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 banks in England _suspended_ in 1797--they _broke_ in 1825;
in the United States it was a _suspension_ during the war, and a
_breaking_ in 1819-20. So it may be again with us. There is imminent
danger to the resuming banks, without the pressure of premeditated
hostility; but, with that hostility, their prostration is almost
certain. The Bank of the United States can crush hundreds on any day
that it pleases. It can send out its agents into every State of the
Union, with sealed orders to be opened on a given day, like captains
sent into different seas; and can break hundreds of local banks
within the same hour, and over an extent of thousands of miles. It
can do this with perfect ease--the more easily with resurrection
notes--and thus excite a universal panic, crush the resuming banks,
and then charge the whole upon the government. This is what it can
do; this is what it has threatened; and stupid is the bank, and
doomed to destruction, that does not look out for the danger, and
fortify against it. In addition to all these dangers, the senator
from Kentucky, the author of the resolution himself, tells you that
these banks must fail again! he tells you they will fail! and in
the very same moment he presses the compulsory reception of all the
notes on all these banks upon the federal treasury! What is this but
a proposition to ruin the finances--to bankrupt the Treasury--to
disgrace the administration--to demonstrate the incapacity of the
State banks to serve as the fiscal agents of the government, and to
gain a new argument for the creation of a national bank, and the
elevation of the bank party to power? This is the clear inference
from the proposition; and viewing it in this light, I feel it to
be my duty to expose, and to repel it, as a proposition to inflict
mischief and disgrace upon the country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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