160 BANKING THEORIES IN UNITED STATES
popular! Tucker and others stressed the value of publicity as a
check upon abuses.”
As in England, the desirability of making banking the exclusive
privilege of certain chartered companies was the subject of considerable
controversy. It was an issue inherited from the colonial
period? Raymond objected to chartered banking in no uncertain
terms. A “parcel of rich men,” he held, combine “for no other
purpose but to augment the artificial power, which money gives
them, in accumulating more.” * “I am unshaken in my opinion 5
wrote Thomas Cooper, “that every bank charter is unconstitutional:
depriving the great majority of citizens of rights which
they are entitled to be protected in exercising; and conferring
exclusive privileges on another class, upon motives and pretenses
often fraudulent, seldom excusable, never justifiable.”
Professor McVickar, writing in the mood of Manchesterism at its
zenith, thought that “all the evils of banking, beyond those which
exist in other modes of business, flow from needless or unwise
regulation.” © Monopoly and charters, interfering with the beautiful
workings of natural laws, were in his judgment the source of
all the evils of banking.” Gouge regarded incorporation as a
premium on villainy, and Hildreth asserted that the restriction of
the privilege of note issue to a few corporations was a regulation
“quite as wise and profound, as if the legislature should grant to
a few firms in Court street and Hanover street, the exclusive right
of manufacturing cotton shirts.” 8 H. C. Carey found the subject
fitted to illustrate his ability to formulate “laws” conveniently
1 Sullivan, Path to Riches (1792), pp. 62-64; Dewey, State Banking Before the
Civil War, pp. 22-33, 112-115.
2 Tucker, Theory, etc. (1839), pp. 211-213. See Dewey, 0p. cit., pp. 126-136, for
legislation seeking greater publicity for banking accounts.
3 “Objections to the Bank of Credit” (1714), Reprints, i, 242-248; “Letter
from One in Boston” (1714), ibid., i, pp. 282-285; Douglass, Discourse (1740),
C. J.Bullock’s edition, pp. 319, 353-t+
Raymond, Elements (1823), ii, 121. He tempered his views fifteen years later.
(See Neill, Daniel Raymond, p. 36.)
5 Cooper, Lectures (1826), p. 157.
6 McVickar, “Hints on Banking” (1827), Financial Register, ii, 321.
V Jbid., 11, 324; 325
8 Hildreth, Letter to Morton (1840), p. 12. See also, Democratic Review (1837).
i. 116. and (1840), vii, 1009.
