Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4Jefferson, Thomas
History
Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
appropriated for their redemption in fifteen years, and (to insure
preference in the first moments of competition) bearing an interest of
six per cent., there is no one who would not take them in preference
to the bank-paper now afloat, on a principle of patriotism as well as
interest: and they would be withdrawn from circulation into private
hoards to a considerable amount. Their credit once established, others
might be emitted, bottomed also on a tax, but not bearing interest: and
if ever their credit faltered, open public loans, on which these bills
alone should be received as specie. These, operating as a sinking fund,
would reduce the quantity in circulation, so as to maintain that in an
equilibrium with specie. It is not easy to estimate the obstacles which,
in the beginning, we should encounter in ousting the banks from their
possession of the circulation: but a steady and judicious alternation of
emissions and loans, would reduce them in time. But while this is going
on, another measure should be pressed, to recover ultimately our right
to the circulation. The States should be applied to, to transfer
the right of issuing circulating paper to Congress exclusively, _in
perpetuum_, if possible, but during the war at least, with a saving of
charter rights. I believe that every State west and south of Connecticut
river, except Delaware, would immediately do it; and the others would
follow in time.
Congress would, of course, begin by obliging unchartered banks to wind
up their affairs within a short time, and the others as their charters
expired, forbidding the subsequent circulation of their paper. This they
would supply with their own, bottomed, every emission, on an adequate
tax, and bearing or not bearing interest, as the state of the public
pulse should indicate. Even in the non-complying States, these bills
would make their way, and supplant the unfunded paper of their banks,
by their solidity, by the universality of their currency, and by their
receivability for customs and taxes. It would be in their power, too, to
curtail those banks to the amount of their actual specie, by gathering
up their paper, and running it constantly on them. The national paper
might thus take place even in the non-complying States. In this way, I
am not without a hope, that this great, this sole resource for loans
in an agricultural country, might yet be recovered for the use of the
nation during war: and, if obtained in perpetuum, it would always be
sufficient to carry us through any war; provided, that, in the interval
between war and war, all the outstanding paper should be called in,
coin be permitted to flow in again, and to hold the field of circulation
until another war should require its yielding place again to the
national medium.
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