﻿INDIA^^^A UNIVEESITY STUDIES 



Thomas A. Hendricks of Shelby county spoke next. He 

 favored a state bank, if any bank at aU had to be estabhshed. 

 He observed that tlie ^\hole system of paper money was a tax on 

 labor, produce, and commerce, and the only reason for having a 

 paper currency in Indiana, was that it would be better to have our 

 own system here under control, than to get our currency from the 

 neighboring states. As far as the argument that free banks would 

 Dut our people on a common level was concerned, it was certainly 

 Tue. None of them would have any power. The free banks would 

 be controlled by the bcndholdeis of New York, London, and Am- 

 sterdam. Indiana bonds had been bought up by these speculators 

 at from fifteen to fifty cents on the dollar, and if this scheme pre- 

 vailed they would rise to par. The speech of Mr. Hendricks did 

 him honor and bespoke his great ability. His work in the conven- 

 tion made him a congressman before the year ended. Mr. Hendricks 

 was a nephew of the second governor of Indiana. His family came 

 from Pennsylvania. In 1822 his parents came to Shelby county, 

 settling where Shelbyville is now. The father was an office-holder 

 under Jackson. Mr. Hendricks w^as well educated, a rising member 

 of the Shelbyville bar, and now, at the age of thirty-one, began a 

 public career that made him famous in the state and nation. 



Jacob P. Chapman, sitting for Marion county, spoke approvingly 

 of the New York system of banking, but especially deprecated the 

 necessity of issuing paper money by any power. He was personally 

 hostile, he said, to all systems of paper money banking such as had 

 existed in this country. He did not believe in the necessity, or 

 propriety, of making every bank a manufactory of paper money, 

 and in this feature, he had long conceived, lay the chief evil of 

 American banking. No other country tolerated such a monstrosity, 

 nor was it at all necessary to legitimate banking, which consisted 

 soltily in the borrowing and the lending of credit. 



Hiram Allen, representing Carroll and Clinton counties, spoke 

 for free banks. General Robert H. Milroy denominated himself a 

 '^progressive Democrat," and was constitutionally opposed to all 

 schemes of chartered banking. He doubted if any real Democrat 

 could support a state bank. John B. Howe of LaGrange county 

 favored the tree banking system for the reason that, thereby we 

 should soonest have no banks at all, and return to a specie circula- 

 tion. Cromwell W. Barbour of Vigo county thought it absolutely 

 necessary that a state should have ample currency. Pork would 

 have brought twenty-five cents more on the hundred, that year, if 

 the State Bank could have furnished sufficient currency; 180,000 



