With us it was one hundred cents, and
consequently we could send it there in competition with their own.
That ordinary price has now doubled with us, and more than doubled in
England; and although a part of this augmentation may proceed from the
war demand, yet from the extraordinary nominal rise in the prices of
land and labor here, both of which have nearly doubled in that period,
and are still rising with every new bank, it is evident that were
a general peace to take place to-morrow, and time allowed for the
re-establishment of commerce, justice, and order, we could not afford
to raise wheat for much less than two dollars, while the continent of
Europe, having no paper circulation, and that of its specie not being
augmented, would raise it at their former price of one hundred and ten
cents. It follows, then, that with our redundancy of paper, we cannot,
after peace, send a bushel of wheat to Europe, unless extraordinary
circumstances double its price in particular places, and that then the
exporting countries of Europe could undersell us. It is said our paper
is as good as silver, because we may have silver for it at the bank
where it issues. This is not true. One, two, or three persons might have
it: but a general application would soon exhaust their vaults, and leave
a ruinous proportion of their paper in its intrinsic worthless form.
It is a fallacious pretence, for another reason.
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