Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850Benton, Thomas Hart
History
Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850
Benton, Thomas Hart
United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861
The bill reported by the chairman of the Committee on Finance
[Mr. WRIGHT of New York] presents the details of the plan for
accomplishing this great result. That bill has been printed and
read. Its simplicity, economy, and efficiency strike the sense
of all who hear it, and annihilate without argument, the most
formidable arguments of expense and patronage, which had been
conceived against it. The present officers, the present mints,
and one or two more mints in the South, in the West, and in the
North, complete the plan. There will be no necessity to carry
masses of hard money from one quarter of the Union to another.
Government drafts will make the transfer without moving a dollar.
A government draft upon a national mint, will be the highest order
of bills of exchange. Money wanted by the government in one place,
will be exchanged, through merchants, for money in another place.
Thus it has been for thousands of years, and will for ever be. We
read in Cicero's letters that, when he was Governor of Cilicia, in
Asia Minor, he directed his _quæstor_ to deposit the tribute of
the province in Antioch, and exchange it for money in Rome with
merchants engaged in the Oriental trade, of which Antioch was one
of the emporiums. This is the natural course of things, and is too
obvious to require explanation, or to admit of comment.
We are taunted with these treasury notes; it seems to be matter of
triumph that the government is reduced to the necessity of issuing
them; but with what justice? And how soon can any government that
wishes it, emerge from the wretchedness of depreciated paper,
and stand erect on the solid foundations of gold and silver? How
long will it take any respectable government, that so wills it,
to accomplish this great change? Our own history, at the close of
the Revolution, answers the question; and more recently, and more
strikingly, the history of France answers it also. I speak of the
French finances from 1800 to 1807; from the commencement of the
consulate to the peace of Tilsit. This wonderful period is replete
with instruction on the subject of finance and currency. The whole
period is full of instruction; but I can only seize two views--the
beginning and the end--and, for the sake of precision, will read
what I propose to present. I read from Bignon, author of the civil
and diplomatic history of France during the consulate and the first
years of the empire; written at the testamentary request of the
Emperor himself.
After stating that the expenditures of the republic were six
hundred millions of francs--about one hundred and ten millions of
dollars--when Bonaparte became First Consul, the historian proceeds:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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