existed as to its real causes. This was not surprising. The operations
of credit are so diversified and the influences which affect them so
numerous, and often so subtle, that even impartial and well-informed
persons are seldom found to agree in respect to them. To inherent
difficulties were also added other tendencies which were by no means
favorable to the discovery of truth. It was hardly to be expected that
those who disapproved the policy of the Government in relation to the
currency would, in the excited state of public feeling produced by the
occasion, fail to attribute to that policy any extensive embarrassment
in the monetary affairs of the country. The matter thus became connected
with the passions and conflicts of party; opinions were more or less
affected by political considerations, and differences were prolonged
which might otherwise have been determined by an appeal to facts, by the
exercise of reason, or by mutual concession. It is, however, a cheering
reflection that circumstances of this nature can not prevent a community
so intelligent as ours from ultimately arriving at correct conclusions.
Encouraged by the firm belief of this truth, I proceed to state my
views, so far as may be necessary to a clear understanding of the
remedies I feel it my duty to propose and of the reasons by which I have
been led to recommend them.

The history of trade in the United States for the last three or four
years affords the most convincing evidence that our present condition
is chiefly to be attributed to overaction in all the departments of
business--an over-action deriving, perhaps, its first impulses from
antecedent causes, but stimulated to its destructive consequences
by excessive issues of bank paper and by other facilities for the
acquisition and enlargement of credit. At the commencement of the year
1834 the banking capital of the United States, including that of the
national bank, then existing, amounted to about $200,000,000, the bank