Continuation of the History of American Banks.

The stock of the United States Bank fell as rapidly as it had risen, and presently sunk far below par. The Bank had experienced some very heavy losses; its business was greatly reduced; and its circulation so much contracted, that at the beginning of 1823, it did not much exceed four millions and a half.

This did by no means satisfy the desires, or answer the expectations of the stockholders and Directors. It was deemed expedient to devise some method of increasing the circulation; and the Directors applied to Congress for a modification of the charter, by which the Bank might be excused from redeeming its notes except at Philadelphia. If this application had been granted, it would doubtless have had the desired effect. Notes disbursed in distant parts of the country would have returned to the Mother Bank but slowly; the dispensation with the necessity of keeping specie at the branches would have given it a decided advantage over the local banks, whose notes it would have been constantly returning in order to make room for its own. At a distance from Philadelphia, and in the state of trade at that time, these notes would have fallen to a discount, equal to the expense of bringing specie from Philadelphia; a circumstance which would have enabled them to drive the local notes out of circulation, but which would have had no great tendency to produce that uniform currency, one of the principal objects, as we are lately told, for which the Bank was established. But Congress refused its consent, and this project was defeated.

The increase of the domestic trade, which, notwithstanding the commercial embarrassments of the country, regularly increased with the increase of population, was fast giving rise to a new and important branch of business, hitherto of little comparative consequence. This was the business of Domestic Exchanges.

The necessity of sustaining its branches, and of meeting the drafts of the government at different points of the country, first led the Bank into this business; and as its facilities for transacting it were great, so, for a long time, it enjoyed a complete monopoly of it. The Bank effected these exchanges at very reasonable rates, and divers practical men have since supposed, that because the Bank had a monopoly of the business, and the rates were moderate, therefore the monopoly was the cause of