below par.

The circulating medium, or measure of values, being doubled, the price of commodities was doubled.

The agiotage, of course, was the profit of the bankers and brokers; a sum estimated at six millions of dollars a year, or ten per cent.

on the exchanges of the country, which McDuffie, in his celebrated report, estimated at sixty millions annually.
In November the Treasury Department found itself involved in the common disaster.

The refusal of the banks, in which the public moneys were deposited, to pay their notes or the drafts upon them in specie deprived the government of its gold and silver; and their refusal, likewise, of credit and circulation to the issues of banks in other States deprived the government also of the only means it possessed for transferring its funds to pay the dividends on the debt and discharge the treasury notes.
Mr.Dallas found himself compelled to appeal to the banks by circular to subscribe for sufficient treasury notes to secure them such advances as might be asked of them for the discharge of the public obligations.
"In the latter end of the year 1814," says Mr.Gallatin, "Mr.Jefferson suggested the propriety of a gradual issue by government of two hundred millions of dollars in paper;" commenting upon which Mr.Gallatin remarks that Mr.Jefferson, from the imperfect data in his possession, "greatly overrated the amount of paper currency which could be sustained at par; and he had, on the other hand, underrated the great expenses of the war;" but at "all events," he adds, "the issue of government paper ought to be kept in reserve for extraordinary circumstances." But here it may be remarked that the evolution of the systems of American finance seems to lead slowly but surely to an entire divorce of banking from currency, and the day is not far distant when the circulating medium of the United States will consist of gold and silver, and of government issues restricted, according to the English principle, to the minimum of circulation, and kept equivalent to coin by a specie reserve in the treasury; while the banks, their circulation withdrawn and the institutions freed from any tax, will be confined to their legitimate business of receiving deposits and making loans and discounts.
On October 14, 1814, Alexander J.Dallas, Mr.Gallatin's old friend, who had been appointed secretary of the treasury on the 6th of the same month, in a report of a plan to support the public credit, proposed the incorporation of a national bank.