Bloomington Herald

From the Globe.

The World is Governed too much

This is our motto; and it is more applicable to the regulation of the currency in this country than any thing else. It is management of this great aliment of the business of the country for the benefit of a few—for the stockholders in corporations—stockjobbers, brokers and speculators—which deranges, robs, and destroys the industry of the nation. The ups and downs of the fluctuating credit system, which, under the protection of law, converts what should be a standard of value, into a mere medium of gambling speculation, makes all business a mere lottery. All the regulation of the institutions which are made the fountains of the actually circulating money—their paper issues—is to place them above all legitimate restraint—above all responsibility to those who hold their obligations, and so render them omnipotent to change the value of property—of private engagements among men—of every thing circulating as money; and to bankrupt hundreds of thousands without being themselves subjected to the condition of bankrupts, when they are actually bankrupt—without being subject to be sold out, discredited, and deprived of the privileges by which they overthrow every thing like a sound currency, under the pretence of increasing, improving, and regulating it.

We give a short article from the last Journal of Commerce, which speaks a volume on this subject. We may say of it. which Lord Chatham said of Magna Charta. He said it was "homely Latin, but worth all the classics."

"The Currency.—Did ever any body see such a muss as this country is in about the currency? We have been improving and improving and regulating and fixing until the whole affair has gone to nothing at all. Here is the great Regulator, which should control every thing, and the great question about her is, whether all the banks in Philadelphia can hold her up. That she can borrow money, is considered an achievement. As to Mississippi, which expanded most magnificently, so that the banks did more good than could be estimated, why the bubble has burst one way, and the bottom has fallen out the other. Every now and then a small bank explodes here and there, and is seen no more. and in many that do not explode, there are sad tokens of unsoundness. Through the whole country south of Pennsylvania, there is no such thing as constitutional money, and no two States have a currency alike. It seems to us that such a state of things ought to teach men to let the currency alone. Certainly if this is the best that legislation can do. the matter had better be left to run wild. "Tom, Dick, and Harry," cannot get up a worse state of things than now exists. We cannot have confusion worse than this. and now that the doctors have brought the patient into such dreadful convulsions, let us send them all home, and see if "the operations of nature" will not yet save life. It will turn out, when the truth is known, that more money has been lost by banks within the last ten years, than the whole country would have sold for when our fathers fought the battles of independence; yet the fault is not in the banks nor their directors. The wide spread ruin shows that the evil is not local nor particular, but universal. It is in the system. We have waged a great battle with the laws of trade, and we have been severely flogged for our folly.

"We have undertaken to regulate that which cannot be touched without mischief.—Shall we go on now to create a fourth national bank? The plan is frightful. It would only be leaving to the next generation the confusion and revulsion which have overthrown this.—All that is necessary is, that we should be convinced of our folly and leave currency to itself. It is the easiest thing to manage in all the departments of business. If Congress will but make a bankrupt law, which shall compel all banks and all men to pay their debts or divide their effects, and then if Congress and the State Legislatures will just let the whole matter alone, there will grow up of itself the best currency in the world. What we want is, to get rid of a system and of regulation, so that every man shall act for himself and act freely.—Then, whatever is wanted will be provided.—If we want paper money accredited in all parts of the country, we shall have it. Then, if a banker fails, he will fall out of the ranks.—Our suspensions grow out of the fact that our currency is managed by a great system. If one important wheel breaks, the whole system stops. Let currency become an individual matter, like other branches of business, and suspensions would be impossible. When we become wise enough to leave currency to take care of itself, after Congress has discharged its constitutional duty of coining money and fixing the value thereof, then we shall have the safest and steadiest and every way the best currency, which the imperfect state of this world will admit."