A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 3, part 1: Andrew Jackson (Second Term)
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 3, part 1: Andrew Jackson (Second Term)
Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845; Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government
Connected with the condition of the finances and the flourishing state
of the country in all its branches of industry, it is pleasing to
witness the advantages which have been already derived from the recent
laws regulating the value of the gold coinage. These advantages will be
more apparent in the course of the next year, when the branch mints
authorized to be established in North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana
shall have gone into operation. Aided, as it is hoped they will be, by
further reforms in the banking systems of the States and by judicious
regulations on the part of Congress in relation to the custody of the
public moneys, it may be confidently anticipated that the use of gold
and silver as a circulating medium will become general in the ordinary
transactions connected with the labor of the country. The great
desideratum in modern times is an efficient check upon the power of
banks, preventing that excessive issue of paper whence arise those
fluctuations in the standard of value which render uncertain the rewards
of labor. It was supposed by those who established the Bank of the
United States that from the credit given to it by the custody of the
public moneys and other privileges and the precautions taken to guard
against the evils which the country had suffered in the bankruptcy of
many of the State institutions of that period we should derive from that
institution all the security and benefits of a sound currency and every
good end that was attainable under that provision of the Constitution
which authorizes Congress alone to coin money and regulate the value
thereof. But it is scarcely necessary now to say that these
anticipations have not been realized.
After the extensive embarrassment and distress recently produced by the
Bank of the United States, from which the country is now recovering,
aggravated as they were by pretensions to power which defied the public
authority, and which if acquiesced in by the people would have changed
the whole character of our Government, every candid and intelligent
individual must admit that for the attainment of the great advantages of
a sound currency we must look to a course of legislation radically
different from that which created such an institution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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