This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers
in dreams, and the gulls of that size entered _bona fide_ into it. But
the art and mystery of banks is a wonderful improvement on that. It
is established on the principle, that 'private debts are a public
blessing;' that the evidences of those private debts, called bank-notes,
become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures,
and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for
instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our
debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they
are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when
called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of
letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from the
repayment of these debts beyond a given proportion, (generally estimated
at one third.) And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead of
paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom
they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we
see in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is
levied again on us through the medium of commerce. And they are so ready
still to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to
let themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them
the same premium of six or eight per cent, interest, and on the same
legal exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the
debt, when it shall be called for.
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