considerations:--the first derived from the facility with which it
may be provided in emergencies, and the second, from its cheapness.

'The principal objections to such a circulation as a permanent
system are, 1st, the facility of excessive expansion when
expenditures exceed revenue; 2d, the danger of lavish and corrupt
expenditure, stimulated by facility of expansion; 3d, the danger of
fraud in management and supervision; 4th, the impossibility of
providing it in sufficient amounts for the wants of the people
whenever expenditures are reduced to equality with revenue or below
it.

'These objections are all serious. The last requires some
elucidation. It will be easily understood, however, if it be
considered that a government issuing a credit circulation cannot
supply, in any given period, an amount of currency greater than the
excess of its disbursements over its receipts. To that amount, it
may create a debt in small notes, and these notes may be used as
currency. This is precisely the way in which the existing currency
of United States notes is supplied. That portion of the expenditure
not met by revenue or loans has been met by the issue of these
notes. Debt in this form has been substituted for various debts in
other forms. Whenever, therefore, the country shall be restored to
a healthy normal condition, and receipts exceed expenditures, the
supply of United States notes will be arrested, and must
progressively diminish. Whatever demand may be made for their
redemption in coin must hasten this diminution; and there can be no
reissue; for reissue, under the conditions, necessarily implies
disbursement, and the revenue, upon the supposition, supplies more
than is needed for that purpose. There is, then, no mode in which a
currency in United States notes can be permanently maintained,
except by loans of them, when not required for disbursement, on
deposits of coin, or pledge of securities, or in some other way.
This would convert the treasury into a government bank, with all
its hazards and mischiefs.

'If these reasonings be sound, little room can remain for doubt
that the evils certain to arise from such a scheme of currency, if
adopted as a permanent system, greatly overbalance the temporary
though not inconsiderable advantages o