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Treasury Circular.

prove its general prosperity; he referred to the high prices paid for every thing to prove that money was not scarce, except to those whose engagemnets compelled them to repair to the banks; he referred to the rates of exchanges in the South and West to prove that the exchanges of the country were good wherever they were beyond the reach of the Bank of the United States; and he stated the contents of letters in his possession from presidents and cashiers of banks in Ohio, Mississippi, and Louisiana, to show that there was but one objection to the Treasury order, and that was, that it had not been issued early enough!

Having vindicated the Treasury order from the charges of illegality and unconstitutionality, and shown that it had not been ruinous to the country, Mr. B. said he would proceed to show the reasons for which it had issued, and the benefits which had resulted from it. President Jack son, it was known, in the exercise of his high constitutional duty to see the laws of the country faithfully executed, had directed the issuing of this order. He stood before the country as its responsible author. As such he had been denounced. As such he was charged with violating the laws and constitution, and destroying the prosperity of the country. As such he is calumniated in the Philadelphia letter, which calls this order "the revenge of the President upon Congress for passing the distribution bill." As such, another condemnation, for the gratification of discomfited politicians and a dethroned national bank president-another victory in the Senate cham. ber for those who have been defeated at the polls-is now sought against him in this attempt to rescind that order. Under such circumstances, it is not only right that he should find defenders, but that he should be heard also in his own defence. Mr. B. would therefore refer to the annual message delivered at the opening of this session of Congress, and point the attention of the Senate and the country to the whole of that profoundly wise, transcendently patriotic, and paternally beneficent, part of the message which relates to the general currency and to the national domain.

Extracts from the President's Message.

"I beg leave to call your attention to another subject intimately associated with the preceding one-the currency of the country.

"It is apparent, from the whole context of the constitution as well as the history of the times which gave birth to it, that it was the purpose of the convention to establish a currency consisting of the precious metals. These, from their peculiar properties, which rendered them the standard of value in all other countries, were adopted in this, as well to establish its commercial standard, in reference to foreign countries, by a permanent rule, as to exclude the use of a mutable medium of exchange, such as of certain agricultural commodities, recognised by the statutes of some States as a tender for debts, or the still more pernicious expedient of a paper currency. The last, from the experience of the evils of the issues of paper during the Revolution, had become so justly obnoxious as not only to suggest the clause in the constitution forbidding the emission of bills of credit by the States, but also to produce that vote in the convention which negatived the proposition to grant power to Congress to charter corporations; a proposition well understood at the time as intended to authorize the establishment of a national bank, which was to issue a currency of bank notes, on a capital to be created to some extent out of Government stocks. Although this proposition was refused by a direct vote of the convention, the object was afterwards in effect obtained by its ingenious advocates, through a strained construction of the constitution. The debts of the Revolution were funded, at prices which formed no equivalent compared with the nominal amount of the

[DEC. 19, 1836.

stock, and under circumstances which exposed the motives of some of those who participated in the passage of the act to distrust.

"The facts that the value of the stock was greatly enhanced by the creation of the bank; that it was well understood that such would be the case, and that some of the advocates of the measure were largely benefited by it, belong to the history of the times, and are well calcuated to diminish the respect which might otherwise have been due to the action of the Congress which created the institution.

"On the establishment of a national bank, it became the interest of the creditors that gold should be superseded by the paper of the bank as a general currency. A value was soon attached to the gold coins, which made their exportation to foreign countries, as a mercantile commodity, more profitable than their retention and use at home as money. It followed as a matter of course, if not designed by those who established the bank, that the bank became, in effect, a substitute for the mint of the United States.

"Such was the orgin of a national bank currency, and such the beginning of those difficulties which now appear in the excessive issues of the banks incorporated by the various States."

