se, that decrease will be
equivalent to an increase of taxes, without producing a corresponding
decrease of the public debt. For the portion payable in gold it will be
better economy to pay the premium than to reduce the currency
sufficiently to avoid it; because such a reduction will work a
corresponding reduction of the value of all the wealth of the country, a
sum much greater than the debt. It is scarcely necessary to suggest that
the more currency the less taxes, and the greater the ability to pay
them; or that, when the war is over, government will cease to spend
several hundred millions per annum, and the industry this money supports
will require time to rearrange and adapt itself to pacific demands; or
that, if the currency be suddenly and largely reduced at such a time,
an accumulation of distress will follow, such as is rarely seen. With
the proposed currency, however, and the proposed mode of reduction, if a
reduction be agreed on, the change from the condition of war to that of
peace may take place without producing the prostration of business so
justly anticipated, because so fully warranted by experience of a
credit-currency, and so earnestly to be deprecated, because so evidently
and so easily avoidable by the adoption of a national currency that is
capable of regulation, and that, being properly regulated, cannot fail.

Though this currency, like that of bank-notes, is wholly nominal, the
words of which it consists are those of a nation, and represent power.
Accordingly, they give to the currency power to perform its allotted
function; but they give it no other power. Has any other currency any
other power? A specie-currency may be converted into ear-rings, but it
is no longer a currency; it may be buried in iron pots, or locked in
iron safes, but it is not then a currency; it may be exported to foreign
lands, but it is not there a currency until reauthorized. Currencies,
properly speaking, are ideas clothed in words,--the words of a nation,
otherwise called laws. The merchandise attached to a specie-currency is
an evidence of former barbarism,--a remain of the primitive practice of
barter,--an incongruous element, tending to impede rather than to assist
circulation, to destroy rather than to create a currency.

But is a value-currency possible? It is, to a people enjoying universal
equality before the law, and knowing that every individual has a direct
and immediate interest in it,--knowing that it is a