Select Speeches of Daniel Webster, 1817-1845Webster, Daniel
General
Select Speeches of Daniel Webster, 1817-1845
Webster, Daniel
Speeches, addresses, etc., American
The original, leading, main cause, then, of all our difficulties and
disasters, is the disordered state of the circulation. This is,
perhaps, not a perfectly obvious truth; and yet it is one susceptible
of easy demonstration. In order to explain this the more readily, I
wish to bring your minds to the consideration of the internal
condition, and the vast domestic trade, of the United States. Our
country is not a small province or canton, but an empire, extending
over a large and diversified surface, with a population of various
conditions and pursuits. It is in this variety that consists its
prosperity; for the different parts become useful one to the other, not
by identity, but by difference, of production, and thus each by
interchange contributes to the interest of the other. Hence, our
internal trade, that which carries on this exchange of the products and
industry of the different portions of the United States, is one of our
most important interests, I had almost said the most important. Its
operations are easy and silent, not always perceptible, but diffusing
health and life throughout the system by the intercourse thus promoted,
from neighborhood to neighborhood, and from State to State.
This circuit of trade, in a country of such great extent as ours,
demands, more than in any country under heaven, a uniform currency for
the whole people; that what is money in Carolina shall be so elsewhere;
that what the Kentucky drover receives, what the planter of Alabama
sells for, what the laborer in New York gets in pay for his work, and
carries home to support his family, shall be of ascertained and uniform
value.
This is not the time nor the occasion for an essay or dissertation on
money; but I mean distinctly to express the opinion, that until the
general government shall take in hand the currency of the country,
until that government shall devise some means, I say not what, of
raising the whole currency to the level of gold and silver, there can
be no prosperity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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