This portion of the community have neither time nor opportunity
to watch the ebbs and flows of the money market. Engaged from day to day
in their useful toils, they do not perceive that although their wages
are nominally the same, or even somewhat higher, they are greatly
reduced in fact by the rapid increase of a spurious currency, which, as
it appears to make money abound, they are at first inclined to consider
a blessing. It is not so with the speculator, by whom this operation
is better understood, and is made to contribute to his advantage. It is
not until the prices of the necessaries of life become so dear that the
laboring classes can not supply their wants out of their wages that the
wages rise and gradually reach a justly proportioned rate to that of the
products of their labor. When thus, by the depreciation in consequence
of the quantity of paper in circulation, wages as well as prices become
exorbitant, it is soon found that the whole effect of the adulteration
is a tariff on our home industry for the benefit of the countries where
gold and silver circulate and maintain uniformity and moderation in
prices.
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