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lead to those precautions for the general security which constitute the necessity for government, and are the main foundations of its strength and power. The principles of this new performance of Mr. Carey might possibly have been supported by a similar exercise of ingenuity so far as respects the encouragement and justification it affords to the extravagance, immorality and vice incident to gambling, but they proceed to an immeasurably greater length than any doctrines before published. While Mandeville only contended that the vices of individuals would in the long run be counterbalanced by the accession of strength to the body politic, the main object of the reply is to break down this strength. The destruction of all the safeguards by which the sober, industrious and honest portions of the community are protected from the consequences of the profligacy of others, is now for the first time deliberately advocated. The checks which are intended to save the innocent from becoming involved in the destruction which sooner or later overtakes the guilty, are denounced as hostile to human freedom. The whole community are in effect to be punished for the fraudulent cupidity of a few gamblers and speculators.

The doctrines contained in this reply greatly exceed, therefore, in their results, any which have been hitherto seriously addressed to the understandings of a peaceful, law-abiding and religious people in any age of the world. Were not these results carefully concealed from the observation of light and superficial readers, by a plausible perversion of language, wherever they would be likely to shock the moral sense by their transparency, we should leave this reply to find its proper estimation among the Whig party, to which it seems to be particularly addressed, without any remarks on our part. But the mode now adopted, as we have already suggested for subverting the rights of the people by attempting to poison the fountain of power, imperiously requires that every friend of public liberty should endeavour to expose such designs and prevent their influence. The corruption of the moral sense of the people-the purity and correctness of which are the main foundation upon which the success of our great experiment of self-government essentially depends-is too alarming an enterprize to be witnessed with unconcern, by any well-wisher to human happiness.

Our readers will doubtless bear in recollection that the design of our former Article was to shew that "the credit system" of this country, by confounding two things radically and diametrically opposed to each other in their influences upon industry and enterprize-mere credit and actual capital-had impaired the security of property, and had deeply affected that mutual confidence and good faith among men which is so essential to social prosperity. We traced the present credit system of this country to its corrupt origin in the intrigues of Morris and Hamilton for bringing into operation an

irresponsible controlling power wholly independent of the people, after their plans for that purpose were defeated in the Convention which formed the Constitution of the United States.

We explained the course of management which had been pursued by the second Bank of the United States for the overthrow of the standard of value which it was one of the main objects of the Constitution to secure and we endeavoured to illustrate the operation of the credit system of this country, and its consequences upon our productive interests, by the condition into which the people of England and France had been plunged by the adoption of a similar system.

The most reasonable feature in this reply, regarding it according to its professed import, is that not a single word can be found in it, from beginning to end, upon the principal and most important subject of our Article—the origin and operations of the credit system heretofore existing in the United States. We state this explicitly and distinctly in order that the friends of this system may first examine our Article and the performance which purports to be a reply, before they shall decide that Mr. Carey has refuted the facts and arguments contained in the Democratic Review. The reply takes up entirely new grounds-the right of the whole people to issue paper currency to be received in all payments. It commences with a flourish upon the progress of the age, and the increasing power of the people, and immediately falls into the track of our illustrations of the injurious consequences of paper currency sanctioned by Government, which we had brought to bear upon the operations of the two Banks of the United States. In effect, the credit system of the United States as managed by the banks is abandoned to its fate as totally indefensible, and a new crotchet is brought forward to supersede them.

Now, bad as we believe the management of many of the banks to have been, we think them to be far less injurious to the common welfare than Mr. Carey's substitute as explained by himself. None can be more deeply anxious to promote the progress of human improvement than ourselves. It is precisely because we wish that the great advancement which is daily developing itself may not become a retrograde movement tenfold more rapid in its pace, which shall overwhelm at once all hopes of political and social amelioration, that we desire the American people to ponder well this vital question of paper currency. Upon this rock many a gallant ship of state has already been wrecked. More poverty, misery and oppression have been created in the world by mistakes upon this question than by any other scheme of mis-government.

As the most dangerous of Mr. Carey's doctrines, because the most likely to impose upon inexperienced minds. are artfully enveloped in terms used in a sense wholly different from their ordinary signification, we regard it as an indispensable preliminary to explain,

that several expressions of the most frequent recurrence in the reply, do not convey to our minds the ideas which he assumes to be their import. It would indeed seem from many recent instances that the literati of the Philadelphia paper-money school are equally bent upon the destruction of all confidence in language as well as in currency. We do not regard the circulating medium of a great producing and commercial people, as a proper subject for the indulgence of an arbitrary and frivolous play upon words, and as it is obviously impossible to discuss usefully any subject unless in language mutually comprehended between the writer and reader, we propose to state explicitly what we do not understand by several of these phrases.

1. By the term freedom as applied to individuals, we do not understand an absolute exemption from every restraint upon the unbridled passions and fraudulent cupidity of mankind. By freedom of commerce, we do not mean a scheme of legalized plunder under the pretence of the protection of industry, vainly adopted to prevent the operation of the great laws of trade upon a false and deceptive measure of value. We think the experience of the last two years has sufficiently established, that free trade, in the proper sense of the term, cannot exist either between the several States of the Union, or between this and foreign countries, except by a rigid adherence to the sound and equal measure of value established for that very purpose by the Constitution of the United States.

