The Panic of 1819 (Murray N. Rothbard)

The Panic of 1819 (Murray N. Rothbard)
- Highlight Loc. 271-79  | Added on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 09:35 PM

Obstacles and intimidation were the lot of those who attempted to press the banks for payment in specie.46 As the Philadelphia economist, merchant, and State Senator Condy Raguet wrote to Ricardo: You state in your letter that you find it difficult to comprehend, why persons who had a right to demand coin from the Banks in payment of their notes, so long forbore to exercise it. This no doubt appears paradoxical to one who resides in a country where an act of parliament was necessary to protect a bank, but the difficulty is easily solved. The whole of our population are either stockholders of banks or in debt to them. It is not the interest of the first to press the banks and the rest are afraid. This is the whole secret. An independent man, who was neither a stockholder or debtor, who would have ventured to compel the banks to do justice, would have been persecuted as an enemy of society.47