n to depart from the true
principles of taxation, or at least to do so without any very serious or
ruinous consequences. Now, however, when the public expenditure is about
to be vastly increased, and when it will be for the first time really
felt by the people, it will become the first duty of our rulers to study
the extent and true character of our resources, and to adjust the
burdens of taxation, with all practicable fairness, to the respective
capacities of all classes and interests. We may expect to have a system
stable and permanent in its principles, if not in its details; and the
basis of this system will be a wise arrangement of duties on imports,
which must, from various reasons, ever form the great bulk of our taxes.

It is not an American maxim that a great public debt is a public
blessing; nor is it likely that an educated and eminently practical
people like ours will ever accept that mischievous paradox. Yet if it
be desirable that our large public debt should be widely scattered among
the people, so that every man may be directly interested in maintaining
the public credit and the stability of the Government, the present
system, now but imperfectly adapted to that object, might easily be made
to accomplish it fully. If the Treasury notes recently issued were the
only paper circulation in the country--that is to say, if the banks were
prohibited, by taxation or otherwise, from making any issues of their
own--the Government might increase their amount to at least five hundred
millions, with even less than the present depreciation, and would thus
enjoy the benefit of a loan to that amount without the payment of any
interest. As it is now, the banks get the advantage of a great part of
this extensive loan, and at the same time perform a function which
properly belongs to the Government--that of furnishing a currency for
the people. By the proposed system, the entire community would be
interested in this part of the public debt, and would doubtless find the
circulating medium much safer and better than that now manufactured by
the numberless banks chartered by the States. The issue of these notes
by State institutions was always an evasion of that clause of the
Constitution which prohibits the States from issuing bills of credit,
and is plainly against the spirit and intention of the instrument. If
our public debt should, in this way, eventually drive all bank notes out
of circulation and banish them forever, it