739. BANKS, Scarcity of Medium and.—[further continued].
The evils of this deluge
of paper money are not to be removed, until
our citizens are generally and radically instructed
in their course and consequences,
and silence by their authority the interested
clamors and sophistry of speculating, shaving,
and banking institutions. Till then we
must be content to return, quoad hoc, to the
savage state, to recur to barter in the exchange
of our property, for the want of a
stable, common measure of value, that now in
use being less fixed than the beads and
wampum of the Indian, and to deliver up our
citizens, their property and their labor, passive
victims to the swindling tricks of bankers
and mountebankers.—
To John Adams. Washington ed. vii, 115.
(M.
1819)
