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history of our currency and banks, for the last fifteen or twenty years, must be appealed to; and that completely establishes the fact, of the indispensable utility of this great institution to the monied relations of the country, and the interests of industry, in all its forms and modifications, affecting the wages of labour, the value of property, and the steadiness of prices.

Whatever tends to prevent the monied fluctuations of a country, is of positive utility to the industry of that country; and so far beneficial to all those productive classes, who depend on labour for subsistence. This operation, unseen as it is, by the great mass of society, is not the less real and beneficial. Thousands-tens of thousands of working people, are in this manner benefited by the bank of the United States, who neither can perceive, or conceive the operation, by which they are daily saved from a heavy loss of their labour, by preserving the currency free from depreciation, and not liable to fluctuate from day to day, in its real metallic value. It is but a few years since that the issue of bank bills by the state institutions of a denomination less than five dollars, caused a weekly substraction of one or two dollars from the wages of labour; owing to their local depreciation, caused by their immense influx. from other states. A similar depreciation existed in our paper currency generally, when the present bank of the United States commenced operations. Both evils were arrested, and finally removed, by the judicious management of the present head of that institution. But we may safely challenge the opponents of the bank to say, whether they believe those sanative cures in the state of our currency could have been accomplished without the aid of this bank? It is susceptible of demonstration that those useful results

would not otherwise have occurred; and that no other causes were adequate to beget consequences so auspicious to the country; for no other causes could combine the two properties of public credit and the power and resources of government, co-operating with the influence and weight of capital.

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A fallacious argument, or false position are often exposed with most success, by granting the antagonist argument, as a political opposition is most disconcerted by yielding the contested point. Let us suppose, as some few of the productive classes wish, that the bank of the United States was suddenly demolished. What would be the value of property-what the wages of labour what the state of the currency-and what the condition of public credit? General consternation would prevail. Real estate would fall to one half its present value-trade would languish and decay, of course the wages of labour would suffer a proportional diminution-manufactures would languish, and general bankruptcy and ruin would overspread the country. A suspension of specie payments would ensue, as a natural consequence of the efforts of the state banks to relieve the public pressure by an extension of their issues. Bank bills would be issued to cure the eviland thus the mischief would diffuse itself by every fresh attempt to arrest it by such improper means. The dissolution of the bank of the United States would withdraw from circulation not less than seventy millions of dollars. To meet this hiatus the state institu tions would exert every faculty, without much regard to the peril of the enterprise; and hence the necessary depreciation of their bills; the confusion of the currency, and the general ruin of trade and manufactures.

Thus it will appear, that an opposition to the prin

ciples of banking monopoly in general, may be perfectly consistent and reconcileable with an advocacy of the continuance of the bank of the United States; and the renewal of its charter. Nothing is more reasonable than for an abstract principle to yield to a practical good, or an anticipated evil. We may desire to see the pernicious system of banking monopoly abolished; but when the best part of that system only is to be menaced with destruction, in order that all its perils may flow in upon society, through more copious and mischievous channels-reason, patriotism, and interest, impel us to preserve the best, so that we may not be afflicted with the worst effects of the system. It is, therefore, apparent, that were the bank of the United States to be demolished to-morrow, they who were the first to oppose the renewal of its charter, would be the first to invoke its restoration; and in one year after, we should behold a new institution erected on its ruins, with a capital of a hundred millions, fortified by higher privileges of monopoly, and every way more objectionable to the productive classes. It is for these reasons, that all who look to the true interests of the working people, the real prosperity of the country-the invigorating expansion of our system of American industry, and internal improvements, must desire the continuance of an institution which has done, and is still doing so much to advance and promote the combined faculties and energies of the republic.

Review of Mr. Madison's Speech against the Bank of the United States.

The exordium of this speech upon the general principles and effects of banking, comprises opinions so exploded, and theorems so objectionable, as to justify us in more severity of criticism than we feel disposed to exercise towards a patriot so venerable, and a statesman so eminent as JAMES MADISON. We can overlook his errors the more readily on this subject, because they are the errors of a by-gone age, errors more ascribable to time than to Mr. Madison-more to be ascribed to the gross ignorance of the Adam Smith school of economists, than to the able statesman who so lucidly expounded the spirit of the Federal Constitution, under the signature of "PUBLIUS," when associated with Hamilton and Jay. In fine, Mr. Madison has lived long enough to append his approval to a bill incorporating a Bank of the United States with a capital of thirty-five millions—after he had objected to a similar institution with a capital of ten millions! He has lived long enough to oppose a TARIFF as a violation of the constitution, and to recant the error of that opinion, and decide in favour of the policy of protecting American manufactures by high duties. He has lived long enough to see the truth and acknowledge the correction that time changes even constitutions— and that half a century will so alter, expand and reverse the relations of a young and improving country, that the posterity of the people of 1789, cannot and

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will not be controlled by the ordinances adopted for the government of an infant republic, unsettled, unpopulated, immature in its relations, unsettled in its principles, wavering in its policy, and variable in its character. Mr. Madison is to be commended for having displayed that philosophical spirit, which renounces error, at the expense of imputed want of consistency-which, soaring above the common infirmities of man, can keep pace with the improvements of the age into which he has lived, without being soured by its advances, or made obstinate by its superior intelligence. Well might Mr. Madison see cause to change his mind between the year 1791 and 1816, when HE signed the bill for the incorporation of the present bank. That he did see cause to change his mind, we well know; and it was due to candour and fair argument in those who now protrude his speech of 1791 before the public, to state that he had suggested to congress the incorporation of the present bank, and given it existence by the sanction of his name without which it never could have been. The public will infer whether the suppression of this fact denotes the consciousness of a bad cause, and an untenable position.

It has been a question with us, whether, under this view of the subject, any regard ought now to be paid to the published sentiments held by Madison in 1791, when he has so amply refuted them by his acts in 1817! But we determined to waive all these recantations on his part, in the full conviction that we could even bestow a gratuitous argument upon the enemies of this institution-especially upon those exploded, and long refuted positions assumed in Mr. Madison's speech of 1791, touching the right of congress to char

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