Public money

“ Whoever attempts, under whatever popular cry, to shake the stability of the public currency, bring on distress in money matters, and drive the country into the use of paper money, stabs your interest and your happiness to the heart."
The herd of hungry wolves who live on other men's earnings will rejoice in such a state of things. A system which absorbs into their pockets the fruits of other men's industry is the very system for them. ”

“ What man in his senses would invest his money in the public securities of a country where questions affecting the very foundations on which public credit rests are in perpetual agitation; or would settle in it at all if he could find for his foot a more stable resting-place elsewhere? ”

“ But they receive an immediate benefit from the money expended amongst themselves, either as being employed in opening roads, the erection of buildings, &c., or as being more interested in the application of public money to schools, the payment of jurors and other petty offices, and even prospectively in the provision for the poor. ”

“ The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men, who, even if their actions be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who, necessarily, by every reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom. ”

“ And as economists have lost sight of this great function of money in relation to individual rights, so they have equally lost sight of its function as a representative of good things. That, for every good thing produced, so much money is put into everybody's pocket, is the one simple and primal truth for the public to know, and for economists to teach. ”

“ Banks which hold the public money are often tempted by a desire of gain to extend their loans, increase their circulation, and thus stimulate, if not produce, a spirit of speculation and extravagance which sooner or later must result in ruin to thousands. ”

“ The only considerable branch of the public revenue which yet remains unmortgaged, is thus regularly spent before it comes in. Like an improvident spendthrift, whose pressing occasions will not allow him to wait for the regular payment of his revenue, the state is in the constant practice of borrowing of its own factors and agents, and of paying interest for the use of its own money. ”

“ So we accept the paper promises of the government, when we believe the government can and will pay them without discount. Paper money is more convenient to handle than metal money, and so long as it is worth its face value, so long will it circulate to the partial or total exclusion of gold and silver. It is when a doubt of the solvency of the government creeps into the mind of the public, that the people demand the money upon which there is never a discount. ”

“ Examine on the other hand, the use made by the state of the money raised, and you will easily perceive the justness, I think, of the above mentioned principles. This money belongs to the public, and is administred by private people. ”

“ But whether the lazy spendthrift must not be doubly poor?
424 Whether money circulating be not the life of industry; and whether the want thereof doth not render a State gouty and inactive?
425 But whether, if we had a national bank, and our present cash (small as it is) were put into the most convenient shape, men should hear any public complaints for want of money?
426 Whether all circulation be not alike a circulation of credit, whatsoever medium (metal or paper) is employed, and whether gold be any more than credit for so much power? ”

“ By proceeding in this plain track, and by keeping the principles constantly in view, the most perplexed systems of borrowing, funding, stock-jobbing, coining and re-coining of money, changing the weight, fineness, and denominations of specie, circulating paper in conjunction with it, imposing upon mankind with bubbles and bankruptcies, and calling them operations of public credit, may be rendred intelligible to the most slender capacity. ”

“ Let us as quite the first business in this our national crisis look not only into our affairs but into our accounts and obtain some notion of how we annually spend our money, and what we are getting for it. Not the public revenue only ”

“ As these fall principally on the rich, it is a general desire to make them contribute the whole money we want, if possible. And we have a hope that they will furnish enough for the expenses of government and the interest of our whole public debt, foreign and domestic. ”

“ The problem which now presses most persistently for immediate solution is that of money. The crying need of the hour is to provide work for the unemployed. Tinkering with the tariff will not do this, because you cannot make a people prosperous by taxation. You can set the wheels of industry in motion, however, by putting money in circulation.
And what is money?
Money is the public credit, stamped or imprinted upon, or represented by, metal, paper, or any other convenient substance recognized by law or usage, and employed as a medium of exchange and a measure of values. ”

“ With these facts before our eyes we must realise the necessity of limiting the issue of paper money to the needs, the custom, and the benefit [Pg 47] of the community in general. Permission cannot be granted to certain individuals to play with the wealth and prosperity of society, to take from it its hard cash and to give it in exchange rags of paper. What incentive can they offer to persuade the public to give up to them valuable bills for worthless ones, certainty for uncertainty? ”

“ It will produce combinations of local and sectional interests, strong enough when united to carry propositions for appropriations of public money which could not of themselves, and standing alone, succeed, and can not fail to lead to wasteful and extravagant expenditures. ”

“ Nothing is easier than the expenditure of public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody. ”

“ Public credit we have defined to be, the confidence reposed in a state, or body politic, borrowing money, on condition that the capital shall not be demandable, but that a certain proportional part of the sum shall be annually paid, either in lieu of interest, or in extinction of part of the capital; for the security of which payment, a permanent annual fund is appropriated, with a liberty, however, to the state to set itself free, by repaying the whole, when nothing to the contrary is stipulated. ”

“ We demand a National money, safe and sound, issued by the general government only, without the intervention of banks of issue, to be a full legal tender for an debts, public and private, and a just, equitable, and efficient means of distribution direct to the people and through the lawful disbursements of the Government. ”

“ The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys. ”

