South Branch Intelligencer

THE CURRENCY.

Extract of a letter from Washington to the Editors of the Richmond Enquirer, 21st July.

"It is a question in which the happiness of our country is deeply involved, and one from which party spirit ought, I think, to be discarded. In discussing it we ought not to allow ourselves to dwell too much upon causes, whatever they may have been, which have produced the present state of the currency.

"In presenting my views on this subject, I shall attempt nothing new. In fact, I would inevitably get myself into as many scrapes as many others have done before me. I could neither see what was going on, nor be seen by others looking at the case presented to us as we would wish to look at it, as rational men, and not as visionary theorists too much disordered to enter into discussions. Let us see her difficulties, and resolve to restore her to prosperity, and then we will, with more propriety, indulge our taste for metaphysics.

"I make another proposition, or five to one, I way all arguments or writings prepared on this subject have proved nothing which common sense and common observation did not know before. I am aware of all those evils attending the credit system of our country, or banking system, to call it, have proved. I am very well acquainted with the evils attending steamboat disasters and other kinds of navigation, and I am as deadly opposed to the use of steamboats and the dreadful accidents and disasters that I hear of upon the ocean. There is nothing that would be more distressing to me than to be in a steamboat, or be tossed head over heels into the ocean and swallowed up by some great fish in the deep. Now, Sir, suppose I should write a book to enlighten the world by proving that all these things are wrong, very wrong indeed, and that all these evils ought to be abolished. Would I not be entitled to the name of great statesman? A statue certainly to be erected to perpetuate my name to posterity as one of the great benefactors of the human race? Or, to speak more properly, would I not, by such an impertinence, afford the world an unquestionable proof that I was a soft-headed blockhead? If I could not point out a remedy for these dreadful evils, what good would I do by writing frequent essays to prove that no benefit can result from an argument which proves what every body knows without its aid? What would be thought of a physician attending a patient suffering under the pangs of a mortal disease, who would content himself with satisfying the patient that the disease was a fatal one?

"That there are evils in the banking system of our country, as there are in all things that affect the human body, is as clear as the sunshine; and it is the dictate of common sense that you cannot get rid of them. When evils overtake us, it becomes the part of the wise man to seek out the best remedy, and not content ourselves with idle lamentation over them. I say, that the credit system, or banking system, to call it by another name, is as fixed upon this country, and will be as lasting as our institutions; and we will groan under the pressure of the one, until we have amended the other.

"Pray, Sir, let us discuss it like rational men, and in the spirit of truth, and not of demagogues, by which we only excite prejudices without any meaning, and appeal to the unfounded passions of the people.

"How are you to put down the paper system in this country, or alter it after the experience of all to know that it has as many benefits as evils? Have we not, in that time, lived to see every thing that is great and happy far beyond the face of the globe? We were 50 years ago at this time and in all that time we do justice to the wise men and patriots who laid the foundation of our Republic, or sufficiently express our gratitude to the Divine Author of all the profusion of blessings we have enjoyed. I do not deny that these blessings have been dearly bought, but they have been purchased, notwithstanding the sacrifices which it occasioned. With your experience, it is unnecessary for me to say with what difficulties we are to change a system which has grown up with us and under which our commercial transactions have been carried on for half a century. Is it not preposterous to suppose that the individual States, or the great stepping stone? Quite the contrary. No one can doubt that the States, as this subject is concerned, are free from acting upon it as they please: suppose one or two States, or two-thirds of the States, if you choose, were to put down their banking systems, would their acts extinguish the paper money in the U. States? No - New York and Pennsylvania alone could flood the whole country with a circulating paper medium.

If you have no banks in Virginia, you will have the bank notes of other States. As long as there are any banks to loan money, there will be borrowers, and these borrowers will pass off their bank notes to all those who will receive them, and nine-tenths of the community will always receive them, as the banks are in good credit. How can any State prevent its citizens from receiving any thing they please in payment of their own property? How strikingly illustrative of this view of the subject, is the condition of the circulating medium in many parts of Virginia at this time. One of the last acts of the Legislature was to prohibit the circulation of small notes under five dollars, and yet you cannot travel from here to Richmond and back without finding your pockets full of notes under five dollars, from all sorts of private banking and corporation authorities. At all events it was my case when I had the pleasure, some weeks since, to visit your delightful and hospitable city.

I solemnly believe, if every Bank in the U. S. was abolished, and every bank note burnt up, and substituted with coin, that before six months the country would be full of paper money everywhere of some kind or other. You cannot prevent it, notwithstanding its evils, any more than you could prevent the use of steam, although the most dreadful disasters frequently happen from it.

If there is a mode of putting down the paper system in this country, I should like to see the plan. Will books and fulminating essays put it down? I think not. Can Congress put it down? Where is her power to prevent the States from chartering Banks? And if she had the power, would she dare to exercise it? Can any one State put it down? It would be utterly impossible. Twenty-six sovereign States cannot be brought to think alike upon such a subject. You cannot get 26 individuals to agree upon it. The late Virginia Convention, assembled in Richmond to amend the Constitution of the State, composed of the most distinguished men which belonged to the old Commonwealth, after all their experience in Government, could scarcely agree upon a single article, and was very near breaking up without doing any thing. How preposterous, then, the idea that 26 sovereign communities can be brought to agree to dispense with the facilities and conveniences afforded by the paper system, after the experience and habits of half a century! If, then, it is fixed upon us as irrevocably as the system of Government under which we live, ought not our whole attention to be directed towards its regulation in such a way as to make its evils, whatever they are, as few as possible: Upon this view of the subject, I may trouble you hereafter, if I can find time."