Future Paper Money of This Country [pp. 1-25]

THE PRINCE TON REVIEW.
by contracting the currency-a process far more stringent and
disturbing than that of raising it towards par by accumulating
coin for its redemption. There can be no doubt, then, of the
ability of the national government to provide a sound paper
currency, good always and everywhere for its face in gold, and
everywhere preferred to it, with rare exceptions, with equal
profit to itself and advantage to the people. But if it under takes this function, will it take the necessary means to make
and keep it always sound and convertible?
It must be confessed that here is where this scheme labors.
Once it is recognized as the function of government to create
money by engraving paper and making it legal tender whether
convertible or not, and there is no end of the temptations on
every hand to repudiate the obligation to redeem it, nay, to
issue it, in such quantities as to necessitate its being irredeem able, in furtherance of all sorts of jobs by which all sections
seek to drain the public treasury for their own benefit, or for
the behoof of political parties and the cormorants who fatten
upon them. LNo doubt a sound and conservative sentiment
will be strong enough to oppose and possibly defeat such a
breach of national faith, and debasement of the very, measures
of value and standards of honesty. But it is by no means
certain to prevail. Of that we have had painfully convincing
evidence in the long and severe contest for the resumption of
specie payments, which more than once only escaped failure by
the narrowest, and by the aid of the most adroit parliamentary
tactics or hair-breadth technicalities-thus proving too clearly
that the heart of the people, or enough of them to sway great
parties, was joined to these paper idols and would not let them
alone. These irredeemable-paper-money factions are even now
courting and courted by political parties. When these are
pretty evenly balanced, they become the make-weights to give
the preponderance to that with which they can make the best
terms. They are possessed with the delusion that value can be
indefinitely created by the fiat of the government making paper
stamped with the word "dollar" equal to 24~ grains of gold
stamped likewise; and that so it has only to make the decree,
and it will thus make itself rich, the people prosperous, and
wealth abundant, by engraved pieces of paper.
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