"The effects of an extension of bank credits and over-issues of bank paper have been strikingly illustrated in the sales of the public lands. From the returns made by the various registers and receivers in the early part of last summer, it was perceived that the receipts arising from the sales of the public lands were increasing to an unprecedented amount. In effect, however, these receipts amounted to nothing more than credits in banks. The banks lent out their notes to speculators; they were paid to the receivers, and immediately returned to the banks, to be lent out again and again, being mere instruments to transfer to speculators the most valuable public land, and pay the Government by a credit on the books of the banks. Those credits on the books of some of the Western banks, usually called deposites, were already greatly beyond their immediate means of payment, and were rapidly increasing. Indeed, each speculation furnished means for another; for no sooner had one individual or company paid in their notes, than they were immediately lent to another for a like purpose, and the banks were extending their business and their issues so largely as to alarm considerate men, and render it doubtful whether bank credits, if permitted to accumulate, would ultimately be of the least value to the Government. The spirit of expansion and speculation was not confined to the deposite banks, but pervaded the whole multitude of banks throughout the Union, and was giving rise to new institutions to aggravate the evil.

"The safety of the public funds, and the interests of the people, generally, required that these operations should be checked, and it became the duty of every branch of the General and State Government to adopt all legitimate and proper means to procure that salutary effect. Under this view of my duty, I directed the issuing of the order which will be laid before you by the Secretary of the Treasury, requiring payment for the public lands sold to be made in specie, with an exception until the fifteenth of the present month in favor of actual settlers. This measure has produced many salutary consequences. It checked the career of the Western banks, and gave them additional strength in anticipation of the pressure which has since pervaded our Eastern as well as the European commercial cities. By preventing the extension of the credit system, it measurably cut off the means of speculation, and retarded its progress in monopolizing the most valuable of the public lands. It has tended to save the new States

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from a non-resident proprietorship, one of the greatest obstacles to the advancement of a new country, and the prosperity of an old one. It has tended to keep open the public lands for entry by emigrants, at Government prices, instead of their being compelled to purchase of speculators at double or triple prices, and it is convey ing into the interior large sums of silver and gold, there to enter permanently into the currency of the country, and place it on a firmer foundation. It is confidently believed that the country will find in the motives which induced that order, and the happy consequences which will have ensued, much to commend and nothing to condemn."

[SENATE.

