effected, all these several creditors received from the United States, by officers for that purpose by Congress appointed, certain certificates of the several sums due to each individual creditor. These certificates were issued, in the different States, to the creditors of the United States, belonging to such States; and were payable to the person or States to whom the same were due; or to bearer, on demand, with interest. These certificates were the evidences of the amount of the domestic debt of the United States, to each of the States, and to each individual in such States. They drew interest by their tenor, and were payable on demand, to whomsoever might be the bearer of them. They were, and were intended to be, a circulating medium. Had the United States been in funds for the payment of them, or of the interest, the medium would, in the absence of gold and silver, as was then the condition of the United States, have been equal to that currency. It would have been equal to the present United States Bank paper, or to the United States stocks. The nation was without funds, and then utterly insolvent. This medium, like the emissions of continental paper bills, fell much below par. It nevertheless continued to circulate, and was, as continental bills had been, before they become of no value, a medium of exchange. Men went to market with it, as with other paper bills with which they had been accustomed to go to market. The medium had a market value, as well known, though much below it, as the market value of silver and gold. Like the old continental, or the treasury notes of the last war, or the bank paper at that period, of all the banks in the country, excepting New-England, it passed from hand to hand, by delivery: being payable to bearer, no written transfer was required, and the market value being generally known, every person who passed it away, and every man who received it, knew at what price it was so passed, and governed himself accordingly. If one man owed for goods received, or wished to purchase goods at the market, to the amount of one hundred dollars, and these certificates, then a circulating medium, were at fifty cents for a dollar, he sent two hundred dollars to his creditor, or to the market. If they were at twenty-five cents, he sent four hundred dollars; if at twelve and a half cents, eight hundred dollars. This, Sir, constituted the greatest part of the buying and selling, done in the market. What color had the gentleman to call such a transaction, robbery? Was it less fair and honest than dealing in any other medium? In continental bills, while they were current? In treasury notes, twenty per cent. below par, as they were in the last war? In the depreciated paper of any established, legally established bank? Are not all of this description of paper subjected to this difficulty at different distances from the office of discount and payment? Why, the whole paper medium of the world is at a discount at any commercially calculated distance from the place of payment, unless prevented by the accidents of trade. When I am at Providence, is not a note, bill, or bond, or any stock payable in Providence, worth more to me than if payable at Boston, or New-York, or Philadelphia, or Baltimore, unless I want money at either of these cities? This, Sir, creates an exchange, and puts all the paper credit at a discount or a premium in the whole commercial world. Is it a felony to deal in it, because depreciated or appreciated? No: not, Sir, if you pay the market value for it. These two circumstances, distance of the place, and payment, and the uncertainty of the solvency of the debtor; the one or the other, and often both, place all that part of the circulating medium of the world, at some rate of discount, and render almost all exchanges a kind of barter, and to be managed by a price current; and not a money transaction. Even gold and silver vary in exchangeable value, and it is only the minor operations of trade which are governed by entire reference to the standard value of coin, either gold or silver. These two solid mediums have an exchange, one against the other; and, in all great transactions, must be governed, not by the laws of the mint, but by those of commerce, bargain, and convention. What medium, then, shall he use? What shall be done by the gentleman too pure to deal in any depreciating medium? What shall be done when his hard money system utterly, in principle, fails him? Turn anchorite. Deal only in bacon, beans, and tobacco. Here, too, the curse of commerce will

meet him; and the want of an eternal standard of value, by the changing market value of his glorious staples, will leave him to the necessary bargaining and higgling of trade, like any mere honest man of this world.

" Is it robbery, Sir, is it robbery, to deal in any thing depreciated in market value below its original cost? May we not buy that to-day, which cost less than it would yesterday? Then, Sir, whatever falls in price must forever remain unsold, unused, unransomed, and perish on the hands of the first producer. The pressure of want must never recall retiring demand by a diminution of price; but all who did not, because they could not, sell at the top of the market, must never sell at any other grade; and all who did not buy, because they could not, at the most costly price, are condemned to perish for want of goods which are perishing for want of purchasers. This, then, is the hard money government of the gentleman from Virginia.

