9. Public distress was a prominent feature of the times to be embraced in this PRELIMINARY VIEW. The Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816, and before 1820 had performed one of its cycles of delusive and bubble prosperity, followed by actual and wide-spread calamity. The whole paper system, of which it was the head and the citadel, after a vast expansion, had suddenly collapsed, spreading desolation over the land, and carrying ruin to debtors. The years 1819 and '20 were a period of gloom and agony. No money, either gold or silver: no paper convertible into specie: no measure, or standard of value, left remaining. The local banks (all but those of New England), after a brief resumption of specie payments, again sank into a state of suspension. The Bank of the United States, created as a remedy for all those evils, now at the head of the evil, prostrate and helpless, with no power left but that of suing its debtors, and selling their property, and purchasing for itself at its own nominal price. No price for property, or produce. No sales but those of the sheriff and the marshal. No purchasers at execution sales but the creditor, or some hoarder of money. No employment for industry--no demand for labor--no sale for the product of the farm--no sound of the hammer, but that of the auctioneer, knocking down property. Stop laws--property laws--replevin laws--stay laws--loan office laws--the intervention of the legislator between the creditor and the debtor: this was the business of legislation in three-fourths of the States of the Union--of all south and west of New England. No medium of exchange but depreciated paper: no change even, but little bits of foul paper, marked so many cents, and signed by some tradesman, barber, or innkeeper: exchanges deranged to the extent of fifty or one hundred per cent. DISTRESS, the universal cry of the people: RELIEF, the universal demand thundered at the doors of all legislatures, State and federal. It was at the moment when this distress had reached its maximum--1820-'21--and had come with its accumulated force upon the machine of the federal government, that this "VIEW" of its working begins. It is a doleful starting point, and may furnish great matter for contrast, or comparison, at its concluding period in 1850.