The American Quarterly Review, No. 18, June 1831 (Vol 9)Various
History
The American Quarterly Review, No. 18, June 1831 (Vol 9)
Various
Intellectual life -- Periodicals; United States -- Intellectual life -- 19th century -- Periodicals
"The loan of thirty millions to government, can only be made
by an immediate issue of bills to that amount. If these
bills should return, the bank will not be able to pay them.
This is certain, and to remedy this inconvenience, power is
given to the directors, by the act, to suspend, at their own
discretion, the payment of their notes, until the President
of the United States shall otherwise order. The President
will give no such order, because the necessities of
government will compel it to draw on the bank till the bank
becomes as necessitous as itself. Indeed, whatever orders
may be given or withheld it will be utterly impossible for
the bank to pay its notes. No such thing is expected from
it. The first note it issues will be dishonoured on its
return, and yet it will continue to pour out its paper, so
long as government can apply it in any degree to its
purposes.
"What sort of an institution, sir, is this? It looks less
like a bank, than a department of government. It will be
properly the paper-money department. Its capital is
government debts; the amount of its issues will depend on
government necessities; government, in effect, absolves
itself from its own debts to the bank, and by way of
compensation absolves the bank from its own contracts with
others. This is, indeed, a wonderful scheme of finance. The
government is to grow rich, because it is to borrow without
the obligation of repaying, and is to borrow of a bank which
issues paper, without liability to redeem it. If this bank,
like other institutions which dull and plodding common sense
has erected, were to pay its debts, it must have some limits
to its issues of paper, and therefore, there would be a
point beyond which it could not make loans to government.
This would fall short of the wishes of the contrivers of
this system. They provide for an unlimited issue of paper,
in an entire exemption from payment. They found their bank,
in the first place, on the discredit of government, and then
hope to enrich government out of the insolvency of their
bank. With them, poverty itself is the main source of
supply, and bankruptcy a mine of inexhaustible treasure."
Pp. 224-5.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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