University of Virginia Library

TO J. K. PAULDING.

Dear Sir, I have recd. your favor of Feby. 28,
and read the pamphlet under the same cover. It is
a powerful and a piercing lesson on the subject
which it exposes. I was not before aware of the
abuses committed by the Law-makers or the lawbreakers
of your State. The picture you give of
both, tho' intended for N. York alone, is a likeness
in some degree of what has occurred elsewhere, and
I wish it could be in the hands of the Legislators,
or, still better, of their Constituents everywhere.
Incorporated Companies with proper limitations
and guards, may in particular cases, be useful; but
they are at best a necessary evil only. Monopolies
and perpetuities are objects of just abhorrence.
The former are unjust to the existing, the latter
usurpations on the rights of future generations.
Is it not strange that the Law, which will not permit

an individual to bequeath his property to the descendants
of his own loins for more than a short
and a strictly defined term, should authorize an
associated few to entail perpetual and indefeasible
appropriations; and that not only to objects visible
and tangible, but to particular opinions, consisting,
sometimes of the most metaphysical niceties; as is
the case with Ecclesiastical Corporations.

With regard to Banks, they have taken too deep
and wide a root in social transactions to be got rid
of altogether, if that were desirable. In providing
a convenient substitute, to a certain extent, for the
metallic currency, and a fund of credit which prudence
may turn to good account, they have a hold
on public opinion, which alone would make it expedient
to aim rather at the improvement than the
suppression of them. As now generally constituted
their advantages whatever they be, are outweighed
by the excesses of their paper emissions, and by the
partialities and corruption with which they are
administered.

What would be the operation of a Bank so modified
that the Subscribers should be individually
liable pro tanto and pro rata for its obligations, and
that the Directors, with adequate salaries paid out
of the profits of the Institution should be prohibited
from holding any interest in or having any dealings
whatever with, the Bank, and be bound moreover
by the usual solemnity, to administer their trust
with fidelity and impartiality? The idea of some
such a modification occurred to me formerly, when

the subject engaged more of my attention than it
has latterly done. But there was then, as there
probably is now, little prospect that such an innovation
would be viewed with public favor if thought
by better judges to have pretensions to it. ...