﻿ESAREY: STATE BANKING IN INDIANA 



267 



usually called ''Free Banking". He wished it understood that 

 individually he was opposed to all banks of issue, but was per- 

 suaded that the people of his district, as well as those of the whole 

 state, were not yet ready to give up a paper currency. 



If they were to have banks he wished the state to have as much 

 control over them as she then had over the State Bank. The state 

 was no more able to engage in banking than it was to engage in 

 other forms of business. A state had to act through an agent, 

 and every business man knew that business could not be well 

 handled by an agent. It could be said that the Bank had worked 

 well, and that the men then connected with it were capable and 

 honest, but would they live forever and could others be found to 

 take their places? Men think in herds and they go mad in herds. 

 History is full of South Sea Bubbles which have ruined whole com- 

 munities. Moneyed institutions more than anything else have led 

 to delusions. There was no evil more to be dreaded, except war 

 and pestilence, than a connection between government and bank- 

 ing. The constitution of the United States had forbidden state 

 banking, and he sincerely deprecated extending the special favors 

 of banking to any group of men.^ 



At the close of this speech, Daniel Reed, a delegate from Bloom- 

 ington representing Monroe and Brown counties, asked leave to 

 read to the Convention "The words of a man of as remarkable 

 sagacity as ever lived", and he proceeded to read some para- 

 graphs from Jackson's "Farewell Address". These were the well 

 known passages in which Jackson assured his countrymen that 

 eternal vigilance was the price of liberty ; that the concentration of 

 the money power in a single hand was dangerous to the freedom 

 of a nation, as was abundantly shown by the Second Bank of the 

 United States; that these same intriguers, driven from the field of 

 the national government, were then intrenching themselves in the 

 states; that the paper money system and its associates — monopoly 

 and exclusive privilege — were deep-rooted and it would require all 

 the people's efforts to eradicate them; and that gold and silver 

 were the only constitutional currency. ^ Immediately after this Mr. 

 Rariden called for the "song of Moses after the Israelites crossed 

 the Red Sea." saying "it would be equally appropriate and much 

 Better composition." But nevertheless the appeal to the "Sage of 

 the Hermitage" was well timed, for the convention was controlled 

 by his disciples. 



November 5, Allen Hamilton, a former president of the Branch 



» Debates, p. 220. 

 * Debates, p. 221. 



