_Henry Clay_ (debate on the sub-treasury, 1840): “The proposed substitution of an exclusive metallic currency to the medium with which we have been so long familiar is forbidden by the principles of eternal justice. Assuming the currency of the country to consist of two-thirds paper and one of specie, and assuming, also, that the money of a country, whatever may be its component parts, regulates all values, and expresses the true amount which the debtor has to pay his creditor, the effect of the change upon that relation, and upon the property of the country, would be most ruinous. All property would be reduced in value to one-third of its present nominal amount, and every debtor would, in effect, have to pay three times as much as he had contracted for. The pressure of our foreign debt would be three times as great as it is, while the six hundred millions, which is about the sum now probably due to the banks from the people, would be multiplied to eighteen hundred millions!... A man, for example, owning property to the value of $5,000, contracts a debt of $5,000. By the reduction of one-half of the currency of the country, his property in effect becomes reduced to the value of $2,500. But his debt undergoes no corresponding reduction.... But if the effect of this hard money policy upon the debtor class be injurious, it is still more disastrous, if possible, on the laboring classes.... Of all the subjects of national policy, not one ought to be touched with so much delicacy as that of the wages—in other words, the bread—of the poor man. In dwelling, as I have often done, with inexpressible satisfaction, upon the many advantages of our country, there is not one that has given me more delight than the high price of manual labor. There is not one which indicates more clearly the prosperity of the mass of the community....