A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 3, part 2: Martin Van Buren
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 3, part 2: Martin Van Buren
Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government; Van Buren, Martin, 1782-1862
Is an argument required beyond the exposition of these facts to show
the impropriety of using our banking institutions as depositories of
the public money? Can we venture not only to encounter the risk of
their individual and mutual mismanagement, but at the same time to place
our foreign and domestic policy entirely under the control of a foreign
moneyed interest? To do so is to impair the independence of our
Government, as the present credit system has already impaired the
independence of our banks; it is to submit all its important operations,
whether of peace or war, to be controlled or thwarted, at first by our
own banks and then by a power abroad greater than themselves. I can not
bring myself to depict the humiliation to which this Government and
people might be sooner or later reduced if the means for defending their
rights are to be made dependent upon those who may have the most
powerful of motives to impair them.
Nor is it only in reference to the effect of this state of things on the
independence of our Government or of our banks that the subject presents
itself for consideration; it is to be viewed also in its relations to
the general trade of our country. The time is not long passed when a
deficiency of foreign crops was thought to afford a profitable market
for the surplus of our industry, but now we await with feverish anxiety
the news of the English harvest, not so much from motives of commendable
sympathy, but fearful lest its anticipated failure should narrow the
field of credit there. Does not this speak volumes to the patriot? Can
a system be beneficent, wise, or just which creates greater anxiety for
interests dependent on foreign credit than for the general prosperity of
our own country and the profitable exportation of the surplus produce of
our labor?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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