way this credit, and what remains? I do not ask
what remains to the few, but to the many? Take away this system of
credit, and then tell me what is left for labor and industry, but mere
manual toil and daily drudgery? If we adopt a system that withdraws
capital from active employment, do we not diminish the rate of wages? If
we curtail the general business of society, does not every laboring man
find his condition grow daily worse? In the politics of the day, Sir, we
hear much said about divorcing the government from the banks; but when
we abolish credit, we shall divorce labor from capital; and depend upon
it, Sir, when we divorce labor from capital, capital is hoarded, and
labor starves.

The declaration so often quoted, that "all who trade on borrowed capital
ought to break," is the most aristocratic sentiment ever uttered in this
country. It is a sentiment which, if carried out by political
arrangement, would condemn the great majority of mankind to the
perpetual condition of mere day-laborers. It tends to take away from
them all that solace and hope which arise from possessing something
which they can call their own. A man loves his own; it is fit and
natural that he should do so; and he will love his country and its
institutions, if he have some stake in that country, although it be but
a very small part of the general mass of property. If it be but a
cottage, an acre, a garden, its possession raises him, gives him
self-respect, and strengthens his attachment to his native land. It is
our happy condition, by the blessing of Providence, that almost every
man of sound health, industrious habits, and good morals, can ordinarily
attain, at least, to this degree of comfort and respectability; and it
is a result devoutly to be wished, both for its individual and its
general consequences.

But even to this degree of acquisition that credit of which I have
already said so much is highly important, since its general effect is to
raise the price of wages, and render industry productive. There is no
condition so low, if it be attended with industry and economy, that it
is not benefited by credit, as any one will find, if he will examine and
follow out its operations.

Sir, if there be any aristocrats in Massachusetts, the people are all
aristocrats; because I do not believe there is on earth, in a highly
civilized society, a greater equality in the condition of men than
exists there. If there be a man in the State who mai