1840.] SENATE— No. 36. 147 



productive as it might be rendered, be diverted to the produc- 

 tion and manufacture of an article of mere luxury ? But sup- 

 pose we should undertake and succeed in producing and manu- 

 facturing our own silks, so, as some lunatics imagine, not only 

 to supply our own wants, but to make it a matter of large ex- 

 portation. How are the luxurious to pay the produ(iers here 

 any better than they can pay the producers abroad ? If the 

 laboring and productive classes will be satisfied with a cur- 

 rency of which we have had too much, and we are to make 

 money at our pleasure, and the luxurious and spendthrift classes 

 can pay for their indulgences, and get on in their indolence and 

 dissipation and wastefulness, with paying in borrowed notes, 

 which in some parts of the country represent nothing but the 

 promise to pay, written on the face of them, we can get along as 

 we have done. But if, on the other hand, the experience we have 

 had of the injustice, madness, and wickedness of such a course, 

 has taught us any thing, we cannot get along as we have done. 

 The laboring and productive classes will not remain satisfied 

 that men should, at their pleasure have the means of expendi- 

 ture and luxury, who do nothing towards earning or producing 

 them; and they will require that that which passes as the 

 representative of value, should not be a mere fiction, but in 

 truth represent that which has a fixed, convertible, available, 

 and permanent value, either in the form of specie or other real 

 property. 



The production and manufacture of silk among us beyond 

 the availing of that kind of labor to which I shall presently 

 refer, is not the remedy then for the evils of which we com- 

 plain, the evils of involving ourselves in debt through the 

 excessive consumption of foreign luxuries or even of home- 

 grown or home-made luxuries. The evil consists in our using 

 that which we have not earned ; that which we do not pay 

 for, and which we have not the means of paying for, and 

 which we are not willing to labor that we may have the means 

 of paying for. The production and manufacture of silk, 

 unless it can be done by labor not now employed and yielding 

 no profit, will not relieve us from our embarrassments. In- 

 deed, try what art we will, there is only one effectual remedy. 



