notes then in circulation to about ninety-five millions, and the loans
and discounts of the banks to three hundred and twenty-four millions.
Between that time and the 1st of January, 1836, being the latest period
to which accurate accounts have been received, our banking capital was
increased to more than two hundred and fifty-one millions, our paper
circulation to more than one hundred and forty millions, and the loans
and discounts to more than four hundred and fifty-seven millions.
To this vast increase are to be added the many millions of credit
acquired by means of foreign loans, contracted by the States and State
institutions, and, above all, by the lavish accommodations extended
by foreign dealers to our merchants.

The consequences of this redundancy of credit and of the spirit of
reckless speculation engendered by it were a foreign debt contracted
by our citizens estimated in March last at more than $30,000,000; the
extension to traders in the interior of our country of credits for
supplies greatly beyond the wants of the people; the investment of
$39,500,000 in unproductive public lands in the years 1835 and 1836,
whilst in the preceding year the sales amounted to only four and a
half millions; the creation of debts, to an almost countless amount,
for real estate in existing or anticipated cities and villages,
equally unproductive, and at prices now seen to have been greatly
disproportionate to their real value; the expenditure of immense sums
in improvements which in many cases have been found to be ruinously
improvident; the diversion to other pursuits of much of the labor that
should have been applied to agriculture, thereby contributing to the
expenditure of large sums in the importation of grain from Europe--an
expenditure which, amounting in 1834 to about $250,000, was in the first
two quarters of the present year increased to more than $2,000,000; and
finally, without enumerating other injurious results, the rapid growth