the most fallacious hope of an easier payment of debts and a lighter burden of taxation. It is easy for a portion of the people to imagine that Government may properly continue to receive depreciated paper because they have received it, and because it is more convenient to obtain than other paper or specie. But on these subjects it is that Government ought to exercise its own peculiar wisdom and caution. It is supposed to possess, on subjects of this nature, somewhat more of foresight than has fallen to the lot of individuals. It is bound to foresee the evil before every man feels it, and to take all measures to guard against it, although they may be measures attended with some difficulty, and not without Mr. B. said it would be observed by the Senate that some temporary inconvenience. The only power which the reasons for issuing the Treasury order are introduced the Government possesses of restraining the issues of the by the President under the head of "currency," and State banks is to refuse their notes in the receipts of the not under the head of "public lands;" and that, in his Treasury. This power it can exercise now, or at least whole manner of treating it, the currency is the object, can provide now for exercising it in reasonable time, beand the lands the incident. The regulation of the cur- cause the currency of some parts of the country is yet rency is the great object; and as the lands, and not the sound, and the evil is not yet universal. But I have excustom-house, was the exciting cause of the swollen, pressed my belief on more than one occasion, and I now bloated, and diseased state of the currency, the remedy repeat the opinion, that it was the duty of the Secretary was directed to the lands, and not to the customs. All of the Treasury, on the return of peace, to have returned this is visible in the passages read. It is also visible in to the legal and proper mode of collecting the revenue. the original Treasury order itself, where the discourage-This Government has a right, in all cases, to protect its ment of the ruinous extension of bank issues, the pre- own revenues, and to guard them against bad and deservation of the soundness of the currency, and the safety preciated paper. As to the opinion advanced by some of the Federal revenue, are distinctly and prominently that the object of the resolution cannot in any way be set forth among the high inducements to its issue. Very answered; that the revenues cannot be collected otherrightly, then, did the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr.wise than they now are, in the paper of any and every WEBSTER] express himself on Thursday last, in the few banking association that chooses to issue paper, it cannot remarks which he then made; very rightly did he de- for a moment be admitted. The thing then is to be done; clare this to be a currency question, and not a land ques- at any rate it is to be attempted. That it will be action! a financial measure of the greatest moment and ex- complished by the Treasury Department, without the tent, affecting every interest and the whole Union! and interference of Congress, I have no belief. If from that rightly did he claim for it that high consideration which source no reformation came when reformation was easy, is due to a measure, not of sectional, but of national con- it is not now to be expected. The great object is that cern. The gentleman is right. The Treasury order is our legal currency is to be preserved, and that we are a regulation of the national currency, issued under the not to embark on the ocean of paper money. I cannot constitutional obligation of the President to preserve and say, indeed, that this resolution will certainly effect the protect the currency of the Federal Government, and desired end. It may fail. Its success, as is obvious, exercised according to the manner pointed out by the must essentially depend on the course pursued by the author of the joint resolution of 1816, and according to Treasury Department." the manner, though not to the same degree, that the Mr. B. would add nothing by commentary to the powregulation of the currency was effected by the Bank of er or appositeness of these quotations. They were up the United States during the whole period of its existto the exigencies of the present occasion, fitted it as if ence. The constitution recognises nothing for money made to order, and superseded the necessity of argubut gold and silver. The President is the sworn pro- ment or illustration. One thing ought to be well obtector, defender, and preserver of that constitution. To served, that this speech, going the whole length, not onpermit any part of its guarantees to be subverted and de- ly of justifying the present Treasury order, but blaming stroyed, is a dereliction of duty, or a defect of vigilance the Treasury Department in 1816 for not having done in him. The joint resolution of 1816 does not grant, but the like, and expressing the fear that it might not do it recognises and enforces, his constitutional duties and in time to come, was delivered on the 26th day of April, powers over the preservation of the constitutional cur1816, four days before the passage of the joint resolution of rency. The author of that resolution, in the speech from that year! consequently, and as the whole speech proves, which I have read extracts-a speech abounding with all the powers and duties claimed in that speech for the just sentiments-recognises all this authority, and pro-Treasury Department, and the Executive Government, claims all this duty of the President as attributes of the Executive Government, existing anteriorly to his resolution; a measure only rendered necessary because these powers and duties had been neglected. Listen to him: "There are some political evils which are seen as soon as they are dangerous, and which alarm at once as well the people as the Government. Wars and invasions, therefore, are not always the most certain destroyers of national prosperity. They come in no questionable shape. They announce their own approach, and the general safety is preserved by the general alarm. Not So with the evils of a debased coin, a depreciated paper currency, and a depressed and falling public credit. Not so with the plausible and insidious mischiefs of a paper money system. These insinuate themselves in the shape of facilities, accommodation, and relief. They hold out

over the regulation of the currency, the restoration of the constitutional money, and the exclusion of State bank paper from revenue payments, were independent of that resolution! were founded-1st, upon the constitution; 2d, the act of 1789, that the customs should be paid in gold and silver coin only; 3d, the act of May 10th, 1800the fundamental act for the general sale of the public lands-and directing that all purchasers should make payment for the same in specie, or in evidences of the public debt of the United States! These were the foundations of the gentleman's argument; these the laws the violation of which he bad in his eye; these the ground of his complaint against the existing administration; these the future ark of his financial hope. These are the laws, faithful expositors of the constitution, in aid of which, and to compel the speedy execution of which, the joint

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Treasury Circular.

[DEC. 19, 1836.

Government but specie; and yet no regard was paid to the imperative injunctions of the law in this respect. The whole strength of the Government, he was of opinought to be put forth to compel the payment of the duties and taxes to the Government in the legal currency of the country."

resolution of 1816 was conceived and passed. The au-
thor of the resolution said at the time that the success of
the resolution depended upon the Treasury Department,
and expressed his fear that it might fail of its objection,
through the fault of that Department-a fear in which
the gentleman's misgivings were prophetic, until the
splendid and beneficent administration of General Jack-
son rose upon the political horizon, to bless and exalt his
country; to command the admiration of the world, civi-
lized and barbarian, and to realize the gentleman's own
cherished and adored vision of 1816-the constitutional
currency restored, and the bloated and pestilential car-
cases of the paper system expelled from the doors of the
Federal Treasury.

