THE FARMERS' REGISTER. 



183 



iniquity. Their directors and users foolishly believe 

 that that is all which is neeHed to sustain them. 

 But they will find their mistake. The growing de- 

 preciation of the notes, the s'ill faster growing dis- 

 credit and distrust of the banks themselves, the dai- 

 ly growing abhorrence of the whole frandiilenr pr- 

 per money system, and of the conduct of it in Vir- 

 ginia in particular, will all concur to demand and 

 enforce resumption before the laws will in good 

 faith. And as we believe that bona fide payments 

 cannot be resumed and .maintained by banks so 

 crippled, and so deservedly discredited as those of 

 Virginia are and will be, the forced attempt at 

 resumption will most likely produce a final sus- 

 pension, which will be then called by the true 

 name for all bank suspensions — that is ba-kruptcy. 

 If we are mistaken in the degree of peril of such 

 results to the banks, or as to the time, we cannot 

 be mistaken in this opinion, that the longer they 

 postpone resumption, the greater will be the dan- 

 ger of undisguised bankruptcy from the attemp*. 

 Banks of circulation, if paying, cannot stand ex- 

 cept when sustained by public confidence — and 

 the banks of Virginia have so acted as to forfeit 

 all claim to trust and confidence. 



And now, when all the evils of the previous 

 full sway of the fraudulent paper system are 

 about to be brought upon the whole community — 

 evils which we predicted long ago, and vainly 

 tried to warn the agricultural community against 

 — the cry is raised by the bankites, and will be 

 sounded and echoed much louder yet, that the 

 movements for bank resumption, and the action 

 of opposers of the frauds of 'the banks, have 

 caused the present and still growing distress. It 

 would be as just and true a charge if all the 

 wretchedness of feeling, prostration of powers, 

 and acknowledged ruin, of a newly sobered 

 drunkard were to be ascribed, not to his intoxicat- 

 ing draughts, or to his having been drunk daily 

 for 10 years before, but to his finally forced slate 

 of abstinence and sobriety. It is very true, that 

 no improvident debtor can pay his debts without 

 inconvenience or privation — and we have never 

 deemed as a light matter the enormous load of 

 bank debt on the people. But debtors who will 

 not prepare for the inevitable approaching, though 

 distant day of payment, until forced, are gene- 

 rally such as would suffer the less by being thus 

 forced to pay early rather than late. Those 

 earlier debtors who have remained in debt to the 

 banks during the whole past five years of sus- 

 pension, and are not yet prepared to pay, never 

 will be prepared. They are ruined already, or 

 their ruin is inevitable, from their own impru- 

 dence ; and no greater extension of indulgence can 

 possibly save them. And those who have first 

 contracted standing debts to the banks, during 



the tirrre of suspension, have been therein no less 

 imprudent, are not the less hspeless, and have 

 no claim whatever that the public should remain 

 under all the burdens and evils of a debased pa- 

 per currency, until these new and fully warned 

 debtors shall voluntarily retrace their false steps. 

 If there had been a^y real effort made, eiiher by 

 the solvent debtors of the banks to pay iheir 

 debts, or of the banks to prevent new debts and 

 liabilities being made, the improper excess of 

 debts might have been paid, and all impediments 

 to resumption of bank payments would have been 

 removed, and bank payments honestly and truly 

 resumed, three years ago, and without any serious 

 loss or inconvenience to the country — indeed very 

 far less than has been suffered since, by the con- 

 tinuance of the fraudulent operation of non-pay- 

 ing banks. If great and general pecuniary dis- 

 tress be now pressing on the people in general, 

 as well as on banks and their debtors, and if the 

 pressure should cause ever so much decline in the 

 selling prices of property, it will not be caused 

 (as alleged by the bank organs) by measures for 

 bank resumption, .but because of the long con- 

 tinued delay of resumption, and the total failure 

 to prepare for resumption both by the banks, 

 and their improvident and reckless debtors. These 

 deductions are so plain that they require merely 

 to be announced to obtain the assent of unpre- 

 judiced persons. But if any such reader should 

 still believe the current assertion, that it is bank 

 reform, and not past bank abuses (as we use 

 the term,) that causes disire<js, we ask what caused 

 all the commercial and general pecuniary pres- 

 sure in Virginia in 1841? During that year, as 

 before shown, there had been no contraction of 

 bank loans and issues, but on the contrary an 

 actual increase of issues and of liabilities, to the 

 amount of more than a million of dollars. Surely 

 ihis reverse and adverse operation to resumption 

 of payments ought to have prevented distress, 

 if contraction and resumption, properly and gra- 

 dually conducted, would produce greater distress. 

 And the approach to resumption might have 

 been abundantly slow, and yet have been safely 

 reached by the banks before 1840. Resumption 

 of payments, so reached, would have been better 

 for the debtors themselves — belter for the per- 

 manent stockholders, (not stock-jobbers,) by show- 

 ing them earlier the true state of their wasted 

 funds — incalculably better for the commonwealth 

 — and better for all, except bank officers and the 

 borrowing and speculating and bankrupt interests, 

 to whom bank loans arc " the breath of their 

 nostrils," and who must cease to exist when de- 

 prived of that sustenance. It is this class that 

 has long directed the banking policy of Virginia, 



