The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself no intrinsic value, it is liable to great and sudden fluctuations, thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and uncertain. The corporations, which create the paper money, cannot be relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount.
In times of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect of gain or by influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend their issue of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable demands of business; and when these issues have been pushed on from day to day, until the public confidence is at length shaken, then a reaction takes place, and they immediately withdraw the credits they have given, suddenly curtail their issues and produce an unexpected and ruinous contraction of the circulating medium, which is felt by the whole community. The banks by this means save themselves, and the mischievous consequences of their imprudence or cupidity are visited upon the public. Nor does the evil stop here. These ebbs and flows in the currency and these indiscreet extensions of credit naturally engender a spirit of speculation injurious to the habits and character of the people. We have already seen its effects in the wild spirit of speculation in the public lands and various kinds of stock which within the last year or two seized upon such a multitude of our citizens and threatened to pervade all classes of society and to withdraw their attention from the sober pursuits of honest industry.
Recent events have proved that the paper-money system of this country may be used as an engine to undermine your free institutions, and that those who desire to engross all power in the hands of a few and to govern by corruption or force are aware of its power and prepared to employ it. Your banks now furnish your only circulating medium, and money is plenty or scarce according to the quantity of notes issued by them. While they have capitals not greatly disproportioned to each other, they are competitors in business, and no one of them can exercise dominion over the rest; and although in the present state of the currency these banks may and do operate injuriously upon the habits of business, the pecuniary concerns and the moral tone of society, yet, from their number and dispersed situation, they cannot combine for the purposes of political influence, and whatever may be the dispositions of some of their power of mischief must necessarily be confined to a narrow space and felt only in their immediate neighborhoods.
We are not left to conjecture how the moneyed power thus organized and with such a weapon in its hands, would likely to use it. The distress and alarm which pervaded and agitated the whole country when the Bank of the United States waged war upon the people in order to compel them to submit to its demands cannot yet be forgotten. The ruthless and unsparing temper with which whole cities and communities were oppressed, individuals impoverished and ruined, and a scene of cheerful prosperity suddenly changed into one of gloom and despondency ought to be indelibly impressed on the memory of the people of the United States. If such was its power in a time of peace, what would it not have been in a season of war, with an enemy at your doors? No nation but the freemen of the United States could have come out victorious from such a contest; yet, if you had not conquered, the government would have passed from the hands of the many to the hands of the few, and this organized money power from its secret conclave would have directed the choice of your highest officers and compelled you to make peace or war, as best suited their own wishes. The forms of your government might for a time have remained, but its living spirit would have departed from it.
Ahh, Andrew Jackson. You got to love that guy. Apparently some assassin tried to kill him and his gun misfired, or he missed or something, anyway, Jackson’s aides had to pull Jackson off the guy before he beat him to death with his cane. Love stories like that.
Thanks for that, much appreciated. Apparently there are a great number of similarities between Trump and Jackson...hair being the least of them.