the currency was to be bimetallic, or of two metals.[1] The ratio of silver and gold was 15 to 1.  That is, fifteen pounds’ weight of silver must be made into as many dollars’ worth of coins as one pound of gold.  The silver coins were to be the dollar, half and quarter dollar, dime and half dime; the gold were to be the eagle, half eagle, and quarter eagle.  Out of copper were to be struck cents and half cents.  As some years must elapse before our national coins could become abundant, certain foreign coins were made legal tender.

[Footnote 1:  The first silver coin was struck in 1794; the first gold, in 1795; the first cent and half cent, in 1793.]

%287.  “Federal Money."%—­The appearance of the new money was followed by another change for the better.  In colonial days the merchants and the people expressed the debts they owed, or the value of the goods they sold, in pounds, shillings, and pence, or in Spanish dollars.  During the Revolution, and after it, this was continued, although the Continental Congress always kept its accounts, and made its appropriations, in dollars.  But when the people began to see dollars, half dollars, and dimes bearing the words “United States of America,” they knew that there really was a national coinage, or “Federal money,” as they called it, and between 1795 and 1798, one state after another ordered its treasurer to use Federal money instead of pounds, shillings, and pence; and thereafter in laying taxes, and voting appropriations for any purpose, the amount was expressed in dollars and cents.  The merchants and the people were much slower in adopting the new terms; but they came at last into general use.

%288.  Rise of the State Banks.%—­Had the people been forced to depend on the United States mint for money wherewith to pay the butcher and the baker and the shoemaker, they would not have been able to make their payments, for the machinery at the mint was worked by hand, and the number of dimes and quarters turned out each year was small.  But they were not, for as soon as confidence was restored, banks chartered by the states sprang up in the chief cities in the East, and as each issued notes, the people had all the currency they wanted.

In 1790, when Congress established the National Bank, there were but four state banks in the whole country:  one in Philadelphia, one in New York, one in Boston, and one in Baltimore.  By 1800 there were twenty-six, in 1805 there were sixty-four, and in 1811 there were eighty-eight.

In that year (1811) the charter of the National Bank expired, and as Congress would not renew it, many more state banks were created, each hoping to get a part of the business formerly done by the National Bank.  Such was the “mania,” as it was called, for banks, that the number rose from eighty-eight in 1811, to two hundred and eight in 1814, which was far more than the people really needed.