ne pence, a depreciation of exactly fifty per cent. The
average price of wheat on the continent of Europe, at the commencement
of its present war with England, was about a French crown, of one
hundred and ten cents, the bushel. With us it was one hundred cents, and
consequently we could send it there in competition with their own.
That ordinary price has now doubled with us, and more than doubled in
England; and although a part of this augmentation may proceed from the
war demand, yet from the extraordinary nominal rise in the prices of
land and labor here, both of which have nearly doubled in that period,
and are still rising with every new bank, it is evident that were
a general peace to take place to-morrow, and time allowed for the
re-establishment of commerce, justice, and order, we could not afford
to raise wheat for much less than two dollars, while the continent of
Europe, having no paper circulation, and that of its specie not being
augmented, would raise it at their former price of one hundred and ten
cents. It follows, then, that with our redundancy of paper, we cannot,
after peace, send a bushel of wheat to Europe, unless extraordinary
circumstances double its price in particular places, and that then the
exporting countries of Europe could undersell us. It is said our paper
is as good as silver, because we may have silver for it at the bank
where it issues. This is not true. One, two, or three persons might have
it: but a general application would soon exhaust their vaults, and leave
a ruinous proportion of their paper in its intrinsic worthless form.
It is a fallacious pretence, for another reason. The inhabitants of the
banking cities might obtain cash for their paper, as far as the cash of
the vaults would hold out; but distance puts it out of the power of the
country to do this. A farmer having a note of a Boston or Charleston
bank, distant hundreds of miles, has no means of calling for the cash.
And while these calls are impracticable for the country, the banks have
no fear of their being made from the towns; because their inhabitants
are mostly on their books, and there on sufferance only and during good
behavior.

In this state of things, we are called on to add ninety millions more
to the circulation. Proceeding in this career, it is infallible, that we
must end where the revolutionary paper ended. Two hundred millions was
the whole amount of all the emissions of the old Congress, at which
point the