Far from helping probity and industry, the ruin to
which it leads falls most severely on the great laboring classes, who
are thrown suddenly out of employment, and by the failure of magnificent
schemes never intended to enrich them are deprived in a moment of their
only resource. Abuses of credit and excesses in speculation will happen
in despite of the most salutary laws; no government, perhaps, can
altogether prevent them, but surely every government can refrain from
contributing the stimulus that calls them into life.
Since, therefore, experience has shown that to lend the public money
to the local banks is hazardous to the operations of the Government, at
least of doubtful benefit to the institutions themselves, and productive
of disastrous derangement in the business and currency of the country,
is it the part of wisdom again to renew the connection?
It is true that such an agency is in many respects convenient to the
Treasury, but it is not indispensable. A limitation of the expenses
of the Government to its actual wants, and of the revenue to those
expenses, with convenient means for its prompt application to the
purposes for which it was raised, are the objects which we should seek
to accomplish.
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