Note DI — LETTER XXVII.

In 1811, out of 88 local banks, there were 55, or two thirds, in New England and New York, although those States contained but little more than one third of the population. In 1834, the States north of the Potomac had 414 banks, with a capital of 106 millions; the Southern and Western States had only 88 with a capital of 60 millions, about one half of which were in a few commercial towns. The population of the former was then 6,500,000, of the latter 7,500,000; the ratio of the banks, therefore, was as 4 to 3, while that of the population was as 6 to 7. Massachusetts and Connecticut alone, in which the character of the mother-country is most strongly preserved, had 174 banks or one third of the whole number of local banks, with a capital of 40 millions, or one-fourth of the whole banking capital of the country, although their population was only one thirteenth of the whole population. The extension of the culture of cotton, and of the trade which it creates, has since, however, tended to turn the balance in favour of the south, and several large banks have been established in the southern capitals with branches in the interior.