Governments which insisted upon borrowing at rates higher than the money market allowed, could do so only by helping to debase the currency. Dallas’s course offered encouragement to the suspended banks alone. The schedule of his loans proved that he paid a premium to insolvency. Of all places where he most needed “a sufficiency of local currency for local purposes,” Boston stood first; but he borrowed in Boston less than one hundred thousand dollars, and this only in Treasury notes. Next to Boston stood New York; but in New York Dallas borrowed only $658,000, also in Treasury notes. In Philadelphia he obtained more than three millions, and took $1,845,000 in the depreciated local currency. In Baltimore he took nearly two millions in local currency; and in the bank paper of the District of Columbia, which was the most depreciated of all, he accepted $2,282,000 in local currency.[118] Thus the loan which he had asked Congress to authorize for the purpose of absorbing the excess of Treasury notes, brought into the Treasury only about three millions in these securities, while it relieved the banks of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington of six millions of their depreciated paper, worth about eighty cents in the dollar, and provided nothing to redeem the government’s overdue bills at Boston and New York. Had Dallas pursued a different course and funded all the overdue Treasury notes at the market rate, he might not have relieved New England, but he would have placed the government in a position to deal effectually with the suspended banks elsewhere. The immediate result of his refusal to redeem the dishonored Treasury notes was to depress their market value, and to discredit the government. Treasury notes fell to eighty-eight and eighty-seven, while the six-per-cents fell as low as eighty-one. In Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia Dallas obtained enough local currency to meet local obligations, and doubtless saved to the government a small percentage by thus trafficking in its own discredit; but in gaining this advantage he offered encouragement to the over-issues of the suspended banks, and he helped to embarrass the solvent banks in the chief commercial centres as well as those in New England.[119]