being obliged to pay even interest on this debt. This payment of
interest is itself represented as exhausting their means and ruinous to
their prosperity. But if the interest cannot be paid without pressure,
can both interest and principal be paid in four years without pressure?
The truth is, the interest has been paid, is paid, and may continue to
be paid, without any pressure at all; because the money borrowed is
profitably employed by those who borrow it, and the rate of interest
which they pay is at least two per cent lower than the actual value of
money in that part of the country. But to pay the whole principal in
less than four years, losing, at the same time, the existing and
accustomed means and facilities of payment created by the bank itself,
and to do this without extreme embarrassment, without absolute distress,
is, in my judgment, impossible. I hesitate not to say, that, as this
_veto_ travels to the West, it will depreciate the value of every man's
property from the Atlantic States to the capital of Missouri. Its
effects will be felt in the price of lands, the great and leading
article of Western property, in the price of crops, in the products of
labor, in the repression of enterprise, and in embarrassment to every
kind of business and occupation. I state this opinion strongly, because
I have no doubt of its truth, and am willing its correctness should be
judged by the event. Without personal acquaintance with the Western
States, I know enough of their condition to be satisfied that what I
have predicted must happen. The people of the West are rich, but their
riches consist in their immense quantities of excellent land, in the
products of these lands, and in their spirit of enterprise. The actual
value of money, or rate of interest, with them is high, because their
pecuniary capital bears little proportion to their landed interest. At
an average rate, money is not worth less than eight per cent per annum
throughout the whole Western country, notwithstanding that it has now a
loan or an advance from the bank of thirty millions, at six per cent. To
call in this loan, at the rate of eight millions a year, in addition to
the interest on the whole, and to take away, at the same time, that
circulation which constitutes so great a portion of the medium of
payment throughout that whole region, is an operation, which, however
wisely conducted, cannot but inflict a blow on the community of
tremendous force and frig