"Of the amount of gold coined within the past year about $130,000 were derived from Mexico, South America and the West Indies, $27,000 from Africa, $518,000 from the gold region of the United States, and about $39,000 from sources not ascer. tained.

"Of the amount of gold of the United States above mentioned about $26,000 may be stated to have been received from Virginia, $294,000 from North Carolina, $22,000 from South Carolina, and $176,000 from Georgia. Gold has been received also within the past year from Tennessee and Alabama, not exceeding, however, $1000 from each of those states, an amount meriting little regard except as indicating the progressive development of the gold region.

"The first notice of gold of the United States on the records of the Mint occurs in the transactions of the year 1804. From that year to 1823 inclusive, the average annual amount received at the Mint did not exceed $2500. Since the latter period the progressive increase has been remarkable. The amount received within the succeeding years to the present time may be stated as follows: In 1824

1825

1826

1827

1828

1829

1830

1831

$5,000

17,000

20,000

21,000

46,000

134,000

466,000

518,000

"Previously to the year 1829, the state of North Carolina had furnished gold to the Mint. Within

that year it was received also from Virginia and South Carolina, viz. from the former $2500, and from the latter $3500. Early in 1830 gold began to be received from Georgia. The amount derived within that year from the various sections of the gold region was as follows: Virginia $24,000, North Carolina $204,000, South Carolina $26,000, and Georgia $212,000.

"Silver bullion has been supplied throughout the year in quantities amply sufficient for our present power. The coinage of silver alone has exceeded the whole amount of coinage in any former year, and the coinage of gold, silver, and copper has exceeded that of any previous year by nearly a million of dollars.

"The employment of copper coins in circulation is becoming obviously more general than heretofore. They are transmitted at the public expense and risk to all parts of the United States within the ordinary means of transportation, and their use and value are becoming familiar and acknowledged, where until recently they have been in little estimation.

"The profit on the copper coinage of the past year will somewhat exceed $10,000. This profit is regularly accounted for to the treasury of the United States, thereby refunding so much of the sum appropriated for the expenses of the Mint establishment. The whole expenditure of the Mint for the past year will then be reduced to less than $28,000.”

"Should the supply of bullion be regular and competent, it is not doubted that the amount of coinage for the present year will be equal to six millions of dollars. Of this amount it is proposed to make such a proportion of denominations less than the half dollar as will sensibly improve the condition of the currency."

Besides these, the coins of foreign countries circulate at certain rates prescribed by act of Congress. As these are not merely used as circulating medium, but are objects of foreign commerce, the stock in the country constantly varies with the state of trade, and it is difficult to form any estimate of the amount now in actual circulation. That part of the currency which consists of banknotes can be more readily ascertained.

The banking system of the United States is simply this: The legislatures of the several states exercise the power of granting charters of incorporation for banks, which are created by a subscription of individual capital, the subscribers having no personal liability beyond the amount contributed by each, and the corporation under the management of a Board of Directors, chosen for the most part annually, proceed to lend out this accumulated capital, receive deposits, and issue notes payable on demand in gold or silver.

The number, the capitals, the notes and the specie of these banks, as far as they have been ascertained, are stated in the excellent work by Mr. Gallatin on banks and currency, from which we extract the following interesting table:

New Orleans,

410

The capital thus owned is divided for the purposes of business between the bank and the following twenty-five offices:

Portland, Portsmouth,

Boston,

Providence,

Hartford,

Burlington, New York,

Utica,

Fayetteville,

Charleston,

Savannah,

Mobile,

Natchez,

St. Louis, Nashville,

Louisville,

Less losses chargeable to

Lexington,

contingent fund,

3,452,976 16

Cincinnati,

Buffalo,

Baltimore,

Washington,

Richmond,

Norfolk,

Pittsburgh.

"The number of offices established in 1817 was eighteen; since then two offices have been discontinued-Middletown in Connecticut, and Chillicothe in Ohio, and nine others have been established. Portland in Maine; Burlington in Vermont; Hartford in Connecticut; Utica and Buffalo in New York; St. Louis in Missouri; Nashville in Tennessee; Natchez in Mississippi; Mobile in Alabama; making an addition of seven offices within the last fourteen years. These points were selected out of applications from thirty-eight places. There are now under consideration applications for the establishment of branches from more than thirty places in various parts of the United States.

"The employment of the capital will be seen in the following statement of the condition of the bank on the 1st of August.

