lic blessing'; that the stock representing it was
a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures,
and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers
in dreams, and the gulls of that size entered _bona fide_ into it. But
the art and mystery of banks is a wonderful improvement on that. It
is established on the principle, that 'private debts are a public
blessing;' that the evidences of those private debts, called bank-notes,
become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures,
and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for
instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our
debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they
are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when
called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of
letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from the
repayment of these debts beyond a given proportion, (generally estimated
at one third.) And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead of
paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom
they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we
see in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is
levied again on us through the medium of commerce. And they are so ready
still to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to
let themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them
the same premium of six or eight per cent, interest, and on the same
legal exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the
debt, when it shall be called for. But let us look at this principle
in its original form, and its copy will then be equally understood.
'A public debt is a public blessing.' That our debt was juggled from
forty-three up to eighty millions, and funded at that amount, according
to this opinion, was a great public blessing, because the evidences of
it could be vested in commerce, and thus converted into active capital,
and then the more the debt was made to be, the more active capital was
created. That is to say, the creditors could now employ in commerce the
money due them from the public, and make from it an annual profit of
five per cent., or four millions of dollars. But observe, that the
public were at the same time paying on it an interest of exactly the
same amount of four millions