8265. TARIFF, Paper money.—
The long
succession of years of stunted crops, of reduced
prices, the general prostration of the farming
business, under levies for the support of manufacturers,
&c., with the calamitous fluctuations
of value in our paper medium, have kept
agriculture in a state of abject depression,
which has peopled the Western States by
silently breaking up those on the Atlantic,
and glutted the land market, while it drew
off its bidders. In such a state of things,
property has lost its character of being a resource
for debts. Highland in Bedford,
which, in the days of our plethory, sold
readily for from fifty to one hundred dollars
the acre (and such sales were many
then), would not now sell for more than
from ten to twenty dollars, or one-quarter
or one-fifth of its former price.—
To James Madison. Washington ed. vii, 434.
Ford ed., x, 377.
(M.
Feb. 1826)
