The distress of the country figured largely in the speeches of several members, but without finding much sympathy. That engine of operating upon the government and the people had been over-worked in the panic session of 1833-'34 and was now a stale resource, and a crippled machine. The suspension appeared to the country to have been purposely contrived, and wantonly continued. There was now more gold and silver in the country than had ever been seen in it before--four times as much as in 1832, when the Bank of the United States was in its palmy state, and was vaunted to have done so much for the currency. Twenty millions of silver was then its own estimate of the amount of that metal in the United States, and not a particle of gold included in the estimate. Now the estimate of gold and silver was eighty millions; and with this supply of the precious metals, and the determination of all the sound banks to resume as soon as the Bank of the United States could be forced into resumption, or forced into open insolvency, so as to lose control over others, the suspension and embarrassment were obliged to be of brief continuance. Such were the arguments of the friends of hard money. The divorce bill, as amended, passed the Senate, and though not acted upon in the House during this called session, yet received the impetus which soon carried it through, and gives it a right to be placed among the measures of that session. CHAPTER XII. ATTEMPTED RESUMPTION OF SPECIE PAYMENTS. The suspension of the banks commenced at New York, and took place on the morning of the 10th of May: those of Philadelphia, headed by the Bank of the United States, closed their doors two days after, and merely in consequence, as they alleged, of the New York suspension; and the Bank of the United States especially declared its wish and ability to have continued specie payments without reserve, but felt it proper to follow the example which had been set. All this was known to be a fiction at the time; and the events were soon to come, to prove it to be so. As early as the 15th of August ensuing--in less than one hundred days after the suspension--the banks of New York took the initiatory steps towards resuming. A general meeting of the officers of the banks of the city took place, and appointed a committee to correspond with other banks to procure the appointment of delegates to agree upon a time of general resumption. In this meeting it was unanimously resolved: "_That the banks of the several States be respectfully invited to appoint delegates to meet on the 27th day of November next, in the city of New York, for the purpose of conferring on the time when specie payments may be resumed with safety; and on the measures necessary to effect that purpose._" Three citizens, eminently respectable in themselves, and presidents of the leading institutions--_Messrs._ Albert Gallatin, George Newbold, and Cornelius W. Lawrence--were appointed a committee to correspond with