of dollars. Where then is the gain to
either party, which makes it a public blessing? There is no change in
the state of things, but of persons only. A has a debt due to him from
the public, of which he holds their certificate as evidence, and on
which he is receiving an annual interest. He wishes, however, to have
the money itself, and to go into business with it. B has an equal sum of
money in business, but wishes now to retire, and live on the interest.
He therefore gives it to A, in exchange for A's certificates of public
stock. Now, then, A has the money to employ in business, which B so
employed before. B has the money on interest to live on, which A lived
on before: and the public pays the interest to B, which they paid to
A before. Here is no new creation of capital, no additional money
employed, nor even a change in the employment of a single dollar.
The only change is of place between A and B, in which we discover no
creation of capital, nor public blessing. Suppose, again, the public to
owe nothing. Then A not having lent his money to the public, would be
in possession of it himself, and would go into business without the
previous operation of selling stock. Here again, the same quantity of
capital is employed as in the former case, though no public debt exists.
In neither case is there any creation of active capital, nor other
difference than that there is a public debt in the first case, and none
in the last; and we may safely ask which of the two situations is most
truly a public blessing? If, then, a public debt be no public blessing,
we may pronounce _a fortiori_, that a private one cannot be so. If the
debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to any body, it is to
themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten
per cent, on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our
gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without
interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have
been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which, they have
given us two hundred millions of froth and bubble, on which we are to
pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air, as Morris's
notes did. We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the
principle of 'a public debt being a public blessing,' and its mutation
into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous
as the original principle itself. I