Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
Specie payments having been resumed by the Government and banks, all
notes or bills of paper issued by either of a less denomination than
$20 should by law be excluded from circulation, so that the people may
have the benefit and convenience of a gold and silver currency which in
all their business transactions will be uniform in value at home and
abroad. Every man of property or industry, every man who desires to
preserve what he honestly possesses or to obtain what he can honestly
earn, has a direct interest in maintaining a safe circulating
medium--such a medium as shall be real and substantial, not liable to
vibrate with opinions, not subject to be blown up or blown down by the
breath of speculation, but to be made stable and secure. A disordered
currency is one of the greatest political evils. It undermines the
virtues necessary for the support of the social system and encourages
propensities destructive of its happiness; it wars against industry,
frugality, and economy, and it fosters the evil spirits of extravagance
and speculation. It has been asserted by one of our profound and most
gifted statesmen that--Of all the contrivances for cheating the
laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than that
which deludes them with paper money. This is the most effectual of
inventions to fertilize the rich man's fields by the sweat of the poor
man's brow. Ordinary tyranny, oppression, excessive taxation--these
bear lightly on the happiness of the mass of the community compared
with a fraudulent currency and the robberies committed by depreciated
paper. Our own history has recorded for our instruction enough, and
more than enough, of the demoralizing tendency, the injustice, and the
intolerable oppression on the virtuous and well-disposed of a degraded
paper currency authorized by law or in any way countenanced by
government. It is one of the most successful devices, in times of peace
or war, of expansions or revulsions, to accomplish the transfer of all
the precious metals from the great mass of the people into the hands of
the few, where they are hoarded in secret places or deposited under
bolts and bars, while the people are left to endure all the
inconvenience, sacrifice, and demoralization resulting from the use of
depreciated and worthless paper.
The Secretary of the Interior in his report gives valuable information
in reference to the interests confided to the supervision of his
Department, and reviews the operations of the Land Office, Pension
Office, Patent Office, and Indian Bureau.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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