No sooner, however, was this condition of the commercial and banking community well established than a new shock was given by another political interference. The administration had now advanced to the point of desiring to establish a specie currency for the country. The object was laudable and the means taken were proper, but, following as they did in the train of the events already mentioned, they produced new confusion. In 1836 various acts were passed to bring about a specie currency, and in July of that year the Secretary of the Treasury ordered the receivers of public money to take only gold and silver for lands. The circumstances warranted this order. The sales of lands had risen from two or three to twenty-four million dollars in a year, and the amount was paid in the notes of “banks”[57] which deserved no credit. If the nation was not to be swindled out of the lands the measure was necessary. It then became necessary for the purchasers of land to carry specie to the West and vast amounts of it accumulated in the offices of the receivers, or were transferred at great trouble and expense to deposit banks. The specie was obtained from the eastern banks, and inasmuch as the whole existing system had pushed them to the utmost limit of expansion, these demands for specie were embarrassing. Two points here deserve notice. It is strange to see what a superstition about “specie” had taken possession of the public mind. It was regarded as a good thing to have, but too good to use. A specie dollar was regarded as an excuse for its owner to print and circulate from three to twenty paper ones, but it was not regarded as having any other use. The withdrawal of the specie basis from an inflated paper was no doubt a serious blow to the whole fabric, but, if the paper had not been redundant the transfer of specie to the West could only have forced an importation of so much more. This superstition about specie also prevented any demand upon the banks for specie for any purpose. Such a demand was regarded as a kind of social or business crime. Hence the “convertibility” of the notes was a polite fiction. The second point worth noticing is that the bank advocates continually talked about “the credit system” when they meant the system of issuing credit bank notes; and they grew eloquent about the advantages of credit, as if those advantages could only be won by using worthless bank notes and not by lending gold or silver or capital in any form.