No. 216.] 371 



ganic laws. If the currency is preserved steady, uniform and sound, 

 society adapts itself to its volume with perfect quietude and freedom, 

 never demanding more except as the commonwealth grows and pro- 

 duces it, and unable to do with less without severe suffering; rea- 

 soning upon national interests without reference to the currency, all 

 the conclusions of statesmen are defective in an essential particular, 

 and no result is reached which corresponds to experience, and hence 

 in Europe as in America, after so long debate, great questions of na- 

 tional polity and finance are yet unsettled. 



The currency of the United States, the convertible issues of banks, 

 is the growth of more than half a century — commencing during the 

 revolutionary war with the bank of North America, at Philadelphia, 

 it has grown up with the nation, and has become an integral portion 

 of the national wealth, and is so involved in all existing obligations, 

 is so fixed in all the mental habits of society, that any essential 

 change of its character is impracticable. It may be modified and 

 rendered more secure by the introduction of a larger proportion of 

 capital into it. The general government, by the adoption of a sub- 

 treasury for the management of their small share of its general bulk, 

 will attempt to alter its character in vain, it must remain of its 

 present general extent and constitution, until the slow progress of 

 investigation shall so modify the opinions of society, as to make a 

 change in the constitution of the United States practicable, and in- 

 duce the public to accept of the nation J credit as the basis of the 

 currency, and the measure of value instead of gold and silver, as at 

 present, if that shall be demonstrated to be the true theory for the 

 construction of a currency. It is therefore, necessary, that in all 

 present investigation, and in the arrangement of our national policy, 

 we adhere to the existing currency, and govern ourselves accordingly. 

 It is idle t) reason upon the assumption that a change is practicable, 

 by the introduction of a currency of metal, as is proposed by many 

 opponents of a tariff of protection and by the sub-treasury, as it is 

 entirely impracticable; the government, while the amount of its accu- 

 mulated revenue is small, may blunder along adhering to the obsolete 

 idea of a metallic currency, but all its efforts to reduce the general 

 currency to the standard of metal, or to substitute metal in place of 

 bank notes in general commercial action, will be found to be entirely 

 futile. 



Nor would the substitution of metal in place of o'ur present cur- 

 rency, as is supposed, greatly change the relative position of our 



