ants ever appeared, the greater part having been massacred; and the vessels of Girard were found laden with property of great value, whose owners could not be found, after the most liberal advertising. This property, consisting in value of about fifty thousand dollars, was transported to Philadelphia, and tended to add largely to his already considerable fortune, as the original owners, consisting of entire families, had been swept away amid the pillage and devastation of that island. In the year 1791, and the subsequent year, Mr. Girard commenced the building of those beautiful ships which have ever been the pride of the city of Philadelphia, vessels which soon engaged largely in the trade with Calcutta and China. The names of some of these ships, while they indicate the national prepossessions of their owner, also show the early bent of his mind, being called the Montesquieu, Helvetius, Voltaire, and Rousseau. At this period the desire of fame, the movements of ambition, seeking money, not from avarice, but as a means of power, appear to have taken a firm hold upon his mind, and amid the abstract musings of the lone man, regarded with no affection by a human being, a man whose sympathies appear to have been steeled against the world; he was doubtless in the cold recesses of his solitary heart, even while calculating the interest upon the tenth part of a cent, projecting fabrics of anticipated renown, upon whose walls his own name would be written in letters of living and enduring light.

Du

We now approach a period in the life of Mr. Girard which tended in good measure to relieve his character from the imputation of selfishness and want of feeling, that had, to this time, so deeply shaded it. We allude to the part that he bore in that terrific pestilence, which, it will be remembered, in the year 1793, broke out in the city of Philadelphia, converting that beautiful metropolis into a foul and disgusting charnel-house. ring the time to which we refer, the yellow fever had produced ravages and revolting scenes of misery which have never been equalled in the country, and that have been seldom witnessed anywhere. Whole streets were left tenantless, excepting, perhaps, by the dead bodies of their former occupants, that had been forsaken by their friends. The hearse was the vehicle that was most frequently seen in the streets. The obsequies of an ordinary funeral were denied to those who would, but a short time previous, have attracted crowds of mourners to their graves. The individual who was seen with the badges of mourning upon his arm was avoided as the Upas tree, and almost every person was involved in the fumes of camphor or tobacco. While this pestilence was raging at its utmost height, an individual, of low and square stature, was perceived alighting from a coach which drew up before an hospital where the most loathsome victims of this disease had been collected for the purpose of being attended by medical aid. The man entered this living sepulchre, and soon returned bearing in his arms a form that appeared to be suffering in the last stages of the fever, a being whose countenance was suffused with that saffron color which seemed to be the certain harbinger of death. The body was deposited in a coach, and the carriage drove away. The man who was thus seen performing this act was Stephen Girard. It might be, and indeed has been said, that having gone through the seasoning process in a tropical climate, he was proof against the disease. But whether that was or was not the case, it does not abate in any measure the credit which is his due in thus exposing, at least, his life in behalf of a fellow-being. And it is a well-attested fact that during the prevalence

of the disease he continued a constant attendant in the hospital, performing all those offices which would seem revolting to the most humble menial.

The institution of the private bank of Mr. Girard in Philadelphia, that was originally believed to have been the offspring of a long and deeply settled plan, that had been matured in silence and solitude, appears to have been the result of a temporary circumstance, which was the opposition that then prevailed to the old Bank of the United States. Girard was a firm friend to that institution, and convinced that a corporation which had been organized under the advice of Washington, and which he supposed had conferred obvious and solid advantages upon the country, should have been perpetuated. Believing that this bank would be renewed, Mr. Girard, as early as 1810, transmitted orders to the house of Messrs. Baring, Brothers & Co., London, to invest his funds in shares of the Bank of the United States, a transaction which was performed during the following year, by the purchase of stock in that bank to the amount of half a million of dollars. The house of the Barings, however, was unable to transmit his funds periodically, owing to the critical condition of the Bank of England, and their own state verging upon bankruptcy; and it may be perceived upon what an uncertain foundation his own property rested when we learn the fact, that this house was indebted to him, in the year 1811, in the sum of two hundred thousand pounds sterling. After a time, however, he succeeded in extricating his funds from that country, partly by investment in British goods and public stock, and purchased shares of the Bank of the United States, for which he paid one hundred and twenty dollars per share, with a view to the investment of his capital in an independent form, and probably from an ambition to become himself a regulator of the currency. Mr. Girard having discovered that he could purchase the old Bank of the United States and the cashier's house at the reduced price of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, being less than one third of their original cost, on the 12th day of May, 1812, commenced the banking operations of the old Girard Bank, with a capital of one million and two hundred thousand dollars, which was increased the succeeding year to one million and three hundred thousand; the bulk of the business of the old Bank of the United States, including five millions of specie, the funds of that institution, being deposited in his vaults. Aided by such accession to his funds, and with the officers of the old bank retained in his employ, together with the business which was transferred to his hands from that institution, the customers of the old corporation being turned over to him, Mr. Girard, backed by the valuable assistance of Mr. Simpson,* his cashier, who had before been engaged in the former institution, commenced his operations upon the same principles that had regulated the old body. The non-renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States, however, led to the establishment of his own.

