o which I have alluded did not cause the great fall of prices, but that
that fall was natural and inevitable, from the previously existing state
of things, the abundance of commodities, and the want of demand. But
that would only prove that the effect was produced in another way,
rather than by another cause. If these great and sudden calls for money
did not reduce prices, but prices fell, as of themselves, to their
natural state, still the result is the same; for we perceive that, after
these new calls for money, prices could not be kept longer at their
unnatural height.

About the time of these foreign events, our own bank system underwent a
change; and all these causes, in my view of the subject, concurred to
produce the great shock which took place in our commercial cities, and
in many parts of the country. The year 1819 was a year of numerous
failures, and very considerable distress, and would have furnished far
better grounds than exist at present for that gloomy representation of
our condition which has been presented. Mr. Speaker has alluded to the
strong inclination which exists, or has existed, in various parts of the
country, to issue paper money, as a proof of great existing
difficulties. I regard it rather as a very productive cause of those
difficulties; and the committee will not fail to observe, that there is,
at this moment, much the loudest complaint of distress precisely where
there has been the greatest attempt to relieve it by systems of paper
credit. And, on the other hand, content, prosperity, and happiness are
most observable in those parts of the country where there has been the
least endeavor to administer relief by law. In truth, nothing is so
baneful, so utterly ruinous to all true industry, as interfering with
the legal value of money, or attempting to raise artificial standards to
supply its place. Such remedies suit well the spirit of extravagant
speculation, but they sap the very foundation of all honest acquisition.
By weakening the security of property, they take away all motive for
exertion. Their effect is to transfer property. Whenever a debt is
allowed to be paid by any thing less valuable than the legal currency in
respect to which it was contracted, the difference between the value of
the paper given in payment and the legal currency is precisely so much
property taken from one man and given to another, by legislative
enactment.

When we talk, therefore, of protecting industry, l