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The capital was fixed at six millions of livres, in twelve thousand shares of five hundred livres each, purchasable one-fourth in specie and the remainder in billets d'etat. It was not thought expedient to grant him the whole of the privileges prayed for in his memorials until experience should have shown their safety and advantage. Law was now on the high road to fortune.
They, therefore, favored an institution of large capital, non-specie-paying, and obliged to make heavy loans to the government, which involved, of course, an irredeemable paper currency. In a word, there was the party of no bank, the party of a specie bank, and the party of a huge paper-money bank. The second of these parties, with which of course Mr. Webster acted, held the key of the situation.
In any modification of the present laws regulating national banks, as a further step toward preparing for resumption of specie payments, I invite your attention to a consideration of the propriety of exacting from them the retention as a part of their reserve either the whole or a part of the gold interest accruing upon the bonds pledged as security for their issue.
Then they took gunpowder and blew up the express specie boxes and got their contents. The leader of the robbers was a small, quick-spoken man, and the fame of his vigorous manner and his intrepidity was in everybody's mouth when we arrived. The night after instructing Virginia, I walked over the desolate "divide" and down to Gold Hill, and lectured there.
On the other hand, appeared in the leading paper, the "Moniteur," a very thoughtful article against paper money, which sums up all by saying, "It is, then, evident that all paper which cannot, at the will of the bearer, be converted into specie cannot discharge the functions of money."
They attributed that excess to "the want of a sufficient check and control in the issues of paper from the Bank of England, and originally to the suspension of cash-payments, which removed the natural and true control". While allowing that paper could not be rendered suddenly convertible into specie without dislocating the entire business of the country, they recommended that an early provision should be made by parliament for terminating the suspension of cash-payments at the end of two years.
Indeed, a specie-currency in the presence of bank-notes is an impossibility, because the notes proclaim their own inferiority; consequently, the specie is retained and the notes circulated. Yet, the operations of the mint are continued, with the avowed object of creating a specie currency. This practice is, however, of some use.
Gilbert was asleep at the time, but got up shortly after she was seen, and ordered the Panda to go about and stand for the brig. A consultation was held between the captain, mate and carpenter, when the latter proposed to board her, and if she had any specie to rob her, confine the men below, and burn her. This proposition was instantly acceded to, and a musket was fired to make her heave to.
* Tallien is supposed, as agent of the municipality of paris, to have paid a million and a half of livres to the Septembrisers or assassins of the prisons! I know not whether the sum was in assignats or specie.
The financial agony was prolonged somewhat by attempts to secure funds by still another "forced loan," and other discredited measures, but when all was over with paper money, specie began to reappear first in sufficient sums to do the small amount of business which remained after the collapse.
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