Mr. B. repeated the date of the speech from which he
had read an extract; it was the 26th of April, 1816, four
days before the passage of the joint resolution of that
year. He now had another extract from another speech
of the same gentleman, also delivered before that joint
resolution was passed, and clearly indicative of his inten-
tion in bringing forward that measure, to compel, as
soon as possible, the complete re-establishment of the
currency of the constitution as the sole and exclusive
currency of the Federal Government. It was a speech
delivered in February, on the passage of the charter of
the Bank of the United States, and in which the speaker
took the great and true ground that the law and Treasu-
ry Department, and not the bank, ought to be the true
regulator of currency. Mr. B. only read the parts which
were applicable to the point in debate, namely, the legal
currency of the United States, and the speedy and com-
pulsory payment of the whole revenue in that currency.
Extract from Mr. Webster's speech on the Bank of the
United States Charter Bill, February, 1816.
"No nation had a better currency than the United
States. There was no nation which had guarded its cur-
rency with more care; for the framers of the constitution
and those who enacted the early statutes on this subject,
were hard money men; they had felt, and therefore duly
appreciated, the evils of a paper medium; they, there
fore, sedulously guarded the currency of the United
States from debasement. The legal currency of the Uni-
ted States was gold and silver coin; this was a subject in
regard to which Congress had run into no folly.
Mr. W. declined occupying the time of the House to
prove that there was a depreciation of the paper in cir-
culation; the legal standard of value was gold and silver;
the relation of paper to it proved its state, and the rate
of its depreciation. Gold and silver currency, he said,
was the law of the land at home, and the law of the world
abroad; there could, in the present state of the world, be
no other currency. In consequence of the immense pa-
per issues having banished specie from circulation, the
Government had been obliged, in direct violation of ex-
isting statutes, to receive the amount of their taxes in
something which was not recognised by law as the mon-
ey of the country, and which was, in fact, greatly de-
preciated.

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"As to the evils of the present state of things, Mr. W. admitted it in its fullest extent. If he was not mistaken, there were some millions in the Treasury of paper which were nearly worthless, and were now wholly useless to the Government, by which an actual loss of considerable amount must certainly be sustained by the Treasury. This was an evil which ought to be met at once, because it would grow greater by indulgence. In the end, the taxes must be paid in the legal money of the country, and the sooner that was brought about the * If Congress were to pass forty statutes on the subject, he said they would not make the law more conclusive than it now was, that nothing should be received in payment of duties to the

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Now (said Mr. B.) the Senate will doubtless be willing to hear what was said by the friends of the administration in 1816, to those powerful appeals from the gentleman who so strenuously plead the cause of the laws, the constitution, and hard money. He had looked over the speeches of that day, and found the whole of their answers compressed into a short paragraph by Mr. Sharpe, of Kentucky, a gentleman of genius and ability, and whose tragical death had since attracted so much public notice and commiseration.

"In reply to the argument of Mr. Webster, that the remedy for the evil was in the power of the Secretary of the Treasury, by requiring payment of the dues to the Government in specie, Mr. S. said the gentleman had not demonstrated that there was specie enough in the country for the purposes of the payment of the revenue to the Treasury, nor that the banks have not the means ultimately to force the Government to take their paper in payments to the Treasury. The disposition was not wanting in the officer at the head of that Department to apply the remedy, if it was in his power."

