ls as a standard in the general trade of the world. With us
bank issues constitute such a currency, and must ever do so until they
are made dependent on those just proportions of gold and silver as a
circulating medium which experience has proved to be necessary not only
in this but in all other commercial countries. Where those proportions
are not infused into the circulation and do not control it, it is
manifest that prices must vary according to the tide of bank issues,
and the value and stability of property must stand exposed to all the
uncertainty which attends the administration of institutions that are
constantly liable to the temptation of an interest distinct from that
of the community in which they are established.

The progress of an expansion, or rather a depreciation, of the currency
by excessive bank issues is always attended by a loss to the laboring
classes. This portion of the community have neither time nor opportunity
to watch the ebbs and flows of the money market. Engaged from day to day
in their useful toils, they do not perceive that although their wages
are nominally the same, or even somewhat higher, they are greatly
reduced in fact by the rapid increase of a spurious currency, which, as
it appears to make money abound, they are at first inclined to consider
a blessing. It is not so with the speculator, by whom this operation
is better understood, and is made to contribute to his advantage. It is
not until the prices of the necessaries of life become so dear that the
laboring classes can not supply their wants out of their wages that the
wages rise and gradually reach a justly proportioned rate to that of the
products of their labor. When thus, by the depreciation in consequence
of the quantity of paper in circulation, wages as well as prices become
exorbitant, it is soon found that the whole effect of the adulteration
is a tariff on our home industry for the benefit of the countries where
gold and silver circulate and maintain uniformity and moderation in
prices. It is then perceived that the enhancement of the price of land
and labor produces a corresponding increase in the price of products
until these products do not sustain a competition with similar ones in
other countries, and thus both manufactured and agricultural productions
cease to bear exportation from the country of the spurious currency,
because they can not be sold for cost. This is the process by which
specie is banished by the