And while the committees may have hooted the idea that the Bank was responsible for the severity and continuance of the panic, it very slowly began to dawn upon the New York merchants that possibly the “Emperor Nicholas” might be able to alleviate conditions without in the least compromising the safety of the Bank. Some of his champions were slow to realize or loath to concede this declining popularity. In February the bankers and merchants of New York appointed a committee to wait upon him and urge a suspension of the contraction, and Albert Gallatin, former Secretary of the Treasury, pointedly warned him that the committee was satisfied of his ability to grant relief, and would so report to the New York merchants. Thus cornered and threatened with the desertion of its friends, the Bank finally agreed that up to May 1st there should be no further contraction. This was a fatal concession in that it was a confession that relief had been previously deliberately denied.[686] Even such champions of the Bank as James Watson Webb found real cause for melancholy complaint in heavy losses in Bank stock, and we find him whining that he had lost all except his paper, and that other speculators, including Alexander Hamilton, Jr., had been among the victims. Thus the drift against the Bank, which began when Governor Wolf of Pennsylvania denounced its actions in his Message to the Legislature, increased alarmingly. The fact that the Governor had been a firm supporter gave tremendous weight to his act. The friends of the institution were stunned, and, as we shall see a little later, the Governor was bitterly denounced and warmly defended in the Senate. Thus the advice of Jackson to “see Biddle,” so mirthfully related by the committees at the time, and so much ridiculed by some historians since, was demonstrating its wisdom. One month after Wolf acted, Governor Marcy of New York imitated his example with the recommendation of a State plan of relief. His proposal to issue $6,000,000 of five per cent State stock to be loaned to State banks was adopted. The Bank, in its game of “disciplining” the people, had vastly overplayed its hand, and, by its cruel, implacable policy of ruining friends as well as foes, had begun to lose ground in the late winter and early spring. Even among the ultra-conservatives of business, the feeling was germinating that Jackson was not far wrong in the conclusion that a moneyed institution possessing the power to precipitate panics to influence governmental action, was dangerous to the peace, prosperity, and liberty of the people. X