"The revolutionary soldiers passed off their certificates at the market, because they had no other means of purchase; and those in New-England who had bread, meat, drink, and clothing, received these certificates at the market value, because they could get no better medium for payment. These certificates found the readiest market, and the best price, among those people who had most regard for their country, and most confidence in public faith and public justice. Men who knew that the United States were insolvent, as all did, and believed them to be knaves, as some did, would not touch a certificate sooner than a continental dollar, worth then not one cent. Men who were patriots, and honest themselves, and had the best reason (a good conscience of their own) to think other men so, would not leave the soldier to perish, because he had nothing to pay for his bread but the proof of his services, and the plighted faith of a nation of patriots and heroes. Was this, Sir, robbery ?-felony against the valor, which, steeped in blood, had won this country? Then, Sir, the purest deeds are profligacy; things sacred are profane, and demons shall riot in the spoils of redemption. It is true, the disbanded army received no where relief so readily as in NewEngland. Virginia, as the gentleman says, did not receive their depreciated money. Not because Virginia had not other paper

M

money to give for it. That the soldiers did not want. All paper money was alike to them. They had been ruined by it. Their own certificates the price of their scars and unclosed wounds, were in their hands-the best paper money then in circulation. They wanted bread. Virginia was then the land of corn; the very Egypt of the United States. They did not buy. They chose to keep their wheat in their storehouses, rather than put soldiers' depreciated certificates, a kind of old continental money, as they said, in their pockets. With Washington, like the pious Patriarch preaching righteousness to antediluvian sinners, even with him preaching patriotism and public faith, they would not believe-would not barter bread and relieve hunger-no, not of a soldier-for any such consideration.

"When this Government was established; when this nation redeemed their high pledges, by funding and providing for that medium which patriots alone had with that hope received, or patriotic soldiers who were able to do so, had retained, then public justice did, as future mercy will do-reward all who, with faith in her high integrity, had fed the hungry and clothed the naked.

"Here is the deep fountain of the gentleman's abounding anathema against New-England: They began the Revolution; they relieved the army who conquered the colonies from the European nation, and gave the American people their independence; they received from this Government, by the funding system, the recompense of their patriotism and public confidence. These are injuries too high to be forgiven by one who has no goods but other's ills-no evils but other's goods.

"This Government,' says the gentleman, 'was, by the Constitution, made a hard-money Government, because that Constitution gave them the power to "coin money." New-England has made it a paper-money, cotton-spinning Government.'New-England, Sir, although not entitled to the honor of having introduced the Banking System, is yet entitled to the credit of never having departed from the principles of that system, by refusing to redeem her bills with silver or gold. The Government, by establishing the funding system, established the great banking principle in the country. All these sons of Mammon,

who look on gold and silver as the only true riches, will regard, as the enemies of all righteousness, all those prudent statesmen, who consider money as merely the great circulating machine in the production of their country. It, therefore, becomes highly important to furnish so necessary and costly a machine, at the least practicable expenditure of labor and capital.

"Every nation must be supplied with this circulating medium, in amount equal, and somewhat more than equal, to all its exchanges, necessarily to be made at any one given time. The same medium, or part of the whole, may operate different exchanges at different times: but there must, at all times, be in the nation an amount equal to the amount of exchanges in operation at any one and the same time. This medium may be all money; or what the laws have adjudged to be as money. It, however, in all trading nations, or which is the same thing, in all rich nations, does consist of several other parts. All the stocks representing national debts are one part of this medium. All the stocks representing the debts and capital of all incorporated companies, are a second part. All the paper, representing all the debts of individuals, and unincorporated trading companies, is a third part of this medium of circulation. The whole money, or what by law is adjudged to be as money, makes up the fourth and last part of this great machine of circulation, sustaining and keeping in full work, all the money production of any country. This money was anciently, in most nations, gold and silver. The modern invention of banking is thought to be an improvement.

"If the money circulating medium of this nation be, as probably it is, fifty millions of dollars, the cost of furnishing that amount must be equal to that sum. The yearly cost must be whatever the market interest may be in the whole country. Το this must be added the amount yearly consumed by the wear of all the metallic pieces, whether gold, silver, or copper, of which such money is fabricated. This may be three per cent. The very great cost of transporting such a weight of money, to make all the ready exchanges of the immense trade of our country, cannot readily be appreciated or even conceived by men accustomed to the accommodation of bank bills for all such exchanges. Six