Immediately after the close of the last session
the bank, through its president, announced its ability and readiness to
abandon the system of unparalleled curtailment and the interruption of
domestic exchanges which it had practiced upon from the 1st of August,
1833, to the 30th of June, 1834, and to extend its accommodations to
the community. The grounds assumed in this annunciation amounted to an
acknowledgment that the curtailment, in the extent to which it had been
carried, was not necessary to the safety of the bank, and had been
persisted in merely to induce Congress to grant the prayer of the bank
in its memorial relative to the removal of the deposits and to give it
a new charter. They were substantially a confession that all the real
distresses which individuals and the country had endured for the
preceding six or eight months had been needlessly produced by it,
with the view of affecting through the sufferings of the people the
legislative action of Congress. It is a subject of congratulation
that Congress and the country had the virtue and firmness to bear the
infliction, that the energies of our people soon found relief from this
wanton tyranny in vast importations of the precious metals from almost
every part of the world, and that at the close of this tremendous effort
to control our Government the bank found itself powerless and no longer
able to loan out its surplus means.
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