5620. NATIONAL CURRENCY, Bank paper and.—[continued].
Put down the banks, and
if this country could not be carried through
the longest war against her most powerful
enemy, without ever knowing the want of a
dollar, without dependence on the traitorous
classes of her citizens, without bearing hard
on the resources of the people, or loading
the public with an indefinite burthen of debt,
I know nothing of my countrymen. Not by
any novel project, not by any charlatanerie,
but by ordinary and well-experienced means;
by the total prohibition of all private paper
at all times, by reasonable taxes in war aided
by the necessary emissions of public paper of
circulating size, this bottomed on special
taxes, redeemable annually as this special tax
comes in, and finally within a moderate period.—
To Albert Gallatin. Washington ed. vi, 498.
(M.
Oct. 1815)
