743. BANKS, Suspend Specie Payments.—
The paper bubble is burst. This is
what you and I, and every reasoning man,
seduced by no obliquity of mind or interest,
have long foreseen. We were laboring under
a dropsical fulness of circulating medium.
Nearly all of it is now called in by the banks,
who have the regulation of the safety-valves
of our fortunes, and who condense and explode
them at their will. Lands in this State
[Virginia] cannot now be sold for a year's
rent; and unless our Legislature have wisdom
enough to effect a remedy by a gradual
diminution only of the medium, there will
be a general revolution of property in this
State. Over our own paper and that of other
States coming among us, they have competent
powers; over that of the Bank of the United
States there is doubt, not here, but elsewhere.
That bank will probably conform voluntarily
to such regulations as the Legislature May
prescribe for the others. If they do not, we
must shut their doors, and join the other
States which deny the right of Congress to
establish banks, and solicit them to agree to
some mode of settling this constitutional
question. They have themselves twice decided
against their right, and twice for it.
Many of the States have been uniform in
denying it, and between such parties the Constitution
has provided no umpire.—
To John Adams. Washington ed. vii, 142.
Ford ed., x, 147.
(M.
Nov. 1819)
See Money and Paper Money.