This was the answer! a deplorable confession of the condition to which the Federal Treasury had been reduced by receiving State bank paper in payment of the federal revenues! That policy had begun under General Hamilton, and been folowed up by other Secretaries, in violation of the laws and constitution, until nothing but inconvertible paper remained in the Treasury, and little else in the country. All their fine phrases about specie-paying banks, and paper equivalent to specie, and no paper but what the collectors and depositories of the revenue would receive as cash-all these holiday phrases had ended, as such schemes must forever end, in the eventual general use of paper, the eventual general banishment of specie, and the eventual general stoppage of banks, and universal depreciation of paper money. This was the only answer which could be given in 1816, and the only one that could be given until President Jackson's measures for restoring the constitutional currency shall have raised that currency to seventy-five millions of dollars. There is now specie enough in the country to make all revenue payments in gold and silver; and the purchasers of the public land, speculators and bank borrowers excepted, have found no difficulty in getting specie to make their payments. Land office returns prove this. The sum of $1,463,656 was paid into the land offices, in gold and silver, from the 15th of August, when the order took effect, down to the middle of November, to which the returns were made up. This was a million and a half for three months, being at the rate of about six millions per annum. This would buy near five millions of acres of land at the present minimum price; and five millions of acres of public lands, in addition to other sources of supply, is double as much as the progressive settlement of the country has ever required. Does the demand for this small sum-a sum which does not go out of the country, but enters immediately into general circulation through the Government payments-cannot such a demand be supplied out of the seventy-five millions in the country, especially when four and a half millions were exported to foreign parts this very year, not to return again? Of the seventy-five millions of specie in the country, the banks alone were computed by the Secretary of the Treasury to have forty-five millions in their vaults. Can they not spare a few millions for the ser. vice of the country, especially when the measures of President Jackson's administration have increased their

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supplies of the precious metals from twenty-five to fortyfive millions in three years? Mr. B. would subjoin from the Treasury report the statement of specie in all the banks in the United States, as far as obtained at the Treasury Department, first premising that the report was not complete. The number of banks in the United States and their branches is near one thousand! Their names occupy twelve columns in Bicknell's Counterfeit Detector, with nearly eighty names in each column! The Treasury report does not include them all, but the main part, and their specie is reported thus:

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Here is an increase of specie in their vaults, said Mr. B., of twenty millions in three years, and of five millions of dollars during the very year of the Treasury order's | existence-a fact which, of itself, exposes and puts to shame the whole story of their distress and ruin, and inability to aid the community on account of this order, or to furnish the specie which it requires. The fact is conclusive: it stamps the whole contrivance on the part of the banks which have engaged in it, as a shameful and fraudulent imposition upon the public. It is enough of itself; but the custom-house books show that these banks would in reality have increased their specie to ten millions this year, had it not been for the sums exported to foreign countries. The exports of specie, up to near the end of November, were $4,435,815; of which $312,811 was in gold. But this is nothing, according to the Philadelphia letter. It is nothing; while the one third of that sum going into our land offices, and thence through Government payments to the people, is to create intense distress, derange the exchanges deprive the banks which affect to be injured by the Treasury order of all capacity to make loans to business men, and justify them in throwing borrowers into the hands of usurers, to be fined at the rate of 3 per cent. per month discount (equal to 4 per cent. interest) for the use of money.

But Mr. B. had another test to apply to the capacity of those banks to furnish the small amount of five millions of dollars per annum for the purchase of public lands. It was in the contrast exhibited by the one thousand banks of the United States with what is done by a single banker in the English county-he might almost say kingdom instead of county-for Lancashire, in point of wealth, is equal to the second rate kingdoms of Europe -in the English county of Lancashire, and where there are no local paper-issuing banks or bankers. He would give the sworn words of Samuel Jones Lloyd, Esq., a banker, examined before the committee of thirty-one members of the House of Commons in 1832; a committee of which Lord Althorpe was chairman, and such men as Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Mr. Goulburn, Sir Henry Parnell, Mr. Baring, and more than two dozen scarcely their inferiors, were members, and on which such men as the Governor of the Bank of England, Mr. N. M. Rothschild, and a hundred distinguished bankers and merchants were witnesses. Mr. Lloyd, among other things, testified to the quantity of gold paid weekly by a single banking establishment, (his own,) for wages to working people in the city of Manchester, one out of the many great cities which Lancashire contains. This is the part of his evidence relating to this point:

"A great amount in gold is paid at Manchester, in wages. Witness's house issues about 25,000 sovereigns weekly. That issue was formerly in one pound notes. There is no local issue in Lancashire."

Here are three statements (said Mr. B.) which ought to be sterotyped on the head and heart of every friend to

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the constitutional currency of our America: 1. Twentyfive thousand sovereigns paid weekly by one bankinghouse, for wages to working people. 2. This amount formerly paid in one pound notes. 3. No local bank issuing paper now in Lancashire.

