Discounts are to be
at five per cent., but the profits are expected to be seven per cent.
Congress then will be paying six per cent, on twenty millions, and
receiving seven per cent, on ten millions, being its third of the
institution: so that on the ten millions cash which they receive from
the States and individuals, they will, in fact, have to pay but five
per cent, interest. This is the bait. The charter is proposed to be for
forty or fifty years, and if any future augmentations should take place,
the individual proprietors are to have the privilege of being the sole
subscribers for that. Congress are further allowed to issue to the
amount of three millions of notes, bearing interest, which they are to
receive back in payment for lands at a premium of five or ten per
cent., or as subscriptions for canals, roads, and bridges, in which
undertakings they are, of course, to be engaged. This is a summary
of the scheme, as I understand it: but it is very possible I may
not understand it in all its parts, these schemes being always made
Unintelligible for the gulls who are to enter into them. The advantages
and disadvantages shall be noted promiscuously as they occur; leaving
out the speculation of canals, &c. which, being an episode only in the
scheme, may be omitted, to disentangle it as much as we can.
1. Congress are to receive five millions from the States (if they will
enter into this partnership, which few probably will), and five millions
from the individual subscribers, in exchange for ten millions of six per
cent, stock, one per cent, of which, however, they will make on their
ten millions of stock remaining in bank, and so reduce it, in effect, to
a loan of ten millions at five per cent, interest.
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