For many years the corporate capital ($500,000) was equally divided between both offices, but since November, 1843, three hundred thousand dollars have been located in the branch, and two hundred thousand dollars in the mother bank. The first dividend of profits was paid May 1, 1814, and dividends have been paid semi-annually ever since; each office contributing thereto ratably, after paying its own taxes, salaries, and other expenses of every kind; issuing also separately its own bank-notes, and providing funds for their redemption. One omission, however, of a half-yearly dividend occurred in 1819, on an untoward occasion, which caused my appointment to the branch in September of that year, and your appointment to the mother bank a month or two subsequently. You were wholly unknown to the directors at Canandaigua, who acted therein on my judgment, an event of which our learned and venerable friend, the Hon. Daniel Appleton White, of Salem, Mass., says: "I have similar grounds to exult at as John Adams had at having nominated ChiefJustice Marshall to the United States bench." The responsibility we severally undertook was not, small. The corporation was prostrate in credit, and literally a ruin. I forsook no employment for my new post, and therefore hazarded only my reputation; but you were at New-York, in mercantile business, and had already acquired thereby $30,000-a large accomplishment we then thought, though it equals in amount only about half your present established annual cash income; acquired, too, not by making other men poorer, but by varied operations that benefited all their instrumentalities.

We omitted, in May, 1837, one other dividend, by compulsion of the Legislature, on the suspension of specie payments throughout the Union; but on the day the law

terminated, May 16, 1838, our corporation paid its stockholders ten per cent. for the suspended year. In that suspension of specie, our two institutions were among the last in the State that submitted to a necessity originating elsewhere; and at a convention of bankers from all parts of the Union, held in New-York some months after the suspension, our corporation said, through us, as its delegates: "If we designate a day for the resumption of specie payments, persons may say that the designation is to frustrate the sub-treasury bill; and if we adjourn without designating a day, we may be suspected of striving to create a National Bank. The dilemma in these suspicious times may be inevitable, but if our decision shall conform to our moral and legal obligations, its propriety may protect us from misconstruction. We are urged to continue in suspension, lest the public suffer a pecuniary pressure; but, threatened, taunted, and despised as we are, for not complying with our obligations, no person will believe that we continue dishonored to protect the public which thus threaten, taunt, and despise us. Duty, therefore, in this case, as in most others, is our best chance for safety." The convention, however, adjourned without designating any day, but the banks of the State met subsequently, and I had the honor to draft a resolution which was adopted, and on which specie was resumed on the first of May then approaching. On the banks of the city of New-York rested the whole burden, expense, and danger of the resumption, which seemed almost hopeless of permanency, while other cities, especially Philadelphia, continued suspended; but time justified the measure, and the resumption became permanent, gradually extended over the Union, and has been unbroken ever since.

The total profits which our corporation will have paid to

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its stockholders on the first of January next, will be four hundred and eleven per cent.; equalling seven per cent. interest the year on the capital, from its investment in 1813, and, in addition, $5,951,8% on every thousand dollars of stock; provided the stockholder shall have kept the excess of dividends invested at compound interest from its reception. Should he have kept thus invested the seven per cent. interest also, the whole would amount, with the capital, to $23,286, for every thousand dollars of original investment. The calculation is predicated on compounding annually, though no reason exists why the owner should not have compounded semi-annually as the bank paid the dividends. On looking at a thousand dollars thus enlarged by the slow process of legal accumulation, we can see why prudent perseverance is usually successful; and that men who jeopard their capital to acquire wealth suddenly, are usually only re-enacting the old fable of killing the bird that, if preserved, would have laid daily, for ever, a golden egg. The dividends, too, have been paid at different localities near the respective stockholders, who have been so little troubled that perhaps one cannot be found out of Canandaigua, and few therein, who has ever voted on his stock even by proxy, or known who conducted the two banks except by the names on the bank notes. The corporation has relieved, also, every stockholder from the personal payment of all taxes on his invested capital, and has paid some fifty-five thousand dollars extorted by the safety fund. The stockholders, however, should know that one. dividend of twenty per cent., paid on the whole capital in November, 1843, was paid exclusively out of the surplus earnings of the office at Canandaigua; and, while the disclaimer may wound the susceptibilities of some whom it honors, I cannot resist saying that, though the dividend

was a surprise on the stockholders, it was preceded by no effort of any knowing director or official to buy up the stock from unwary holders; though custom has much blunted public morals to such quasi-peculations.

In the aggregate of dividends, I include ten per cent. (it may be twelve) that will be paid on the first of January next; and this, also, with the exception of some two per cent., will be the sole earning of your office. Your superior acquisitions for our stockholders my self-love has sometimes attributed to your location, but, as I am now at confession, I admit that the difference in our pecuniary gains is only a sample of our general history, verifying the proverb, that those who best manage their own affairs, are the best managers of the affairs of other people; for when you were appointed to the bank at Canandaigua, I was worth just double your property, and now the proportion between us continues exactly the same, but the disparity is reversed, being in your favor.

During your long administration, you have never been. counselled or ordered by your board, as to what you should do or leave undone, or whom you should trust, or the securities you should accept. I have been equally uncontrolled, though I have spontaneously written to you weekly our progress, and half-yearly stated our debtors. No committee ever visited me; no proceedings were ever criticised, and my directors were always appointed on my sole nomination. You and I, though sympathizing in the service of the same stockholders, subject to the same hopes and fears, and affected by the same good and evil, have, during the long period of our connection, met personally but three or four times, and then casually, briefly, and at long intervals; and never deliberated with each other on our business. Still I have always known that had my re

sults been adverse to the stockholders, you would have detected the delinquency, and that no regard for me, though we have known each other from our youth, and you have said often you feel towards me as a brother, would have restrained you from exercising whatever painful duty the interests of the stockholders would have required. So as regards your board at Canandaigua, one of whom, the Hon. John Greig, your President, I have known well for nearly half a century, courteous as he always is, and as sensitive towards the feelings of others as of his own honor, yet vigilant in pecuniary operations, acute in legal knowledge, and inflexible in integrity, had he and his compeers seen that your being uncontrolled was accomplishing evil to the stockholders, they would have been anything but passive.

I never saw your board but once, and for a half hour, twelve years ago. They were the men who, in 1813, procured the charter, and had been commissioners to distribute its stock. They had grown old with the bank, several very old, and all were reposing in affluence, some in princely magnificence, on life's toils well accomplished. They presented a permanency of position unusual in our country. Those who have left the Board since, have died out; those that remain meet weekly as of yore, not to borrow-they owe nothing-but to supervise gratuitously the business. they have undertaken for stockholders, whom time has scattered over our State, and in Europe, California, Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode-Island; but who mostly are the widows and the descendants, male and female, collateral or linéal, in the second and third generation, of the original subscribers, or their early transferrees. Not a few, however, are the first holders, venerable as the institution, and I hope as vigorous; the whole repre