The organization of the Girard Bank tended to confer extensive and solid benefits upon the community. Conducted upon a liberal scale, it was the policy of Mr. Girard to grant accommodations to small traders, and thus to encourage beginners; while, at the same time, the smaller notes were preferred to the larger ones. It was obvious that the organization of this institution tended to avert the evils that must necessarily have flowed

* To a work prepared by a son of that gentleman, we are indebted for most of the facts connected with the life of Mr. Girard.

from the entire suspension of the circulation of the funds of the old institu tion; and whatever of temporary inconvenience arose from that fact was soon neutralized by the extraordinary efforts that were made by this able financier to remedy the evil, and to diffuse abroad the benefits that had flowed from the old bank. During the commencement of his banking operations, Mr. Girard, who had accustomed the institution to the discount of accommodation paper to a large amount, for auctioneers who practised the advance of large loans upon foreign and imported goods, perceiving that losses were found accruing from such a plan of proceeding, and that his capital was engrossed by these auctioneers, soon deemed it prudent to alter his policy; and in 1816, it was understood that no paper that was merely fictitious was to be discounted at his bank, and no renewal of a note was accordingly allowed. On this change of his banking plans, his profits augmented, and but few losses occurred.

The establishment of this private bank exhibited to the country the novel spectacle of a private American banker conducting his institution upon a large scale, and conferring advantages upon the community nearly as great as those which had been derived from state or national auspices. And this bank rendered important service to the government. The fiscal affairs of the nation had been thrown into confusion by the dissolution of the former bank, and the suspension of specie payments added to the general embarrassment. Yet, while the public credit was shaken to its centre, and the country was involved in difficulties springing from its exhausted finances and the expenses of war, the bank of Mr. Girard not only received large subscriptions for loans, but made extensive advances to the government, which enabled the country to carry on its belligerent enterprises; loans, too, which were the spontaneous offspring of patriotism, as well as of pru dence. This aid appears to have been rendered from time to time, down to the period of 1817, when the second national bank superseded his as sistance. A circumstance soon occurred, however, which was a source of no little discomfiture to the financial arrangements of his individual institution. This fact was the suspension of specie payments by the state banks, resulting from the Non-intercourse Act, the dissolution of the old bank, and the combined causes tending to produce a derangement of the currency of the country. It was then made a matter of great doubt with him how he should preserve the integrity of his own institution while the other banks were suspending their payments; but the credit of his own bank was effectually secured by the suggestion of his cashier, Mr. Simpson, who advised the recalling of his own notes by redeeming them with the specie, and by paying out the notes of the state banks; and in this mode, not a single note of his own was suffered to be depreciated, and he was thus enabled, in 1817, to concontribute effectually to the restoration of specie payments.

Meanwhile, an interesting circumstance occurred, which enabled him, by his bank, in 1813, to accomplish an enterprise which was of great importance to the city of Philadelphia, by the increase of its trade, as well as to his own funds in its profits, besides the advantages which were furnished to the government by the duties which accrued to the national treasury. It happened that his ship, the Montesquieu, was captured at the mouth of the river Delaware, as was alleged, by a British frigate, and as this vessel had an invoice cargo of two hundred thousand dollars-consisting of teas, nankeens, and silks-from Canton, it was determined by the captors, in preference to the hazard of being recaptured by an American ship in their

attempt to carry their prize to a British port, to send a flag of truce to Mr. Girard, in order to give him the offer of a ransom. Applying to his wellstored vaults, the banker drew from it the sum of ninety-three thousand dollars in doubloons, which was transmitted to the British commander, and his vessel was soon seen coming into port with her rich cargo; which, notwithstanding the price of the ransom, is supposed, by the advance of the value of the freight, to have added a half a million of dollars to his fortune. It may be mentioned as an act indicating his patriotism at least, that in 1814, when the credit of the country was exhausted, the treasury bankrupt, the resources of the nation prostrated, and an invading army was marching over the land; when, in fact, subscriptions were solicited for funds to the amount of five millions of dollars, upon the inducement of a large bonus and an interest of seven per cent, and only twenty thousand dollars could be obtained upon that offer for the purpose of carrying on the war, Stephen Girard stepped forward and subscribed for the whole amount; and that when those who had before rejected the terms, were now anxious to subscribe, even at a considerable advance from the original subscription, these individuals were let in by him upon the same terms.

