DELAWARE.

MEMORIAL

OF

INHABITANTS OF NEWCASTLE COUNTY,

Asking a restoration of the Public Deposites to the Bank of the United States.

MAY 19, 1834.

Read, and laid upon the table.

To the honorable the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: The memorial of the undersigned, farmers, manufacturers, mechanics, traders, and citizens of Newcastle county, in the State of Delaware, RESPECTFULLY SHOWETH :

That your memorialists are constrained, by the pecuniary pressure which they sensibly feel, in common with their fellow-citizens in other parts of the Union, to approach your honorable bodies with a representation of their situation, and to apply for that relief which, as the constitutional and exclusive guardians of the currency of the country, it is in your power alone to afford. Your memorialists respectfully represent that, within the last three months, an extraordinary and unprecedented change has overtaken every department of business and industry in this district; a change which, first manifesting itself in a sudden curtailment of bank accommodations, and, of course, a great and unprecedented scarcity of money, is now exhibited in an extraordinary depression of the prices of produce, of manufactures and of labor, and in an almost total suspension of all productive business. Within the period mentioned, agricultural produce has fallen at least 25 per cent. real property has experienced a great depression, our manufacturers are paralyzed, many of them are discharging their hands, and many more of them are looking forward to the speedy necessity of shutting up their establishments and closing their business. Money is not to be had, and that which is the substitute for money in times of prosperity-credit-is destroyed by the existing state of things, which, nearly depriving us of confidence in ourselves, takes away all confidence in the stability of others. Your memorialists disclaim all partisan or political feeling in this matter; the situation in which they find themselves is such as to compel them to speak their feelings in the language of soberness and truth, and their anxiety for relief is a sufficient warrant, if any were wanting, for the sincerity of any suggestion they may offer with a view to that object. In looking about for the cause of their present condition, they can find none which they believe (Gales & Seaton, print.]

to be adequate, but the removal of the public funds from the Bank of the United States, which has given a shock to public confidence, upon which the monetary system of every country depends, and has taken those funds from an institution where they were fully available, and placed them where experience has shown that they cannot be available. In this State, there is no branch of the Bank of the United States, and very few of our citizens have any accommodations or transactions with the Bank; our banks are in as sound a condition as any in the Union, and the curtailments which they have been compelled to resort to, your memorialists feel assured were not caused by any pressure of the Bank of the United States upon them, but by the general distrust which the unexpected removal of the public moneys from an institution where they were advantageously employed, has created in all the State banks and among the whole commercial community. Fully convinced, therefore, that this is the cause of the existing distress, your memorialists earnestly and respectfully pray that the public deposites may be immediately restored to the Bank of the United States, as the only proper and effective remedy, and that such further measures as the wisdom of Congress may devise, may be adopted for the permanent establishment of a sound currency. And your memorialists will ever pray, &c.

Peter Riley,

do

Silas Parvin, barber

Joseph Spencer, farmer

Benj. S. Booth, do
John R. Bryan, do
Robert Sheddy, innkeeper

Juniper Taylor, railroad tender
George Townsand, farmer
Arthur Drummond, laborer
Abraham Eves, farmer
Kensey Johns, late chancellor of
the State

James Couper, cashier F. Bank
Newcastle

William Miller, brickmaker
Henry Colesberry, physician
Luke W. Spencer, farmer
Kensey Johns, jr. chancellor of the
State

James Sawdon, farmer
Geo. Miller, brickmaker
David Sand, shoemaker
George Waller, farmer