"The immediate causes which thus compelled the banks of the city of New York to suspend specie payments on the 10th of May last, are well known. The simultaneous withdrawing of the large public deposits, and of excessive foreign credits, combined with the great and unexpected fall in the price of the principal article of our exports, with an import of corn and bread stuffs, such as had never before occurred, and with the consequent inability of the country, particularly in the south-western States, to make the usual and expected remittances, did, at one and the same time, fall principally and necessarily, on the greatest commercial emporium of the Union. After a long and most arduous struggle, during which the banks, though not altogether unsuccessfully, resisting the imperative foreign demand for the precious metals, were gradually deprived of a great portion of their specie; some unfortunate incidents of a _local_ nature, operating in concert with other previous exciting causes, produced distrust and panic, and finally one of those general runs, which, if continued, no banks that issue paper money, payable on demand, can ever resist; and which soon put it out of the power of those of this city to sustain specie payments. The example was followed by the banks throughout the whole country, with as much _rapidity_ as the news of the suspension in New York reached them, without waiting for an _actual run_; and principally, if not exclusively, on the alleged grounds of the effects to be apprehended from that suspension. Thus, whilst the New York city banks were almost _drained_ of their specie, those in other places preserved the _amount_ which they held before the final catastrophe."