In reviewing the conflicts which have taken place between different
interests in the United States and the policy pursued since the adoption
of our present form of Government, we find nothing that has produced
such deep-seated evil as the course of legislation in relation to the
currency. The Constitution of the United States unquestionably intended
to secure to the people a circulating medium of gold and silver. But the
establishment of a national bank by Congress, with the privilege of
issuing paper money receivable in the payment of the public dues, and
the unfortunate course of legislation in the several States upon the
same subject, drove from general circulation the constitutional currency
and substituted one of paper in its place.
It was not easy for men engaged in the ordinary pursuits of business,
whose attention had not been particularly drawn to the subject, to
foresee all the consequences of a currency exclusively of paper, and we
ought not on that account to be surprised at the facility with which
laws were obtained to carry into effect the paper system. Honest and
even enlightened men are sometimes misled by the specious and plausible
statements of the designing.
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