“ The demand for paper-money was further strengthened by administrative considerations; for if payment in kind is inconvenient to the private trader, much more is it so to the collector of public dues. Moreover there is a natural tendency on the part of young and hopeful communities to escape from financial difficulties by mortgaging their future. ”

“ Belief, custom, law, patriotism, particularly a network of legal relationships growing out of contracts expressed in terms of the money in question, the policy of the state as to receiving the money for public dues, the influence of a set of customary or legally prescribed prices, which tie the value of [Pg 137] money to a certain extent to the values of goods—factors of this character can add to the value of money, and can, conceivably, even sustain it when the original source of value is gone. Social economic value does not rest on marginal utility. ”

“ The national power to create money is appropriated to enrich bondholders; a vast public debt payable in legal tender currency has been funded into gold-bearing bonds, thereby adding millions to the burdens of the people. ”

“ The preceding account will, I fancy, help to shew what is practicable, taking things as they are, in borrowing money for public uses. It proves, that the nation loses greatly by the low price of all capitals bearing a higher interest than 3 per cent. ”

“ Mankind has been taught that in the essence of things fiscal your question of currency is as intricate and involved as was the labyrinth of Minos. And then, to add ill-doing to ill-teaching, our own crazy-patch system of finance has been in every one of its patches cut and basted and stitched with an interest of politics or of private gain to guide the shears and needle of what money-tailor was at work. ”

“ Above all things, good policy is to be used that the treasure and monies in a state be not gathered into few hands. For otherwise a state may have a great stock, and yet starve. And money is like muck, not good except it be spread. ”

“ We may each one of us counsel our active and enterprising countrymen to be constantly on their guard, to liquidate debts contracted in a paper currency, and by conducting business as nearly as possible on a system of cash payments or short credits to hold themselves prepared to return to the standard of gold and silver. To aid our fellow-citizens in the prudent management of their monetary affairs, the duty devolves on us to diminish by law the amount of paper money now in circulation. ”

“ But as the currency changes in purchasing power, so the money value of all you possess, and all you have to buy or to sell, changes also; so that the power of the Government to determine the quantity of currency that shall be in circulation is virtually equivalent to the power, by its own arbitrary act, to increase or decrease the money value of all private property in the land; in other words, the private fortune of every citizen is placed at the mercy of the Government's arbitrary pleasure. ”

“ A plenty of currency induced legislative bodies to increase their wages; governments to increase their expenses, extend their patronage, and bestow pensions; and capitalists to increase protecting duties; and has taught us, by woful experience, the effects of a redundancy of money. It is used by the property-transferring policy to augment its incomes, and ultimately to punish the credulity which believes that a plethora of money will advance the wealth or happiness of majorities. ”

“ The entire case may be presented by the statement that the day of sensible and sound financial methods will not dawn upon us until our Government abandons the banking business and the accumulation of funds and confines its monetary operations to the receipt of the money contributed by the people for its support and to the expenditure of such money for the people's benefit. ”

“ The second general reason why gold and silver make the best money is found in the fact that Governments have little to say or do about the Value and Quantity and Mode of Circulation of such Money. In respect to Credit-Moneys, like our own Greenbacks and national Bank-Bills, the Government has everything to say. When we remember how governments are constituted, that they are only a transient Committee of the citizens for special purposes ”

“ Remember that a government based upon gold, {7} wealth, sordidness, must end unhappily. We must have other and higher ideals for our people.
Do not misunderstand me; I do not decry individual, and, in certain degrees, aggregate wealth. Let our citizens accumulate money "beyond the dreams of avarice." Through the natural channels open for its circulation, it will gradually flow back to the community. ”

“ It followed, of course, that to have and enjoy any thing and every thing, it is only necessary to create and use its symbol or representative; and to pay for value received, it is only necessary to imagine a corresponding and equivalent value, and pass it over in exchange and settlement. On these conclusions of law and reason, then, it was decided by the three leaders of the philosophers and their friends, who had control of the Government, that the future money of the state should be based. ”

“ At certain times there are greater and less demands for money, which, under our present practices, make a dollar, to-day, worth four per cent. per annum interest, and to-morrow increase it to ten per cent. It must be remembered that we are now speaking of an irredeemable currency, the representative of the wealth of the nation: that the government representing the nation has uttered it, in behalf of the people, upon the soundest and, in reality, the only sure basis of value any money can have—the productive power and capacity of the nation. ”

“ When the Government of this great country puts its stamp upon a piece of paper and thus makes it money, then that money is based upon the whole wealth of the country.” That sounds magnificently, and you may think, well, if this country has forty or fifty thousand millions' worth of property, and all that property is mortgaged as security for the value of this fiat money, why should not this security be good enough for a couple of thousand millions of fiat money? ”

“ The few who could center in themselves, by grace of Government, the banking and manipulation of the people's money and the restricting or inflating of money issues, were immediately vested with an extraordinary power. ”

“ Your finances are in the greatest disorder, and the great majority of states have perished through this cause. A patriotic spirit sustained the ancient states, and united all classes for the safety of their country. In the present times, money has taken the place of this spirit; it has become the universal lever, and you are in want of it. A spirit of finance affects every department of the state ”