" This
statement sets forth a low view of governmental function and
practically limits its sphere to the office of the policeman,
whose chief concern is to suppress disorder. Statesmanship should
go deeper and should labor in a constructive way to remove causes
of disorder.
An examination of President Cleveland's state papers show that
his first concern was always to relieve the Government from its
financial embarrassments; whereas the first concern of the people
was naturally and properly to find relief from their own
embarrassments. In the last analysis, the people were not made
for the convenience of the Government, but the Government was
made for the convenience of the people, and this truth was not
sufficiently recognized in the policy of Cleveland's
administration. His guiding principle was stated, in the annual
message, December 3, 1894, as follows: "The absolute divorcement
of the Government from the business of banking is the ideal
relationship of the Government to the circulation of the currency
of the country." That ideal, however, is unattainable in any
civilized country. The only great state in which it has ever been
actually adopted is China, and the results were not such as to
commend the system. The policy which yields the greatest
practical benefits is that which makes it the duty of the
Government to supervise and regulate the business of banking and
to attend to currency supply; and the currency troubles of the
American people were not removed until eventually their
Government accepted and acted upon this view.
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