Alexandria Gazette

In the "Carolinian," published in Sumter district, South Carolina, of the 10th inst., we find a letter written from Philadelphia, describing a spectacle once witnessed here, and which may refresh the memories, if it is not wholly new, to all of our readers. In speaking of the pecuniary difficulties here, the writer remarks:--Phil Gazette.

The Girard Bank, was chartered about nine years ago. You may remember reading the accounts of the shocking scenes enacted at the taking of the Stock. A book on the United States, published about two years ago, in England, gives all the details. The host of commissioners appointed to receive subscriptions established themselves in the Masonic Hall, in Chesnut street, closed six or eight of the windows with boards, in one of which was a small hole, barely large enough for the admission of a hand, porters, draymen, butchers, and other able bodied men, were selected by our financiers to hand in their names and subscriptions. Most of these men had their clothes torn off on the first day. The next day they attended in an elegant undress, consisting of a pair of pantaloons, their heads wrapped up in handkerchiefs, to prevent competitors from seizing them by the hair. For hours they fought and struggled to reach the windows, and after they had delivered the papers with the bank notes enclosed, to a Commissioner, it was as difficult to get out. It was a most disgusting spectacle."