| 240 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE
During the Revolution Maryland made an attempt to launch
a bank. The preamble of the June 1780 act establishing the
bank declared that " many citizens of this state would pledge
their property and credit to the establishment of a bank, for
the purpose of procuring . . . supplies for the army, if this
State would become security for their indemnification and Te-
payment." It was actually no more than a subscription for
specie to buy military supplies and was to end when that pur-
pose had been accomplished. Similar in conception to the so-
called " Philadelphia Bank " of 1780, whose subscribers tvere
guaranteed by the Continental Congress, the Maryland sub-
scription bank was, unlike the Pennsylvania one, never under-
taken.238 In 1782 the first attempt to incorporate a bank in
Maryland failed when the House of Delegates rejected James
McHenry's bill " to establish the credit of a bank " in Balti-
more.23' But because commerce developed rapidly after the
Revolution, commercial transactions were made difficult by the
limited circulation of foreign coins and depreciated paper and
by the refusal of the Maryland legislature to issue more paper
money. The value of banks for promoting further commercial
development in Maryland gained more adherents as other
states, such as Massachusetts, incorporated state banks mod-
eled on the great national banks of England and the Conti-
nent.
In 1784 the agitation for a bank in Baltimore was renewed.
Proposals for a Bank of Maryland were published -and sub-
scriptions were solicited. A bank with a capital of $300,000, to
be subscribed in gold and silver, was proposed and quickly
subscribed. However there was much opposition to the plan.
The agrarians thought the short-term loans and the drawing
of specie to Baltimore would work to their disadvantage. The
speculators, who hoped for and preferred a state issue of paper
money, and the antimonpolists, who found that the proposed
bank's three hundred shares of stock were held by only seven-
teen people, also opposed the plan.28g The bill introduced in
x8" Md. Sess., 1780 June c. 28, Davis, II, 35.
ge' Alfred C. Bryan, History of State Banking in Maryland, Johns Hopkins
Uni-
versity Studies in Historical and Political Science, XVII (Baltimore, 1899
Nos-
1-3), p. 133.
"87bid., pp. 17-18. B. Md. Gaz., Mar. 5, 1784, " Proposals for Establishing
a
Bank at Baltimore."
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