Being
thus a large holder of the stock of the bank, the charter having
expired, and its affairs being in liquidation, he bought out the
entire concern; and, merely changing the name to Girard's Bank,
continued it in being as a private institution, in the same building,
with the same coin in its vaults, the same bank-notes, the same
cashier and clerks. The banking-house and the house of the cashier,
which cost three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, he bought for one
hundred and twenty thousand. The stock, which he bought at four
hundred and twenty, proved to be worth, on the winding up of the old
bank, four hundred and thirty-four. Thus, by this operation, he
extricated his property in England, invested it wisely in America,
established a new business in place of one that could no longer be
carried on, and saved the mercantile community from a considerable
part of the loss and embarrassment which the total annihilation of the
bank would have occasioned.
His management of the bank perfectly illustrates his singular and
apparently contradictory character. Hamilton used to say of Burr, that
he was great in little things, and little in great things.
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