Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
Is an argument required beyond the exposition of these facts to show the
impropriety of using our banking institutions as depositories of the public
money? Can we venture not only to encounter the risk of their individual
and mutual mismanagement, but at the same time to place our foreign and
domestic policy entirely under the control of a foreign moneyed interest?
To do so is to impair the independence of our Government, as the present
credit system has already impaired the independence of our banks; it is to
submit all its important operations, whether of peace or war, to be
controlled or thwarted, at first by our own banks and then by a power
abroad greater than themselves. I can not bring myself to depict the
humiliation to which this Government and people might be sooner or later
reduced if the means for defending their rights are to be made dependent
upon those who may have the most powerful of motives to impair them.
Nor is it only in reference to the effect of this state of things on the
independence of our Government or of our banks that the subject presents
itself for consideration; it is to be viewed also in its relations to the
general trade of our country. The time is not long passed when a deficiency
of foreign crops was thought to afford a profitable market for the surplus
of our industry, but now we await with feverish anxiety the news of the
English harvest, not so much from motives of commendable sympathy, but
fearful lest its anticipated failure should narrow the field of credit
there. Does not this speak volumes to the patriot? Can a system be
beneficent, wise, or just which creates greater anxiety for interests
dependent on foreign credit than for the general prosperity of our own
country and the profitable exportation of the surplus produce of our
labor?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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