The agency of Mr. Girard appears to have been very active in the organization of the Bank of the United States, which was chartered in 1816. His intimacy with Mr. Dallas, and his success in impressing upon his mind the frame of the projected institution, seems to have been admitted, and that gentleman is stated to have made use of the frequent expression of the French banker, that "the national authority was requisite for the establishment of a sound currency, by the aid of a national bank." His friends, indeed, have gone so far as to allege that even the establishment of his own private institution was his desire to hold up to the country the example of the influence of such an institution in regulating the currency of the nation; and that, in the capacity of banker, he acted as a trustee for the country, designing to unite its influence with that of the projected national bank, in order to the accomplishment of its object; and even after the outline of that institution was formed, and Mr. Girard was chosen one of the directors, he made the formal proposition that if the board would agree to elect his cashier-Mr. Simpson-the cashier of the Bank of the United States, he would unite his own institution with that, and deposit in the new corporation one million of specie which he held in his vaults. Even after the bank was regularly organized, and its prosperity placed upon a solid foundation, Mr. Girard, acting as one of its directors, not only impressed its policy with his clear-sighted, far-reaching, and sagacious views, but practised towards it a forbearance and liberality which marked him as its strong and faithful friend. When that institution was unable, from the pressure of the times, to pay to him even half the amount which was his due in specie, he refrained from demanding it, and evinced himself the firm supporter of its interests; and when specie payments were resumed, he recommenced, at the same time, the issuing of his own notes.

One of the essential characteristics of Mr. Girard was his public spirit. At one time, he freely subscribed one hundred and ten thousand dollars for the navigation of the Schuylkill; at another time, he loaned the same company two hundred and sixty-five thousand eight hundred and fifty. When the credit of the state of Pennsylvania was prostrated by what was believed to have been an injudicious system of internal improvement, and it was found expedient for the governor to resort to its metropolis, in order to re

plenish its coffers, he made a voluntary loan to Governor Shultz of one hundred thousand dollars. So far was his disposition to promote the fiscal prosperity of the country manifested, that as late as 1831, when the country was placed in extreme embarrassment from the scarcity of money, he perceived the cause in the fact that the balance of trade was against us to a considerable extent, and he accordingly drew upon the house of Baring, Brothers & Co., for bills of exchange to the amount of twelve thousand pounds sterling, and which he disposed of to the Bank of the United States, at an advance of ten per cent; which draft was followed up by another for ten thousand, which was disposed of in like manner to other institutions. This act tended to reduce the value of bills, and the rate of exchange suddenly fell. The same spirit which he manifested towards the national currency he exhibited to the corporation of Philadelphia, by erecting new blocks of buildings, and beautifying and adorning its streets; less, appa rently, from a desire of profit than from a wish to improve the place which was his adopted home, and where he had reaped his fortunes. His subscription of two hundred thousand dollars to the Dansville and Pottsville Railroad, in 1831, was an act in keeping with the whole tenor of his life; and his subscription of ten thousand dollars towards the erection of an exchange, all looked to the same result. Thus passed the life of Stephen Girard, the financier, the banker, the economist; with a soul devoted to what most men so ardently seek-the acquisition of wealth; expanding his influence through the whole circle of mercantile enterprise, and marking the fiscal system of the nation with his own broad impression.

Having given the prominent facts connected with his life in chronologi. cal order, we now propose to draw a brief portraiture of his character, and this can be most properly done by a condensed view of the incidents connected with its history. We see this man, at first a cabin-boy, embarking from his native country without money or apparent friends; then a mate of a trading vessel, supercargo, and shipmaster; shopkeeper, bottler, a lessor of houses, a large merchant; and lastly, a private banker, having a control of millions, and enabled, by his own individual power, to control the contractions and the expansions of the money market. It was the peculiar circumstances which attended his first entrance into life that colored his subsequent career. In his early voyages before the mast, from place to place, in the operations of traffic, his discerning eye clearly perceived the mode in which fortunes were obtained, and in such expeditions he derived a kind of experience which determined him at once to enter upon a mercantile course; and although without the advantages of an early classical education, he had acquired precisely that sort of information which empowered him to prosecute this mode of life the most successfully. And he commenced, where most wealthy men who have acquired their own fortunes have begun, namely-with small means. Contented with the minute gains of an obscure retail trader, and willing to perform any labor, however humble and arduous, by which those gains could be secured, he was determined to be rich; and adopted that system of business which would most effectually ensure that result, making it a fixed principle to practise the most rigid economy; to shut his heart against all the blandishments of life; to stand to the last farthing, if that farthing was his due; to bar out all those impulses which might in small objects take money from his purse; to saw down his measure when that measure was too large; to plead the statute of limitations against a just claim, because he