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

FUTURE PAPER MONEY OF THIS COUNTRY.
caricature of exaggeration. The result was that the Bank of the
United States, failing of re-charter by Congress, obtained a charter from the State of Pennsylvania, by paying a bonus of nearly
six millions. Thus swept from its proper national foundations,
it was plunged into the mire of corruption in the very first step
of its new abnormal career. Out of its normal sphere it fell
into the hands of speculators and kiters, and so fell to ignominious ruin. It is needless here to rehearse the steps by which the
political revolution of I840, having for an object the restoration
of the United States Bank, failed of it through the untimely death
of President Harrison, and the succession to his place of a Virginia abstractionist, who vetoed the bill re-chartering it. After
so many mortal blows it died past resuscitation, and has left an
odor from its expiring struggles which, added to the prevailing
unpopularity of colossal moneyed corporations, will probably
prevent its reorganization, whatever its capacity for usefulness.
The insufficiency of State banks, without some such regulator,
to provide the currency we need, cannot be questioned. It is
almost equally certain that no such regulator can be established,
even if intrinsically desirable. If there be a system of State or
national banks, it should be under a general law, and not by
special charters. The bonus for the charter of the United
States Bank by the State of Pennsylvania is only an instance,
of unparalleled enormity indeed, of this sort of corruption in
granting special bank charters more than forty years ago. If so
then, what would it be now?
The outcome of the foregoing discussion with respect to the
paper money of the future is:
I. That the people will, and of right ought to, have such
money, in some form immediately convertible into specie, as
their chief circulating medium.
2. That the present national-bank notes, secured by government stocks, are incomparably the best actual or possible, unless
notes of the government itself, based on such coin reserves and
other provisions as shall secure their redeemability in every contingency less than some great national revolution or convulsion.
The great question is whether the disposition of the nation is
equal to its power, to provide such a currency.
3. The gradual extinction of the national debt is likely to
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