We seem equally incorrigible in our financial course. Although a
century of British experience has proved to what a wonderful extent the
funding on specific redeeming taxes enables a nation to anticipitate
in war the resources of peace, and although the other nations of Europe
have tried and trodden every path of force or folly in fruitless quest
of the same object, yet we still expect to find, in juggling tricks and
banking dreams, that money can be made out of nothing, and in sufficient
quantity to meet the expenses of a heavy war by sea and land. It is
said, indeed, that money cannot be borrowed from our merchants as from
those of England. But it can be borrowed from our people. They will give
you all the necessaries of war they produce, if, instead of the bankrupt
trash they now are obliged to receive for want of any other, you will
give them a paper-promise funded on a specific pledge, and of a size for
common circulation. But you say the merchants will not take this paper.
What the people take the merchants must take, or sell nothing. All these
doubts and fears prove only the extent of the dominion which the
banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens, and
especially of those inhabiting cities or other banking places; and this
dominion must be broken, or it will break us. But here, as in the other
case, we must make up our mind to suffer yet longer before we can
get right.
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