2. We do not understand the word capital to mean mere facilities and contrivances for borrowing the fruits of labor. We regard that individual only to be a capitalist who is the proprietor of the accumulated proceeds of labor without being indebted to the producers for the amount. Those individuals without actual property, who lavish large sums in ostentatious and luxurious display, for the purpose of obtaining the credit of being men of wealth, are not capitalists in our acceptation of the term-even should several combine, with or without a charter procured from the legislative power, under whatever pretences or management, and club their mutual obligations together as the basis of paper currency to be imposed upon a credulous community as a substitute for the only sound and equal measure of value. Capital is not created by law, but by labor. Paper currency may enable individuals by law to obtain the proceeds of labor without expense or exertion, but we do not regard the privilege of manufacturing it to constitute a capitalist-although its actual cost to the industrious and producing interests is fully equal to that of metallic currency, besides the hazard of its perishing in their hands like the manna of the Israelites, should it be kept in possession beyond the day on which it is acquired, and thereby producing improvidence and consequent distress. 3. By the term security, as applied to currency, we do not under

stand the immediate and exclusive profit and advantage of any single class of individuals whether merchants or bankers.

4. When the institutions of the people are mentioned, we do not understand private corporations established for individual profit drawn from the industry of the community. These two classes of institutions are entirely distinct in their objects, and are generally totally opposed in their results.

The foregoing explanations, together with a distinction we shall immediately notice which forms the staple of the reply, substantially cover the whole ground assumed by Mr. Carey for the support of his new doctrines. He admits, nay he strongly and in express terms corroborates, our views of the consequences of the eredit system in all other countries. But notwithstanding it was the ohject of his previous publication to prove the necessity of the interposition of the Government, for the purpose of giving confidence to the paper currency issued by the banks, which at that time in most sections of the country was greatly depreciated, he now endeavours, with more dexterity than consistency, to make it appear that the disastrous consequences which have resulted every where in Europe from the use of paper currency, have not been owing to the people but to the governments. The great states of Europe where these melancholy results have been experienced on the largest scale are all monarchical in their forms. He accordingly insists in effect that excessive issues of paper currency can only impoverish the people under monarchies, where "the government is all in all." In a republic he contends that the universal issue of paper currency by the people cannot fail to produce the most perfect degree of security and steadiness. The fluctuations and insecurity which have been so frequently visited upon this country are wholly to be attributed to attempts on the part of our Government to imitate the example of the arbitrary sovereigns of Europe! All the distress and embarassments into which our commercial and industrial interests have been from time to time involved have been exclusively owing to the interference of the Government!

Mr. Carey, in his ardor to increase our stock of illustrations of the deplorable consequences of the credit system upon the people of the several European nations, has entirely overlooked the more immediate and striking instances afforded by the annals of our own country. Like many of our modern philanthropists, he is eagleeyed in detecting misery and oppression in distant regions, but appears to be wholly blind and insensible to the every-day privations around him. A volume would not suffice for the description of the ruinous revulsions produced by the credit system of this country since 1791. The immediate effect of paper currency is to expel specie from circulation. Whoever possesses the power of making payments in a currency which costs nothing will never pay in a val

uable and expensive medium. Wherever paper currency is permitted to become the exclusive medium of commercial interchange, the whole community is placed in the power of those who make it. By arbitrary expansions and contractions they are empowered to ruin the commerce and industry of the country at their pleasure Let us cast a hasty glance at the monetary history of the United States during last twenty years. The most terrible revulsion. this country ever suffered was during 1819, 1820 and 1821, when the contraction of the operations of the Bank of the United States produced a change of ownership in the greater part of the property engaged in commercial pursuits throughout the Middle, Southern and Western States. What interference of the Government produced this series of disasters which ruined so many thousands?— In 1825 another crisis occurred, in the course of which the Bank of the United States was saved from immediate destruction only by the promptitude, address and good fortune of its President, according to his own account published to the world shortly afterwards. Numerous commercial houses of the highest credit and most extended transactions were prostrated by the suddenness and severity of this shock. Was it caused by the interference of the Government? Mr. Adams, the friend and correspondent of Mr. Biddle, was then President of the United States, and the attempt to make him responsible for this revulsion would hardly be successful. In 1828 many of the most extensive manufacturers of the Eastern States were ruined, and a great number of failures occurred in our commercial cities. Mr. Adams was still President-but a strong probability existed that a ferocious military chieftain would be chosen by the people to succeed him. Perhaps, therefore, this awful revulsion should be attributed to the Executive magistrate about to be elected. We now come to the administration of that extraordinary man whose name and public services seem to inspire calumny and detraction among the satellites of the credit system in the same ratio as his character and abilities have elevated the character of our country in every part of the world. In several passages of nis reply Mr. Carey has gratified his exquisite taste and his love of veracity, by the repetition of the stale morsels of slander from the newspaper letter writers of the panic era. As the venerable individual whom they were originally intended to asperse, has retired from public life, we cannot envy the state of feeling which led to this clegant selection. The charter of the Bank of the United States would expire by its own limitation during the second term of his service, should he be re-elected. Gen. Jackson had been engaged in too many of the most important events of our history as a nation, not to have been fully aware of the destructive influence of such a Bank upon its highest interests, from the days of Morris and Hamilton. Measures were concerted to compel the people to re

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