IN SENATE, March 13, 1833. MEMORIAL Of merchants and others of the city of Albany, against the bill for reducing the rate of interest. The undersigned, merchants of the city of Albany, and others, beg leave respectfully to state the objections which in their judg ment present themselves against the passage of the bill now pending before the Legislature for reducing the legal rate of interest. They conceive that, as facilities for the influx and full employment of capital increase the aggregate wealth and prosperity of the State, so also that checks upon its introduction, or restraints upon its employment and circulation, restrict trade and commerce, and diminish the sources of general prosperity. That a diminution or withdrawal of capital tends to enhance the value and price of money, and to increase the cost of it to borrowers, whatever may be the statutory disabilities or penalties. And that the effect of a legal standard of interest, below the market value of money, enforced by the penalties of the usury laws, will be to diminish the actual amount of capital, to lessen the facilities or sources of obtaining money for business and other purposes, and consequently to enhance the cost of money to the borrower. Your memorialists believe that these positions apply to all classes of men and to all avocations, but particularly so to your memorialists, as a body of men familiar with the value and use of capital. Merchants are borrowers of capital. They never cease to be borrowers as a class of the community, until they have acquired a competence; and then they cease to be merchants, and become lenders of capital for the benefit of merchants. As merchants, they charge or receive interest by compulsion, and not from choice, in [Senate, No. 76.] 1 consequence of their credits being prolonged by their customers beyond the term stipulated. The effect therefore of laws restricting the introduction and amount of capital, although prejudicial to all classes of borrowers, and to all who use or employ money, or who render it productive, is particularly so to those engaged in mercantile pursuits. The tendency of a low standard of interest, guarded by penalties, is to prevent the influx of capital from other countries and other States, and at the same time to produce an afflux from our State. Your memorialists beg leave to offer a single illustration. If this law applied to our city alone, its effect would be to expel from it all the seven per cent loans now made, and prevent future loans of capital that could find good security without the city at seven per cent. These two causes combined would make a draft upon the capital of our city to a very large amount; paralyzing enterprize, checking improvement, and producing a ruinous dearth of capital, which would be felt by all, and by none more than by the merchant. If such would be the effect in an old city like this, where capital is not scarce, (and that it would be such we appeal to all practical men,) what must be the effect upon the State at large, where the field for enterprize is so wide, where wild lands are to be subdued and paid for, where buildings are to be erected, farms stocked, villages built, canals and rail-roads constructed, and manufactures established and sustained. All classes of the community must suffer by restraints, except the capitalist. He alone is beyond the reach of legislative coercion. His capital cannot be depressed in value by legislative enactments. If its use in the shape of a loan is fixed below the market value, or the sum which commerce has awarded to it, it will change its location; it will seek some other place or State where it will command its value, or instead of being loaned, it will be invested in an article made cheap by the operation of this law. The inevitable consequence will be to render capital scarce where it is now abundant, and to compel those who borrow and use capital in business pursuits, to pay higher rates of interest than they now pay upon loans. Such must be the effect of reducing the amount of capital, and compelling borrowers to resort to sources that will lend at higher than the legal rates, and will charge a consideration for doing so. Under these views, your memorialists respectfully request that the bill alluded to, now pending before the Legislature, may not be passed into law. And as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c. I. & J. Townsend, J. H. Ten Eyck & Co. R. M. Meigs, Richd. Marvin, D. D. & W. Winne, Joshua Tuffs, Ralph Pratt, John Fay jun. Willard & Lawrence, Erastus Corning & Co. Thos. & Jos. Russell, Rufus H. King & Co. Marvin & Raymond, Seth Hastings, Humphrey & Co. Pruyn, Wilson & Vosburgh, Hochstrasser, Denison & Guest, Friend Humphrey, S. P. Jermain, J. Sherman & Co. Gregory, Bain & Co. W. S. Shepherd & Co. Seymour, Wood & Co. Rathbone & Chapin, Steele & Warren, Carr & Vandenbergh, IN SENATE, March 16, 1833. REPORT Of the select committee, on the petition of the Trus tees of the Seamen's Retreat. The select committee, consisting of the Senators of the first Senate district, to whom was referred the petition of the Trustees of the Seamen's Retreat, REPORTED: That this charitable institution, for the support of sick and disabled seamen, was established by an act of the Legislature, passed 22d April, 1831, and was endowed by an appropriation to their use, of that part of the Marine Hospital fund, composed of the tax on captains, mates, and sailors, arriving in the port of NewYork; and leaving an ample provision for the said hospital, by the income derived from the tax on passengers arriving in the same port. This fund being divided in this manner, between two useful and charitable institutions, the Seamen's Retreat has been erected by the trustees, and is now in successful operation; but their funds have been exhausted in the purchase of ground, the erection of buildings, and supplying their hospital. Although they have been but about eighteen months in operation, they have extended relief to about seven hundred sick and disabled mariners, consisting of captains, mates, and sailors. The healthy and commanding situation of the institution, on the eastern banks of Staten Island, ovorlooking the bay and harbor of New-York, has given it such a preference over the hospital in the city of New-York, that the latter is shunned by the invalid mariner, if there is a possibility of gaining an admission into the for |