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paid, if paid at all, in gold and silver, in like manner as if no paper had been used; with this difference only, that these balances are rated according to the paper standard, and consequently require a larger amount of gold and silver to extinguish them, than would have been requisite, had gold and silver constituted the currency.

The difficulty, which our business men seek to obviate by paper money, is by no means a recondite one. They wish to buy and sell, and amass by the operation a fortune. But they have no money, with which to make their purchases, and no property which they can exchange for money. They have simply the faculty of buying and selling. They would buy and ship to England a cargo of cotton, and not pay the planter for it till it is sold in England and the returns realized. The merchant's means of payment must be obtained by the sale of the cotton purchased. What he wants, then, is credit. This credit, for various reasons, the planter will not give him. His simple course, then, is, to go to the capitalist, or to the bank, and borrow the means of paying the planter. It is well for him to obtain this loan, and no harm to the community. Credits to this extent are needed, and must be had, unless we would leave the whole business transactions of the world to a few moneyed men, a thing by no means desirable.

Banks are unquestionably, in this view of the case, necessary, and worthy of encouragement. If the business man can obtain the loan he asks for, it is an advantage to business, and to labor, for labor in certain respects has interests in common with business. A ready market for the products of labor is of as much importance to the laborer, as to the trader. In order to

command this market, for the products of labor of any one country, it is necessary to open to them the markets of the world. And to do this requires an energy, an enterprise on the part of business men, which can be rarely looked for, except in young men, who have their fortunes to make. Facilities to these should unques

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tionably be extended, and for this banks, private or public, are necessary.

The Democracy, then, should not object to credit, nor to banks. We are willing the merchant should obtain a loan, and purchase his cargo of cotton, and not cancel. his loan till the sale of the cotton has furnished him the means. All this can be assented to without difficulty. We would assign no limits to the credit he or others may obtain, but the means of those who grant it. So long as a bank loans only its actual capital, or real capital in its possession, we utter no complaint. Because then the planter is actually paid for his cotton, and the losses, if any, fall on the speculator and the bank, where they ought to fall. But by means of paper money, that is, by allowing the bank to loan its notes instead of loaning real money, the bank is enabled to furnish credits beyond its means of redemption. It ceases, the moment its notes exceed its actual amount of gold and silver on hand, to be a money-lender, and becomes a money-borrower, and dependent on the success of its debtors in their speculations, for the means to pay its creditors. If these speculations miscarry, the bank miscarries, and the actual loss falls, not on the speculator, for he had nothing to lose, nor on the bank, for it never furnished any real capital, but on the producer, who had exchanged his products for the notes of the bank. This is the feature in our banking system, which should be stricken out.

We have instanced the case of the speculator in cotton, who, wishing to speculate in that article, can only do it on credit. Now, it may be that this speculator can obtain no credit at the bank, or it may be, that the advance on the price paid for his cotton, at which he can sell it, will not be sufficient to furnish him a living profit, and at the same time pay the interest on his loan at the bank. What now shall be done? He, and four or five more in the same situation, but engaged in different business transactions, come together, petition the legislature, obtain a charter for a bank, with a privilege of issuing their notes to as great an amount, practically, as they can keep out.

They pay in the capital of the bank in stock notes, and now substituting their notes as a bank for their notes as individuals, purchase cotton and other products on their own credit. In this case they unite in themselves the character of speculators, borrowers, and lenders. They are their own bankers. The planter takes the notes of their bank for his cotton, which he sells to them as individuals, and the farmer for his wheat. But if they fail in their operations, as speculators, then they must fail as debtors of the bank, and then fail as the bank or debtors of the public, and what then has the planter and farmer received for their wheat and cotton?

