f the latter, is to enrich swindlers at the
expense of the honest and industrious part of the nation.

The sum of what has been said is, that pretermitting the constitutional
question on the authority of Congress, and considering this application
on the grounds of reason alone, it would be best that our medium should
be so proportioned to our produce, as to be on a par with that of the
countries with which we trade, and whose medium is in a sound state:
that specie is the most perfect medium, because it will preserve its own
level; because, having intrinsic and universal value, it can never die
in our hands, and it is the surest resource of reliance in time of
war: that the trifling economy of paper, as a cheaper medium, or its
convenience for transmission, weighs nothing in opposition to the
advantages of the precious metals: that it is liable to be abused, has
been, is, and for ever will be abused, in every country in which it is
permitted; that it is already at a term of abuse in these States, which
has never been reached by any other nation, France excepted, whose
dreadful catastrophe should be a warning against the instrument which
produced it: that we are already at ten or twenty times the due quantity
of medium; insomuch, that no man knows what his property is now worth,
because it is bloating while he is calculating; and still less what
it will be worth when the medium shall be relieved from its present
dropsical state: and that it is a palpable falsehood to say we can have
specie for our paper whenever demanded. Instead, then, of yielding to
the cries of scarcity of medium set up by speculators, projectors, and
commercial gamblers, no endeavors should be spared to begin the work of
reducing it by such gradual means as may give time to private fortunes
to preserve their poise, and settle down with the subsiding medium; and
that, for this purpose, the States should be urged to concede to the
General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive
power of establishing banks of discount for paper.

To the existence of banks of discount for cash, as on the continent of
Europe, there can be no objection, because there can be no danger of
abuse, and they are a convenience both to merchants and individuals.
I think they should even be encouraged, by allowing them a larger than
legal, interest on short discounts, and tapering thence, in proportion
as the term of discount is lengthened, down to legal intere