an adequate specie basis, was a thing to be desired, a
political public advantage to be obtained, if it might be obtained; and,
more especially, I have supposed that in a new country, with resources
not yet half developed, with a rapidly increasing population and a
constant demand for more and more capital,--that is to say, in just such
a country as the United States are, I have supposed that it was admitted
that there are particular and extraordinary advantages in a safe and
well regulated paper currency; because in such a country well regulated
bank paper not only supplies a convenient medium of payments and of
exchange, but also, by the expansion of that medium in a reasonable and
safe degree, the amount of circulation is kept more nearly commensurate
with the constantly increasing amount of property; and an extended
capital, in the shape of credit, comes to the aid of the enterprising
and the industrious. It is precisely on this credit, created by
reasonable expansion of the currency in a new country, that men of small
capital carry on their business. It is exactly by means of this, that
industry and enterprise are stimulated. If we were driven back to an
exclusively metallic currency, the necessary and inevitable consequence
would be, that all trade would fall into the hands of large capitalists.
This is so plain, that no man of reflection can doubt it. I know not,
therefore, in what words to express my astonishment, when I hear it said
that the present measures of government are intended for the good of the
many instead of the few, for the benefit of the poor, and against the
rich; and when I hear it proposed, at the same moment, to do away with
the whole system of credit, and place all trade and commerce, therefore,
in the hands of those who have adequate capital to carry them on without
the use of any credit at all. This, Sir, would be dividing society, by a
precise, distinct, and well-defined line, into two classes; first, the
small class, who have competent capital for trade, when credit is out of
the question; and, secondly, the vastly numerous class of those whose
living must become, in such a state of things, a mere manual occupation,
without the use of capital or of any substitute for it.

Now, Sir, it is the effect of a well-regulated system of paper credit to
break in upon this line thus dividing the many from the few, and to
enable more or less of the more numerous class to pass over it, and to
particip