Due to Bank U. States,

and offices,

Due to State Banks,

Redemption of public debt, Deposits on account of the Treasurer of the United States,

Less overdrafts and special deposits,

Of public offices, Individuals,

5,505,924 28

28,420 09 5,477,504 19 1,291,597 77 9,115,836 47.

-15,884,938 43

Due from State Banks, 2,903,402 51

"The bank of the United States was established for the purpose of restoring specie payments, which had for a long time been suspended throughout a great part of the country,-of furnishing a sound circulating medium, and of giving more uniformity to the exchanges between distant sections of the union. By importing more than seven millions of specie, and by a free issue of notes immediately after its establishment, the bank with great sacrifices succeeded for a time in attaining these objects; but it seems to have been afterwards considered that its powers were exhausted by the effort, and that the continuance of it would be entirely impracticable. The essential difficulty was presumed to lie in the provision of the charter, making the notes universally receivable for debts to the government, which by obliging the bank to provide payment for the same note at various places, would require it to retain a greater amount of specie than it could issue of notes; thus diminishing rather than increasing the sound circulation. The consequence was, that the bank issued its own notes sparingly; more especially in the southern and western states, where it often preferred the re-issue of the notes of the state banks; being unwilling to issue freely its notes which it might be compelled to pay at some one of many places remote from the point of issuing them. However imperious the necessity which enforced this system, it was apparent that its continuance would tend to defeat the object of establishing the bank, since by declining the issue of its notes it could not furnish the circulating medium expected from it; and by reissuing the notes of state banks, it surrendered its most efficient means of control over the currency. Its whole circulation on the 1st of January 1823 was only $4,589,000. "Having, in compliance with the directions of the stockholders in 1822, applied without success to Congress for a modification of this disabling provision in the charter, it became necessary for the board of directors to re-examine the constitution of the bank, in order to discover whether there was really any organic defect which prevented it from performing the functions to which it was destined, or whether some different combination of its powers might not overcome its difficulties.

The experiment was interesting and hazardous. It was to try how far the institution could succeed in doing that which had never yet succeeded elsewhere, in diffusing over so wide a surface of country a currency of large amount and of uniform value at all places and under all circumstances; and also whether it could bring down to its extreme limit the necessary expense of commercial intercourse between distant sections of country, whose exchangeable productions were of such various and unequal values.

"To accomplish these two objects two things seemed necessary.

"Ist. To make all the local currencies equivalent to specie at the place of their emission. This, by rendering them competent for local purposes, would require a less amount of general currency, and at the same time tend to reduce the exchanges between distant places to the real commercial expense of transferring equal values of coin.

"2d. To make the bank itself the great channel of those commercial exchanges.

"If the bank is bound to transfer the whole public revenue throughout the union, and to furnish a currency payable in various and distant places, it must obviously provide funds in those places, and these can of course be obtained only by purchasing bills of exchange payable at the points to which the course of trade naturally directs the notes. There these bills, having reached their maturity, await the coming of that portion of the notes, which having performed for a time the functions of a circulating medium, are carried by the demand for duties out of the immediate sphere of their issue. The greater proportion of its funds, therefore, which the bank can employ in these operations, the more readily can it sustain the notes issued in the course of them. It is indeed thus, and thus alone, that a circle of sound banking operations founded on sound commercial operations contains within itself the means of its own defence at home, and of providing for its notes which the demand for duties may carry to a distance. These operations too are fortunately of the highest benefit to the community; they give the most direct encouragement to industry, by facilitating the purchase and interchange of all its products, they bring the producers and consumers into more immediate contact by diminishing the obstacles which separate them, and they specially adapt the bank to the wants and interests of each section of the union, by making it alternately a large purchaser among the sellers of bills, and a large seller among the purchasers.

"A participation also in the foreign exchanges forms an essential part of the system, not merely as auxiliary to the transfer of funds by which the circulating medium is accompanied and protected, but as the best defence of that currency from external influences. It is the peculiarity of our moneyed system, that in many parts of the country the precious metals are excluded from the minor channels of circulation by a small paper currency, in consequence of which the greater portion of these metals is accumulated in masses at the points of most convenient exportation. Now with a widely diffused metallic currency, the occasional demands for exportation are more gradually felt, the portion exported bearing a small relation to the whole, occasions less inconvenience, and the excesses of exportation can be more readily corrected without injury. But when the great mass of the precious metals of the community lie thus accessible in the banks of the Atlantic cities, liable to be immediately demanded on notes previously issued in the confidence of a continuance of the same state of things which caused the abundant issue of them; at the first turn in the tide of the foreign exchanges---when the sup