By substituting the certificates of indebtedness as available for reserve this contraction was prevented, and by the concession of interest, even at three per cent, the banks were induced to surrender the securities which cost the Government a higher rate.

The limit of these certificates was subsequently raised to $75,000,000,--a limit which in fact was often reached,--but as legal-tenders were needed the certificates were surrendered to the Treasury.
This is substantially the history of contraction, or of attempts at contraction made by the Thirty-ninth Congress.

The successful effort to parry its effect, as already described, shows how unwelcome it had proved to the business community, and how Congress, without resorting at once to an absolute repeal of the act, sought an indirect mode of neutralizing its effect.

Mr.McCulloch, in trying to enforce the policy of contraction, represented an apparently consistent theory in finance; but the great host of debtors who did not wish their obligation to be made more onerous, and the great host of creditors who did not desire that their debtors should be embarrassed and possibly rendered unable to liquidate, united on the practical side of the question and aroused public opinion against the course of the Treasury Department.

An individual, by an effort of will, can bring himself to endure present inconvenience and even suffering, for a great good that lies beyond, but it was difficult for forty millions of people to adopt this resolve.