254 
Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
could not. without ample notice and great preparation, redeem all 
its issue in coin at once. The very nature of the system forbids 
any intention of the kind. 
But, says the bullionists, “ let us have the one per cent, then, that 
is better than nothing.” Not much; my answer invariably is go 
and bug it. You can purchase gold under the worst possible phase 
of our present noxious S3 r stem, at from twelve to fifteen per cent., 
which is a great saving over ninty-nine per cent. 
I know it is an old maxim that “wise men change; fools, never,” 
but as my change of belief in a metallic currency, to a knowledge 
of it sabsolute impossibility, so long as we are a debtor nation, conies 
from the soverign mode of reasoning a priori. I lay no claim to the 
bounty for wisdom, since necessity, and not mere policy is the law 
of the case. 
I now believe, in the light of past histor} r , that it would be a national 
crime longer to continue the national banks—that no bank of issue, 
State or National, should ever hereafter be permitted to exist, but 
that the government should furnish the people with their own cur¬ 
rency, in suitable amounts to meet every legitimate requirement of 
trade and commerce nt home, convertible into bonds of low interest, 
and reconvertible into currency at the pleasure of the holder, and 
then, if the government will not discredit and dishonor its own pa¬ 
per, but, like France, take it for all dues and make it a legal tender 
for every species of debt, save when otherwise already bargained, 
we may safely let gold take care of itself, with the assurance that 
however the latter might fluctuate in volume, by foreign demand 
or otherwise, the former must always be at par, and must not be 
sucked up, and whisped from us by any financial tornado that might 
sweep across the Atlantic. If we could consign gold to the non¬ 
user as money, and turn it over to the dicker of commodities, as 
did Lycurgus, in his onslaught on the usurers of Athens, we should 
no longer be its slave. Some people, however, think we must have 
a currency that all other nations will strive for, just to be in fashion, 
forgetting that our fashionable coats may be stripped at any time 
from our backs, by our sleek cousins in Europe, on creditor’ warrants 
and bond-holders attachments. 
With greenbacks current for all government dues, and a legal 
tender for all private and public debts, except as otherwise agreed, 
gold would no longer reign as monarch, and both government and 
