This is what ought to be done. But it will not be done.
_Carthago non delebitur_. The overbearing clamor of merchants,
speculators, and projectors, will drive us before them with our eyes
open, until, as in France, under the Mississippi bubble, our citizens
will be overtaken by the crash of this baseless fabric, without
other satisfaction than that of execrations on the heads of those
functionaries, who, from ignorance, pusillanimity, or corruption, have
betrayed the fruits of their industry into the hands of projectors and
swindlers.
When I speak comparatively of the paper emissions of the old Congress
and the present banks, let it not be imagined that I cover them under
the same mantle. The object of the former was a holy one; for if ever
there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us
independence. The object of the latter, is to enrich swindlers at the
expense of the honest and industrious part of the nation.
The sum of what has been said is, that pretermitting the constitutional
question on the authority of Congress, and considering this application
on the grounds of reason alone, it would be best that our medium should
be so proportioned to our produce, as to be on a par with that of the
countries with which we trade, and whose medium is in a sound state:
that specie is the most perfect medium, because it will preserve its own
level; because, having intrinsic and universal value, it can never die
in our hands, and it is the surest resource of reliance in time of
war: that the trifling economy of paper, as a cheaper medium, or its
convenience for transmission, weighs nothing in opposition to the
advantages of the precious metals: that it is liable to be abused, has
been, is, and for ever will be abused, in every country in which it is
permitted; that it is already at a term of abuse in these States, which
has never been reached by any other nation, France excepted, whose
dreadful catastrophe should be a warning against the instrument which
produced it: that we are already at ten or twenty times the due quantity
of medium; insomuch, that no man knows what his property is now worth,
because it is bloating while he is calculating; and still less what
it will be worth when the medium shall be relieved from its present
dropsical state: and that it is a palpable falsehood to say we can have
specie for our paper whenever demanded.
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