It is for the people
and their representatives to decide whether or not the permanent welfare
of the country (which all good citizens equally desire, however widely
they may differ as to the means of its accomplishment) shall be in this
way secured, or whether the management of the pecuniary concerns of the
Government, and by consequence to a great extent those of individuals
also, shall be carried back to a condition of things which fostered
those contractions and expansions of the currency and those reckless
abuses of credit from the baleful effects of which the country has so
deeply suffered--a return that can promise in the end no better results
than to reproduce the embarrassments the Government has experienced, and
to remove from the shoulders of the present to those of fresh victims
the bitter fruits of that spirit of speculative enterprise to which our
countrymen are so liable and upon which the lessons of experience are so
unavailing. The choice is an important one, and I sincerely hope that it
may be wisely made.
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