278
AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATWN.
was subscribed, and indeed jeapordise the prosperity and happiness of the whol~ country-I trust that upon this vjew of the subject no one can for a Moment hesitate which course to adopt, wheither that one from whence no possible evil can result to any person or that one which places the welfare of our constituents and Country at stake- Postpone untill the other Banks open and .the country more im- proved and an experiment made of one Bank &c &c- Another argument in favor of postponement to the time ·proposer! is that before that time the Banks in the.United States will all have commenced Specie payments and there .will be no difficulty in pro- cureing specie for the establishme:ot of another Bank, and by that time we shall have made an experiment of one Bank and assertained by actual experiance "\Vheither the opperations of the Banking system are benifitial or injurious to the community and enable the Legis- lature to shape their course accordingly. I have moved a postpone- ment of this Bill to the time proposed and shall vote for it from a firm conviction that the best interest of the country demands it and wi11 be materially benefited or injured in the discussion of this question which I think rests up[on] this proposition Wheither there possibly can as much_ injury result to the com- munity from the postponement of this Bill as there can from its adoption let us first consider what ~vils can possibly arise from its postponement, You are told that the country is deluged with the Bank paper of other States, and that we are compeled to have Banks in self defence and Sir have you not a Bank .now going [into] opperation under a charter granted by the Legislature of this Territory on principles, which guarantes to the community at large, to the country as to the Towns to the whole Territory as well as to _St. Louis an equal partici- pation of those previleges and a.dvantages to be drawn from a Bank- ing institution, and will not the p3rper of that Bank drive out the foreign paper with which we are infested as effectually as the paper of two Banks can do. Sir I contend that it will. I contend that the one Bank is Sufficient to stock the circulation of this Territory at this time, and consequently that two will overstock it, One Bank therefore remedies the evil as to forreign paper two creates another evil .still greater, you are told that it is necessary to have two Banks in order to form a competition and to be a check upon each.other, Sir those who are versed in banking will tell you that nothing is more danger- ous than a violent comp~[ti]tion between Banks for there is eminent danger that the directors harried on by those war~ ~eeling which are always alive and on the alert in al_l cases of competit1on_and governed more by the impulse of those feelmgs than by the true mterest of the
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