Confining his remarks to one only of these statements -the amount of weekly payments in gold-Mr. B. said the annual amount was one million three hundred thousand sovereigns, equal to six millions and a half of dollars! This was paid by a single banking house; and are we to believe that the 1,000 banks in the United States cannot furnish the same amount for the purchase of the public lands? And are we, after attempting to make them do it, to be clamored down by a combined cry from speculators, a part of the banks, and politicians, that the country was paralyzed and desolated by the experiment, and that all further attempt must instantly cease?

Mr. B. would make a short issue with all these complaining banks; they either have, or have not, their pro. portion of the forty-five millions of specie which they report is in their vaults. If they have it, there is no difficulty in furnishing specie for the land offices; if they have it not, then their returns are deceptive-their pe riodical exhibitions of specie are nothing but show money; and the sooner the people find out their hollowness and emptiness, the better for the whole community. But, (continued Mr. B.,) let the amount of specie be what it may in the banks, the fact is, that there is about seventy-five millions in the country, and a goodly part of that is in the hands of the community. In October, 1833, when the deposites were removed, the whole amount of specie in the banks was returned at about twenty-five millions, and that in the hands of the community was computed at only four millions. The community is now computed to have twenty-eight millions, and the annual increase is thus reported by the Secretary of the Treasury:

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Here, then, is a sum in the hands of the community, sufficient to supply the public land demand, on account of actual settlers, four times over. The rapidity with which gold and silver has increased since the commencement of the operations to restore the constitutional currency, should banish all doubt on the practicability of doing it. See what has been done in four years against the powerful opposition, the systematic resistance, and the scoffings and jeerings of a great political and moneyed party. Four years more may be equally successful, if these resolutions can be defeated, and, instead of seventy-five millions, one hundred and twenty millions, and nearly forty millions of it gold, may be in the country. But nobody expects this amount to come into the country, or what is in it now to remain, unless the Federal Government can continue its onward course in the reformation of the currency. If it relapses into a paper money currency, the whole community must relapse into it also; and the result must be, what it has been heretofore, universal banishment of the precious metals, the eventual stoppage of all the State banks, and a call for the re-establishment of the Bank of the United States, as the only safe regulator of the State currencies.

The increase of banks and paper money, and the necessity of restraining the issues of these corporations, as alleged in the President's message, was next adverted to by Mr. B. He referred to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, which showed these results:

SENATE.]

Dates.

Near 1st October, 1833,

1st January, 1834,

1st January, 1835,

1st January, 1836,

Treasury Circular.

Paper in active circulation.

$80,000,000

76,000,000

82,000,000 108,000,000 120,000,000

[DEC. 19, 1836.

sketched in that part of President Jackson's message which relates to the currency. He says:

"The progress of an expansion, or rather a depreciation of the currency, by excessive bank issues, is always attended by a loss to the laboring classes. This portion of the community bas neither time nor opportu nity to watch the ebbs and flows of the money market. Engaged from day to day in their useful toils, they do not perceive that, although their wages are nominally the same, or even somewhat higher, they are greatly reduced, in fact, by the rapid increase of a spurious currency, which, as it appears to make money abound, they are at first inclined to consider a blessing. It is not so with the speculator, by whom this operation is better understood, and is made to contribute to his advantage. It is not until the prices of the necessaries of life become so dear that the laboring classes cannot supply their wants out of their wages, that the wages rise, and gradually reach a justly proportioned rate to that of the products of their labor. When thus, by the depreciation,

wages as well as prices become exorbitant, it is soon found that the whole effect of the adulteration is a tariff on our home industry for the benefit of the countries where gold and silver circulate and maintain uniformity and moderation in prices. It is then perceived that the enhancement of the price of land and labor produces a corresponding increase in the price of products, until these products do not sustain a competition with similar ones in other countries, and thus both manufacturing and agricultural productions cease to bear exportation from the country of this spurious currency, because they cannot be sold for cost. This is the process by which specie is banished by the paper of the banks. Their vaults are soon exhausted to pay for foreign commodities: the next step is a stoppage of specie payment-a total deg. radation of paper as a currency; unusual depression of prices, the ruin of debtors, and the accumulation of property in the hands of creditors and cautious capitalists."

