Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
It is not so with the speculator, by whom this operation is better
understood, and is made to contribute to his advantage. It is not until
the prices of the necessaries of life become so dear that the laboring
classes can not supply their wants out of their wages that the wages
rise and gradually reach a justly proportioned rate to that of the
products of their labor. When thus, by depreciation in consequence of
the quantity of paper in circulation, wages as well as prices become
exorbitant, it is soon found that the whole effect of the adulteration
is a tariff on our home industry for the benefit of the countries where
gold and silver circulate and maintain uniformity and moderation in
prices. It is then perceived that the enhancement of the price of land
and labor produces a corresponding increase in the price of products
until these products do not sustain a competition with similar ones in
other countries, and thus both manufactured and agricultural
productions cease to bear expectation from the country of the spurious
currency, because they can not be sold for cost.
This is the process by which specie is banished by the paper of the
banks. Their vaults are soon exhausted to pay for foreign commodities.
The next step is a stoppage of specie payment--a total degradation of
paper as a currency--unusual depression of prices, the ruin of debtors,
and the accumulation of property in the hands of creditors and cautious
capitalists.
It was in view of these evils, together with the dangerous power
wielded by the Bank of the United States and its repugnance to our
Constitution, that I was induced to exert the power conferred upon me
by the American people to prevent the continuance of that institution.
But although various dangers to our republican institutions have been
obviated by the failure of that bank to extort from the Government a
renewal of its charter, it is obvious that little has been accomplished
except a salutary change of public opinion toward restoring to the
country the sound currency provided for in the Constitution.
In the acts of several of the States prohibiting the circulation of
small notes and the auxiliary enactments of Congress at the last
session forbidding their reception or payment on public account, the
true policy of the country has been advanced and a larger portion of
the precious metals infused into our circulating medium. These measures
will probably be followed up in due time by the enactment of State laws
banishing from circulation bank notes of still higher denominations,
and the object may be materially promoted by further acts of Congress
forbidding the employment as fiscal agents of such banks as continue to
issue notes of low denominations and throw impediments in the way of
the circulation of gold and silver.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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