State Convention—Finance. 
129 
scientific way, after the panic of 1873. The government officials 
could not agree to do it when they held their memorable meeting 
at the Fifth Avenue Hotel one Sunday afternoon, but they did do it 
finally. They were forced to do it afterward, and they soon let go 
the whole reserve into circulation from the necessity of paying the 
expenses of the government, more especially, than for the relief of 
the community; to pay the expenses 5f the government when busi¬ 
ness was paralyzed and taxes could not be collected. 
Says a reliable English writer: “ Within the short historical pe¬ 
riod of forty-one years England has been visited by five great 
panics, each probably fifty times more destructive to property, and 
possibly to life, than the greatest earthquake the world has ever 
known, all of the same character, all exhibiting the same features, 
and all occasioned by a demand for gold for exportation. 
This is the English experience. 
In our own country previous to the late war—suspension of spe¬ 
cie payment, and financial and commercial crisis—the conver¬ 
sion of industrious and producing working people into homeless, 
penniless, and idle u tramps,” the stoppage of mills, the ruin of 
great and small mercantile and manufacturing establishments, a 
stoppage of all industry and trade occurred at intervals of six years. 
Such were the experiences during the panics of 1811, 1814, 1819, 
1825, 1834, 1837, 1839, 1841, 1857, and 18H1. Ten financial crises 
and suspensions of specie redemption of bank-notes and general 
suspension of business in fifty years, averaging a panic once in five 
years. 
These experiences are common to all countries in which the false 
English system of currency and finance prevails. Is it not time, 
then, to abandon the English system? 
A “ specie-paying ” bank, like the Bank of England, is run on the 
principle that the people are very ignorant, and that the people 
know that the bank does, business by issuing $300,000 of notes, 
promising to pay them in gold on demand, when it only keeps 
habitually $100,000 of coin to redeem with. Can they pay $300,000 
of obligations on demand, when they only have $100,000 in coin 
with which to redeem or pay? You will say, no ! You are doubt¬ 
less correct. Common sense dictates your answer, no ! and ex¬ 
perience confirms its correctness. When a bank of issue discovers 
that after paying out their $100,000 of coin in the redemption of 
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