Daily National Intelligencer

To Messrs. Gales & Seaton.

Gentlemen: Your correspondent H. has given an interesting dialogue; and your statement in a former paper, that the present curtailments by the offices of discount and deposit and other banks are attributable to the payment of 7,500,000 of the Louisiana debt due in England, is a fact which corroborates his reasoning—for this country has to remit that sum, and the interest of all our national debt, and of United States Bank stock held abroad, in addition to payments for manufactures. If bills be purchased, exchange rises, and it becomes profitable to send away the precious metals. The Congress ought annually to ascertain how much of our interest-bearing paper is in England. We read of loans being made to Russia and Prussia by the British, who obtain specie from South America, Spain, &c., which, being wisely rendered unnecessary for circulation, is loaned out to foreign governments on good securities. Had those governments been wise, they would have funded their superfluous paper, as Mr. Hamilton did, in this country. Suppose a cotton or a tobacco crop should fail, how long would our banks pay in specie? Enjoying our present peace and plenty, we sleep under a mine of combustible materials, which must sooner or later explode. The difficulties we now experience, and the frequent accounts of country banks failing, are all portentous warnings of a general calamity. The chancellor of the exchequer stated, last year, in the British parliament, that 2,500,000l. sterling, or 12,000,000 dollars, had been issued in gold, and that it all was shed, without causing any difficulties; if the bank had renewed specie payments, all property would have fallen twenty or thirty per cent as it did on a similar occasion in 1797. As your widely-disseminated Intelligencers are not now filled with congressional debates, you cannot benefit your readers more than by inserting essays on the national currency, which at this crisis employs the minds and tongues of almost every one. It has been justly observed, 'that the smallest quantity of useful knowledge, imparted to each of a million of minds, will have a far more beneficial influence on social happiness than the most profound knowledge concentrated in a few enlightened intellects.' Error must be overcome, and blunders rectified, when the people and their republican representatives have facts and truths communicated.

C.

* The statement here referred to by our correspondent, copied by us from another paper, proved to be incorrect: a small part only, say about one million, of this stock being held in England.—Editors.