The confusion was then at its height. Owing
to the very delicate mechanism of the credit circulation, the banks and
the clearing house were the first attacked and the most shaken, but they
immediately formed themselves into a syndicate to resist the storm which
was upsetting all about them. As cheques were no longer paid,
settlements no longer took place, and the credit circulation was
suspended; this stoppage was liable to induce the greatest consequences,
hence it was necessary to be very circumspect. Here it was not possible
to suspend the law, as in England the Act of 1844 was suspended,
permitting an excess of the official limit for the note issue, but the
banks could have been empowered to demand authority to change the
proportion enacted by the law creating National Banks. They had no
recourse to any of these violations of the Statutes, which prove only
too often under such circumstances that regulation by law is impossible;
they satisfied themselves, without having the public powers intervene,
with issuing clearing-house certificates, that is to say, promises,
which they were bound to accept as cheques in settling up the operations
of each day.
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