AND THE WHIG COALITION 347 



that a few purchasers should begin to awake to their 

 delusion and a few creditors should begin to ask for 

 hard cash. By 1836 there were others than Martin 

 Chuzzlewit who had learned to their cost that Alad- 

 din's lamp was not to be found in malarial swamps on 

 the Mississippi. Just then there was a creditor who 

 made demands, and that creditor was the United 

 States government. On the i ith of July the Secretary 

 of the Treasury issued the famous "specie circular," 

 requiring payments for public lands to be made in 

 specie. Stringency of the money market had already 

 begun to be felt, because the issue of paper had not 

 kept pace with the feverish demand. Now the strin- 

 gency increased with fearful rapidity. The crash 

 began to come when the first quarter of the surplus 

 was paid out by the deposit banks in January. So 

 large a sum of money could not be moved without 

 calling in loans and awakening apprehension. West- 

 ern banks began calling for specie to pay their debts 

 to the government; confidence died out in Europe, 

 and gold began flowing thither to balance accounts. 

 Prices had become so inflated, and money so hard to 

 get, that mobs in the city of New York shouted for 

 cheap food, and with true mob logic proceeded to de- 

 stroy a great flour warehouse by way of making flour 

 cheaper. In the course of the spring there was a col- 

 lapse of prices and a collapse of credit. All over the 

 country the banks suspended payment; great houses 

 and little houses became alike insolvent ; widows and 

 orphans who had taken stock in railroads leading to 

 Eden were reduced to live upon charity; coin disap- 

 peared, and there was a partial return to barter ; a pair 

 of shoes would be paid for in soup tickets or chips 



