The President, however, was scarcely settled in his new office when a financial panic struck the country with irresistible force. A general suspension of the banks, a depreciated currency, and insolvency of the federal treasury were at hand. The public money had been placed in the custody of the local banks, and the notes of all these banks, and of all others in the country, were received in payment of public dues. On the 10th of May, 1837, the banks throughout the country suspended specie payments. The stoppage of the deposit banks was the stoppage of the Treasury. Non-payment by the government was an excuse for non-payment by others. The suspension was now complete; and it was evident, and as good as admitted by those who had made it, that it was the effect of contrivance on the part of politicians and the so-called Bank of the United States (which, after the expiration of its national charter, had become a State corporation chartered by the Legislature of Pennsylvania in January, 1836) for the purpose of restoring themselves to power. The whole proceeding became clear to those who could see nothing while it was in progress. Even those of the democratic party whose votes had helped to do the mischief, could now see that the attempt to deposit forty millions with the States was destruction to the deposit banks; that the repeal of President Jackson’s order, known as the “specie circular”—requiring payment for public lands to be in coin—was to fill the treasury with paper money, to be found useless when wanted; that distress was purposely created to throw blame of it upon the party in power; that the promptitude with which the Bank of the United States had been brought forward as a remedy for the distress, showed that it had been held in reserve for that purpose; and the delight with which the whig party saluted the general calamity, showed that they considered it their own passport to power. Financial embarrassment and general stagnation of business diminished the current receipts from lands and customs, and actually caused an absolute deficit in the public treasury. In consequence, the President found it an inexorable necessity to issue his proclamation convening Congress in extra session.