1st December, 1836, Here is an increase of about forty millions of paper money in two years. But it is not the whole increase in that time. The computation is principally made from the returns of the old banks; while one hundred and six new ones, with capitals of sixty millions, had been created; and twelve millions and three quarters of increased capital to the old banks had been granted during the past winter; so that fifty millions of increase of paper was probably the amount when the Treasury order was issued, and the increase going on with a deplorable rapidity. The national domain was the object that was attracting it. The temptation was irresistible. A quire of paper, speckled over with figures, would transmute into 100,000 acres of land; a ream of paper into a mil-in consequence of the quantity of paper in circulation, lion of acres. One thousand engines were at work, striking this paper; hosts of speculators, loaded with bales of it, were on their way to all the new States. It was evident the national domain was becoming a fund for the redemption of all this paper. It was all receivable in exchange for lands; and the holders of these bills seem to consider them as assignats, like those of the French national convention, convertible into the territory of the republic at the will of the possessor, and the faster the better. This was the state of things on the rise of Congress, and the two balls of that body had resounded with the denunciation of the ruinous aspect of this exchange of land for paper, four months before the adjournment took place. The President, acting under the constitution and laws of the country, applied the remedy which the crisis required, and which the laws and constitution authorized. He saved the national domain; he checked the expansion of the paper system; he saved the Treasury from a frightful accumulation of "unavailable funds;" and he prevented that catastrophe in the State banks to which the Bank of the United States is anxiously looking, systematically promoting and impatiently awaiting that catastrophe in the local banks which would again disgrace and discredit them, and bring forth the whole United States Bank party to exclaim, We told you so! we told you this would be the consequence of not renewing our charter! and now you all see it! and we demand the re-establishment of the national bank as the only means of regulating the State banks! President Jackson has prevented all this; and has shown that the constitutional currency can regulate the State banks; and for this he has drawn upon himself the denunciations of disappointed speculators, disappointed politicians, and disappointed bankers. He has prevented many and great evils, and, among others, the further depreciation of the currency. Fifty millions of additional paper, put out in two years, has enabled the banks to imprison forty-five millions of specie, and the whole one hundred and thirty millions of paper money afloat during the summer has depreciated the general currency; which is seen by the importation of wheat from Germany and the Black sea, by the importation of beef and pork from Ireland, hay from Scotland, and many other necessaries of life from Europe; which is seen in the rise of price in every article which depends for sale on its depreciated currency; for articles whose price depends upon foreign markets, where the notes of our one thousand banks are not taken for money, as tobacco and cotton have not risen. The progress and the evils of this depreciation, which commenced before the Treasury order, which that order has checked, but which must recommence with its recision, is powerfully

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This (said Mr. B.) is the progress and effect of a depreciated paper currency. The imprudence and the criminality of banks of issue are equally the sources of this depreciation; and the community is equally the victim of their misconduct, whether it results from accident, folly, or design. It is established in England that a sudden increase of one million sterling, by Bank of England issues, will, in many states of the moneyed system, produce a depreciation in the value of money which will be sensibly felt in the kingdom. What, then, is to be the effect of an increase of fifty millions of paper dollars, in two years, in this country? It must be what every person sees and feels it to be—a depreciation of at least one third of the value of paper money! so that all persons living on salaries, fixed incomes, and wages, are in the condition of having suffered a diminution of one third of their income. Living is becoming as dear in our young and prolific America as in the aged and crowded coun-. tries of Europe. Let no one delude himself with the belief that there is no depreciation while bank notes continue to be convertible into gold and silver; this would be a great error; for it is of the very nature of depreciating paper to carry down gold and silver with it, until things reach that point when prudent men begin to exact payments in hard money, or, which is the same thing, to carry home in silver at night the amount of every note received during the day. When things have reached that point, and about the time when all prudent men have taken care of themselves, the public mind begins to get uneasy. Some cause, no matter what, starts an alarm; and in a few weeks the explosion is universal. Such was the point to which we were rapidly tending in July last. President Jackson has arrested this depreci

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