6373. PAPER MONEY, Ruin by.—
Not Quixotic enough to attempt to reason Bedlam
to rights, my anxieties are turned to the most
practicable means of withdrawing us from the
ruin into which we have run. Two hundred
millions of paper in the hands of the people
(and less cannot be from the employment of
a banking capital known to exceed one hundred
millions), is a fearful tax to fall at haphazard
on their heads. The debt which
purchased our Independence was but of
eighty millions, of which twenty years of taxation
had, in 1889, paid but the one-half.
And what have we purchased with this tax
of two hundred millions which we are to
pay, by wholesale, but usury, swindling, and
new forms of demoralization?—
To Charles Yancey. Washington ed. vi, 515.
Ford ed., x, 2.
(M.
Jan. 1816)
