HARRISON, TYLER 



them, was thus abstracted from the ordinary and safe 

 occupations of industry and commerce. There was a 

 great demand for ready money, and in the prevailing 

 spirit of boundless confidence it was met by an enor- 

 mous increase of banks and bank credits. Between 

 1830 and 1836 the banking capital of the United 

 States rose from 60 to 250 millions, the loans and dis- 

 counts from 200 to 450 millions, and the note circula- 

 tion from 60 to 140 millions. Thus the elements of a 

 prodigious commercial crisis were all at hand. There 

 was the wholesale dealing in property that had only 

 fictitious values ; there was the wholesale creation of 

 indebtedness, and the attempt to pay it, Micawber- 

 like, with paper promises to pay. Perhaps Jackson's 

 withdrawal of the government deposits from the 

 United States Bank, and distribution of them among 

 fifty state banks, may have helped to increase the mania 

 for speculation ; but it is now apparent that the madness 

 was already beyond control and fast hurrying to a crisis. 



A far worse measure, for which both parties in Con- 

 gress were responsible, and which Jackson ought to 

 have vetoed, was the distribution of the surplus. The 

 extinction of the national debt came to diminish the 

 outgo just as the great sales of public lands came to 

 swell the income; and so in 1836 there was a surplus 

 f $37,000,000, which Congress decided to divide 

 among the states and pay over in four quarterly instal- 

 ments, beginning on New Year's of 1837. The pros- 

 pect of this largess simply added to the general craze. 



By the summer of 1836 the bubble had been blown 

 to such dimensions as perhaps had not been seen since 

 the celebrated South Sea bubble of 1720. To prick 

 and explode such airy nothings, it is only necessary 



