1837] 



FARMERS' REGISTER, 



427 



Sccnmllij. That no note of a less donomiiialioii 

 llian live dollnrs sliall be issued. 



Thinllij. That no bank shall purchase its own 

 notes, or the notes of any other bank, or receive 

 them in deposltC; lor a less sum than iheir par 

 value. 



Fourthhj. That no hank shall hold any stock or 

 eecuriiies of' the funded lieht of the United Slates, 

 or its own slock, or the stock ofany other hicorpo- 

 rated company, except companies incorporated li)r 

 purf)nses of internal improvement, to ivhich they 

 may have suhscribed, or shall hereafter subscribe. 



Fifihhj. That no director or cashier of a bank, 

 siiall he entitled to loans, directly or indirectly, be- 

 yond a limiteil amount, or shall be a meujber of 

 either branch of tiie Icifislatuie. 



[The effects of improper and fraiidident banking, 

 and the flooding the country with an irredeemable 

 paper currency, {depreciated, because not truly the re- 

 presentative of coin,) have again, for the third time 

 within sixty years, plunged our prosperous young 

 coiuitry into embarrassments and losses, not far short 

 of temporary ruin. The present condition of things, 

 (as yet at least,) ife not quite so bad as it was in 1315; 

 and that again, was not so total a bankruptcy, and 

 change of property, as followed the old government 

 paper issues during the war of the revolution. But 

 the present calamities, already incurred, and in almost 

 certain prospect, would probably be cohsid'U'ed as 

 equivalent to a full abatement of all the alleged benefits 

 of our always bad system of banking, for the last twenty 

 years, if the same individuals who have secured the 

 past profits, had now to pay the penalties incurred. 

 But this seldom happens ; and numerous individuals 

 profit enormously by the maintenance of a system 

 which may ruin as many others, and be more or less 

 injurious to the community in general. 



The interests of every class are deeply and injurious- 

 ly affected by these revulsions, and none to so great 

 extent as the greatest interestof the country — the agri- 

 cultural interest. Merchants, speculators, and stock- 

 jobbers, may play at the gaming table opened for all 

 adventurers by the banks, and have more or less 

 knowledge of the chances by which they win or lose. 

 But the property of the agricultural class Constitutes 

 the greater part of the stakes for which others play, 

 and is risked without the consent or knowledge of the 

 owners. Hundreds of millions were added to the 

 prices of agricultural property by the last transient 

 expansion of bank credits and paper currency — and 

 still more lost by the reaction which necessarily fol- 

 lowed. In every sale of agricultural property made 

 during these changes, either the buyer or seller was 

 cheated and robbed by the operation of a system 

 which he did not understand, and could not control. 

 And even in the few cases of individuals who have not 

 bought or sold, they have suffered the evil moral effects 

 of believing their wealth suddenly doubled, and then 

 finding it reduced far below the fust low estimate. This 

 part of the effect alone, (which is rarely estimated,) is 

 enough to contaminate and corrupt a whole nation. 



We therefore have no reason to apologize for thus 

 referring to this subject generally, (and as a question 



of political economy, and disconnected with the exist- 

 ing party politics and party contests,) in a journal de- 

 voted to the support of agricultural interests. What we 

 proposed by publishing the foregoing report ( — which 

 we read and approved when it first appeared, and have 

 never had cause to retract the approval — ) is merely 

 what is indicated by the heading above — to give a 

 plain and simple explanation of the three different 

 and quite distinct operations which are confounded 

 and combined in all the banks of the United States — 

 and which serves to show that two of these opera- 

 tions are always beneficial to the public, and that the 

 other alone is always to be suspected, feared, and 

 ought to bo closely and securely restrained. 



We have chosen to give this report, in preference to 

 any thing of latter date, not only for its clearness, but 

 also because it was first used to suit another and a long 

 past time, and other (though very similar^ circum- 

 stances — when the present party questions, (with 

 which the subject of banking is now so closely inter- 

 woven that they are deemed inseparable,) had not 

 arisen — and when the present political parties, indeed, 

 had not come into existence — and therefore it cannot 

 be charged, as a new production might be, with being 

 designed to subserve or oppose existing interests, or to 

 enter into the arena of party contests — contests which 

 we have long deemed as seldom otherwise than dis- 

 graceful and detestable, and never more so than in 

 these times, in which banks and banking have been so 

 mixed with party movements. 



Mr. Raguet, the author of the report, has since been 

 distinguished as a writer and controvertist on po- 

 litical economy, and has been eminently serviceable 

 in maintaining the doctrines and principles oifree trade, 

 which is truly the same thing in effect with the main- 

 tenance of the interests of agriculture, and of the 

 southern states. If names and dates were omitted, the 

 statements would pass as descriptive of the present 

 times. But it is easy for the truths of political economy 

 to be so correctly applied, in advance of facts, as to 

 ^eem to be evidence of the gift of political prophecy. 

 Very many, without such lights, foresaw and could 

 have predicted such disastrous results of expanded 

 pap^r circulation ; but, unluckily for the country, those 

 who gain, or hope to gain, by the expansion, form a 

 different class from those who sutler by the final burst- 

 ing of the bubble. If they were always the same per- 

 sons, one such revulsion would be enough to satisfy a 

 nation with the operation of an unlimited paper cur- 

 rency. 



Nearly all the restrictions recommeniled at the close 

 of the foregoing extract, were adopted by the legisla- 

 ture of Pennsylvania ; and restrictions very similar 

 (and which were then deemed sufficient to guard 

 against a recurrence of the evil of an irredeemable 

 paper currency,) were also enacted in Virginia. It is 

 needless to add, that all the restrictions yet imposed 

 have been found insufficient. 



In addition to these old views of Mr. Raguet's, 

 which are so applicable to the present time, and to all 

 times, we beg leave to present again some old expressions 

 of our own — made on the only other occasion on which 