But one knot of four or five individuals have obtained a bank, and by its means are commanding the products of industry with the same ease they would, had they been men of real capital. Other individuals, seeing this, say, why not we have a bank also? So these other individuals petition, and obtain a bank, and go through the same process. Another set of individuals do the same, till your whole State is covered over with banks, and the land deluged with bank notes. During this time the rage for speculation goes ever increasing; fortunes are made in a day; men who were poor clerks yesterday are millionaires to-day; slow but gradual gains are despised; honest industry is contemned, and all the world rushes into trade. But this cannot last. Balances must be paid, and paid in gold and silver; but gold and silver for this there is not enough to be come at. The few individuals, who, during the fever of speculation had taken good care not to have many outstanding balances to settle off, come out with a princely fortune, while the great mass of the active business men find themselves where they began ; and the planters and farmers, find that they have nothing to show for the products they have parted with.

This is the inevitable result of a system of paper money, and this is a result no honest man can desire. This is carrying the credit system to a ruinous extent, and making that, which, within its natural limits, is a great good, one of the greatest of evils. Credit to this extent is

We must,

not needed, and should not be furnished. then, abolish the paper money system, and compel the banks to limit their loans to their actual resources. The evil of banking begins the moment the bank becomes a borrower from the public at large, and this it does the moment it issues its notes beyond the actual amount of gold and silver in its possession. Beyond that amount its loans are loans of its credit, not of its money. Now we are willing that credits should be obtained by the business men to the full extent of the actual means of those who furnish them. This is the natural limit to the credit system, and beyond which it can never be safe. When extended beyond this limit, the business of the country is unnaturally stimulated, and rendered unhealthy; its frame becomes bloated, and sudden dissolution is always to be apprehended.

We come, then, to this conclusion; the Democracy need not oppose banking, but it should oppose paper money; it need not oppose credit, without which all business must come to a stand-still, but it should oppose all artificial means for extending credits beyond the ability of those who furnish them to redeem them in gold and silver. We make no objections to banks of deposit, of exchange, transfer of credits, and of discount; we simply ask that all discounts be made in the legal currency of the country.

This, if it were but the existing order, we shall be told, would unquestionably be far preferable to our present state of things. But, then, it is useless to contend for it. So large a proportion of the people are in debt, that they will never submit to the sacrifice necessary for introducing it. This may be so. Yet the losses to the debtor class of the community, we do not believe, would be greater than they have been for the last few years. Then, again, can we not arrive at a tolerably exact estimate of the per cent., at which this change would appreciate the currency? Why not, then, require the creditor, in the case of all debts contracted prior to the change, and estimated in a depreciated paper currency, to deduct this per cent. from the nominal

amount claimed? This would be just to both parties, requiring the debtor to pay only the amount of value he had stipulated to pay, and giving the creditor all the values be had ever a right to demand.

But, if we go against all paper money, what shall we do with existing banks? Repeal, of course, that clause in their charters, which allows them to issue their notes as a currency, and require the immediate redemption, in gold and silver, of the notes they have now in circulation. This, we admit, is a bold measure, and cannot be adopted at once, without causing great suffering. But what of that? It is better to take a medicine, which will expel a lingering disease and restore us to health, although its immediate operation shall give us the gripes, than it is to be always sick. What is true in this respect of the individual, is of the community. It is better to feel the full shock of the evil at once, and then to be ever after free from it, than it is to be constantly debilitated by it. But be this as it may, a healthy state of business cannot be obtained at a less expense.

Having disposed of the currency question, and by annihilating all banks of circulation, brought the currency to the constitutional standard, we must extirpate all monopolies, not necessarily all corporations. Corporations are useful, and answer many desirable purposes. All that Democracy can ask in regard to them. is, that they conceal no monopoly principle, that they confer on the corporator no privileges, which he did not possess or may not possess as an individual. We would, therefore, insist that the individual property of all the corporators should be holden for the debts of the corporation.

Corporations, for manufacturing purposes, are not strictly anti-democratic, when their charters confer no monopoly; and yet they exert an anti-democratic influence. Their tendency at present is unwholesome. Nevertheless, they are founded on a principle destined to play an important part in the business of production, that of associated labor. They are but a feeble, a most imper

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