bellishments of life, 1st, their rarity-2d, their indestructibility-3d, their being out of the power of man to produce them. If gold and silver could be manufactur ed as easily as paper, it would have no more value as a standard, or measure of value and industry; although they might possess as much as their utility in the arts invested them with; hence it is apparent, that the value or preciousness of gold and silver is chiefly owing to their rarity, indestructibility, and non-creatibility by human means. Hence the folly of the pursuit of the philosopher's stone, once the darling object of the chymist and alchymist, which, the moment it was successful, would become of no value.

While the precious metals measure with accuracy, and represent with truth the stock of surplus labour and industry; bank bills pretend to represent immediately, gold and silver-and remotely, property, or commodities. But in this country, where it has been more prodigally manufactured than in any other part of the world; and more than reason, or justice, or self-interest can ever approve; this quality of representing the precious metals, is an empty pretension, not only void of fact, but transcending possibility; for our bank paper far exceeds in amount all the mass of specie in the known world! Yet this is the chief currency of the United States; which has superseded gold and silver as the measure of value, and the representative of labour. Capable of being expanded to any amount; depending on the rapacity of men for its creation; and manufactured daily in such immense quantities as suit the purposes of avarice, and gratify the passions of cupidity; it has become an instrument of speculation, instead of a measure, or representative of value. The value of bank notes, therefore, is entirely conventional,

and varies from day to day, according to the quantity put in circulation by the incorporations that manufacture them. It has been contended, that bank bills, if they do not represent money, are yet the symbols of property, or labour. This, though true in a general and abstract sense, yet is not true in fact-in an absolute sense; for the process of arriving at the labour represented by these pieces of paper, is too precarious, and attended with too much loss, to realize the nominal value expressed on the face of them, The currency of a country to be sound and wholesome, ought to be equivalent to the precious metals, or the metals themselves, and not the suppositious representatives of property; which property may diminish one half in the process of realization before the gold and silver are obtained for it. Thus, suppose a bank to stop payment; as was the case with the Franklin bank, of New York-with another in New Jersey-and with one in the interior of Pennsylvania-in fact they are becoming bankrupt every day!-the holders of their bills must wait one, two, or three years for their dividends, and when made, they never exceed fifty per cent. of the capital. So that we see the fact demonstrated before us, that bank bills do not even represent labour, or commodities; and very often, represent nothing but the mere monopoly of public credit. It must be obvious, that a paper currency of this kind is calculated to throw the measure of value into utter confusion; and subject property to the winds and waves of every shock, which its collision with the metals is sure to produce. The crisis of 1819 in our currency, exhibited the disastrous effects of paper credits, when in many instances estates that had cost $40,000 were reduced in value to $18,000; and hundreds of men of fortune who deemed themselves

exalted into opulence and luxury, beyond the power of chance, or the vicissitudes of human affairs to shake or impair, became suddenly reduced to poverty, or compelled a second time to begin at the task of labour. Such horrible conjunctures ought to be avoided by a sagacious and provident people, for they uptear the very foundations of the national wealth and prosperity; eat into private happiness, and corrode away the resources of the country, when thrown into the pressing emergencies, whether of war, or embarrassment in its fiscal concerns.

The first effect produced by paper credits, is a rise of prices; and this, by many, is mistaken for a symptom of prosperity and riches; and such a condition of prosperity it does in fact indicate, when the increase of money is owing to the increase of industry, instead of the augmentation of credits. A reference to our bank reports will show an average augmentation of paper over specie capital of 300 per cent.; say for every one hundred thousand dollars in metals, four hundred thousand dollars in paper are afloat. This artificial enhancement of capital is not, however, an increase of riches; for it gives us no new stock of possessions; it merely converts into activity the old stock of our industry; and we pass from one to another, in the shape's of bank notes, our houses, lots, farms, and lands. All these being thrown into circulation, as to their value, the greater abundance of paper money causes a depreciation in commodities; and it requires four times as much of the paper to buy a house, &c. as it would if no paper existed, but coin only was the circulating medium and this increase of prices leads to the delusion, that because you receive more money for your commodities, you are so much the richer; overlooking the

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fact, that this rise of prices is general, and that whạtever you purchase, you have to pay four prices for; so that, in fact, you are no richer than if you received but one fourth of the amount in coin. In respect to a country, therefore, within itself, it is of no consequence, whether one thousand dollars represent a house, or whether four thousand is paid for it-unless it should happen, that this paper credit system should receive a violent shock, to which it is at all times extremely liable; in that case, the sudden contraction of the paper, its diminution, and abstraction from circulation, cause a sudden fall of prices, so that the house that cost four thousand dollars will not produce or sell for more than two thousand, which causes general ruin, consterna-. tion, dismay, and poverty. Suppose a man owns ten houses that cost him forty thousand dollars, when paper was abundant; as soon as the contraction takes place, they produce him but twenty thousand dollars; and if he has been so unfortunate as to have mortgaged the ten houses for twenty thousand dollars, he is left destitute and poor, without a dime to buy a loaf of bread! This was the case in 1822-3. But these are the greatest, evils of the paper system: where a nominal amount is obtained on bonds and mortgages-and where two thousand dollars must be paid, maugre the alteration in the value of money; which thus causes two thousand to be worth as much as four thousand dollars were before the collision between credit and capital took place; and which causes property to change hands by a mere deception of credit, without the intervention of value received. It may justly be thought strange, that men will subject themselves to the sudden loss of the product of a long life of industry, by giving countenance and support to this fictitious system of riches;-and

which is quite sufficient to account for the sudden rise and fall of men of fortune in this country. Ten years, under the paper credit order of things, is a long term for merchants to remain solvent, and men of fortune to escape penury. The flood of paper ebbs periodically; and the immense amount of importations, over and above our exportations, accumulates our debt to foreign countries to an immense amount in ten years, or even five; and once every five or six years, we experience the shock of specie against paper. For foreign countries must be paid in coin; and foreign countries we must be indebted to, until we learn the practical wisdom of producing those fabrics which are essential to our comfort and independence.

In the fall of prices caused by the contraction of paper issues, the only persons who are not sufferers, but become gainers by the revolution, are the capitalists who have invested their fortunes in bonds, and mortgages, and ground rents. The great loss of property that would accrue to the mortgagers, and those who had taken lots to build on at high rents, has been adduced as an objection to correcting the paper credit system, by a circulating medium of a metallic character. The objection, however, is nugatory and insufficient; for the evils to property holders, who are under the liabilities of mortgages and ground rents, is much greater under the paper system, than it could possibly be, under the temporary ill effects of a mode that should promise to reform the currency; restrict the issues of paper within the limits of a metallic convertibility, and prevent the recurrence of that dreadful fluctuation of prices and values, which so vitally disturbs and unsettles the whole economy of the trading and manufacturing world. By any mode of improving the currency, that should