ge of President Monroe, Mr. Gallatin had
already uttered its idea; when about leaving Paris, on his return from
the French mission, he said to Chateaubriand, the French minister of
foreign affairs (May 13, 1823): "The United States would undoubtedly
preserve their neutrality, provided it were respected, and avoid any
interference with the politics of Europe.... On the other hand, they
would not suffer others to interfere against the emancipation of
America." With characteristic vanity Canning said that it was he himself
who "called the new world into existence to redress the balance of the
old." Yet precisely this had already for a long while been a cardinal
point of the policy of the United States. So early as 1808, Jefferson,
alluding to the disturbed condition of the Spanish colonies, said: "We
consider their interest and ours as the same, and that the object of
both must be to exclude all European influence in this hemisphere."

Matters of equal interest are involved in the study of Mr. Gallatin's
actions and opinions in matters of finance. Every one knows that he
ranks among the distinguished financiers of the world, and problems
which he had to consider are still agitating the present generation. He
was opposed alike to a national debt and to paper money. Had the
metallic basis of the United States been adequate, he would have
accepted no other circulating medium, and would have consented to the
use of paper money only for purposes of exchange and remittance. In 1830
he urged the restriction of paper money to notes of one hundred dollars
each, which were to be issued by the government. Obviously these must be
used chiefly for transmitting funds, and would be of little use for the
daily transactions of the people. Yet even this concession was due to
the fact that the United States was then a debtor country, and so late
as 1839, as Mr. Gallatin said, "specie was a foreign product." For
subsidiary money he favored silver coins at eighty-five per cent. of the
dollar value, a sufficient alloy to hold them in the country. Silver was
then the circulating medium of the world, the people's pocket money, and
gold was the basis and the solvent of foreign exchanges.

Great interest attaches to the application of some other of Gallatin's
financial principles to more modern problems; and a careful study of his
papers may fairly enable us to form a few conclusions. It may be safely
said that he would not have favored a national