" It is under this
clause that the Manhattan Company use and exercise all the privileges
of a bank. The directors were named in the charter, and a majority of
them were of the democratic party.
It has been said that the charter was obtained by trick and
management; and that, if suspicion bad been entertained by any of the
federal members, Colonel Burr could not have got the bill through the
legislature. It is due to him, so far as it can be justly done, to
rescue his memory from the imputation of having _misrepresented_ or
_misstated_ to any member the object he had in view. The facts in
reference to the passage of the charter of the Manhattan Company
through the Senate will now be given. The statement is upon authority
that cannot be contradicted.
When the bill had passed the Assembly and was sent to the Senate,
Colonel Burr, during the hours of business, went into the Senate
Chamber, and requested a federal senator (now living) from the western
district to move a reference of that bill to a select committee, to
report complete, which would supersede the necessity of its going to a
committee of the whole. The senator replied, that though he had no
objection to make the experiment, yet that he was persuaded the motion
would not prevail, because the Senate, not having a press of business
before them, uniformly refused thus committing bills to select
committees instead of a committee of the whole. Colonel Burr then
suggested, that perhaps if the mover would intimate, while on the
floor, that the honourable Samuel Jones was contemplated as chairman
of that committee, the confidence which the Senate was known to repose
in him, and in his uniform attention to every thing relating to the
city of New-York, would perhaps induce the Senate on this occasion to
depart from its accustomed mode of proceeding.
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