THE MERITS OF BANKS 
273 
venience as a medium of payment of bank deposits, representing 
credit for money actually brought to the bank.! 
No less primitive arguments furnished the bulk of the weapons 
of opponents of banks in the early years. On both sides much 
more attention was given to superficial assertions derived from 
naive prejudices than to arguments based upon thoughtful analy- 
sis of the part banks play in our economic life. Gouverneur Morris 
summarized conveniently the objections offered in 1785.2 The 
danger of permitting so powerful a monied interest, coupled with 
chauvinistic fear of its control by foreign capitalists — both ren- 
dered familiar by the debates later occasioned by the two Banks 
of the United States — were already playing a part in this dis- 
cussion of our earliest bank.? 
Along with the fear of foreign domination of so important an 
institution, was sometimes found the Mercantilistic notion that 
the holding of our stock abroad was in itself undesirable because 
of the loss of specie which the payment of dividends would rep- 
resent. Robert Morris, who took a leading part in the Pennsyl- 
vania Assembly in championing the cause of his favorite, the 
Bank of North America, replied most effectively to this. ‘‘Penn- 
sylvania,” he aptly said, “so long as her citizens can derive a 
better income from the capitals of Europeans vested in our bank 
stock, than those Europeans derive from the dividends, ought to 
hold out encouragement for an increase of such stockholders, 
rather than pursue measures for diminishing their shares.” ® 
Mathew Carey still dealt, not without impatience, with a similar 
objection during the parallel controversy that attended the ques- 
tion of rechartering the first Bank of the United States.® 
1 Cp. Pelatiah Webster, Essay on Credit (1786), in Essays, p. 443, on the ad- 
vantages of payment by checks drawn upon deposit credits. 
2 Gouverneur Morris, Address on the Bank of North America (1785), Sparks’s 
Life of Morris, iii, 440, 441. 
3 Ibid., iii, 440. See also, An Inquiry into the . . . Tendency of Certain Public 
Measures (1794), p. 47; and Newman, Elements of Political Economy (1835), p. 115. 
4 Sparks, 0p. cit., p. 440. 
5 Carey, Debates and Proceedings, etc. (1786), p. 56. 
6 _.. “the merest sciolist in political economy well knows that the employment 
of foreien capital is eminently beneficial.” Carey, Desultory Reflections (1810), p. 21.