13 civfcriv fflj B1 MEIERS & BEIFORD. WHOLE NO. 2774. VOL 53. Political. BENTON ON HI H HRLNI V. WASHINGTON, C. STREET, NOV. 15, 1557. To the Editors of the National Intelligencer : GENTLEMEN - Many papeis, desirous of the establishment of a National Bank, are quoting what General Jackson said in favor of such an institution at the beginning of his presidency. J have to remind all such papers that what was so said was said before Gen. Jackson saw a pros pect of restoring the currency of the Constitu tion, and that, after he saw that prospect, he .said nothing more in favor of Banks, National or State, but the contrary, and labored during the remainder of his public life to restore and preserve the hard money currency which the founders ofour Government had secured (as they believed) for ns. The plan of that restoration and preservation consisted of five parts, namely: 1. To revive the gold currency by correcting the erroneous standard of 1791. 2. To create a demand for haul money by making it the exclusive currency of the Federal Treasury. 3. To make sure of this money by keeping it in itsown treasures. 4. To suppress all paper currency under twenty dollars by a stamp duty. 5. To wind up alt defaulting banks by a bank rupt law against delinquents. The first three of these five parts were accom plished, and to these we are indebted for twenty years exemption —from 1831 to 185/—front hank suspensions and depreciated currency; also, for carrying the country through a foreign war—the Mexican without paper money, and with the public securities above par; also, for fiavino' in the country at this time full fifteen times as much hard money as we had in the time ot ttie late Bank of the United States ; and we are indebted to tb" want ot the two latter parts of the plan lor what we now see: nearly two thousand banks in the country, a great part of them frauds from the beginning, and the bad governing the good : a general suspension in a season of peace and prosperity; people are for ced to use depreciated paper when there is more hard moriev in the country than its business could employ; men and women begging for work, and unable to obtain it, when the coun try needs all they can do, and has the means to •pav for it: families crying for bread, when a bountiful Providence has given the most exu berant crops that ever were seen; the business of itwenly five millions of people deranged, disor dered and thrown out of joint ; and all this the work of the base part of ttie banks, falling down of themselves for want ot foundations, and drag ging the solid ones after them. For it is in this case of bank suspensions as it is with a ship .sinking at sea, where those who cannot swim drag down those who can. A stamp duty on their notes, and a bankrupt process against themselves would have saved the country from ;the caiimatiesit now endures; for many of the base order of banks would have been unable to -'■ make currency for want of money to pay for slam) son their notes, and others would have been proper subjects for the bankrupt process in the first few days of their existance. The restoration of the gold currency was ♦/Tecled under General Jackson's Administration the establishment ol the hard money currency tor (he Federal Government and the keeping of its own money iri itsown treasuries, was accom plished under Mr. Van Bnren, both of which Presidents took the toll responsibility of recom mending these three measures, and also the two others—the two for the imposition of a stamp duly on ali paper money under twenty dollars, and lor a bankrupt act against defaul ting banks. Bills were repeatedly brought into Congress lor both purposes, but were always defeated by (he defection of the paper-money wing of the Democratic partv. The most plausible of the open objections made against the stamp duty was in the expense and the extensive machinery for its collection. I hat was answered by providing a cheap ami simple procew fo r both purposes—a clerk in the lieasury Department for a superintendent of the business, and the clerks of the Federal courts to deliver out the stamps which they received from the treasury. The amount of the duty, and hether it should apply to all notes or only to those intended to be suppressed, were ques tions on which there was room for some diver sity ot opinion.—The pre-dominant opinion was that th re should be a duty upon all n >tes i-- sued as a currency, (for what more fit to be taxed than the moneyed powers) the duty being the same on all notes, and such as the large one could easily carry and the small ones not. The amount ol the duty was held necessary to be large—far greater than in Great Britain : for there no note is re-issued; no one goes 'out of the bank a second tune, so that the dntv in England is paid every time the bank issues a note. Not so in (he United Slates. Here a note is re-issued until it is worn out : until it "has be < otiie too ragged to hold together, or too filthy !•<> be handled, or too defaced to be deciphered. A small duty is, therejore, sufficient in Great Britain : it would require a very heavy one to he its equivalent in the United States. Among he penalties for violating the act, either by issuing, receiving, or passing the unstamped paper, should be a disqualification to retain or receive a federal appointment ; for the pursuit o otfice is so general at this time in our country and so ardent, that, in arraying a class so large, so influential, and active against the unstamped notes, their circulation would be effectually check-mated. Ihe paper-money wing of the Democracy uas still more against the bankrupt ac t against 'an-vrupt banks than against the stamp tax on notes ; arid, acting with the habitual opponents ° the party to which they professed to belong, easi \ debated all the brtis. The open objec tion came Iroin the lawyers, with their profess ional idea, drawn chiefly from British statutes, iat merchants and traders were the proper subjects of the bankrupt law,* although every late British statue on the subject includes banks, (the Bank of England excepted :) and in a single season of suspension (that ot 1813-'l4-'ls) ninety-two of these banks had been subjected to commissions of bankiuptcy. But (his remedy was not of English, but of Roman origin, as its name would show, (" bancus and U rupfus") and bankers were the original objects of the law, as the same name also shows. "Broken Bench" is the English of the Latin name, and was so called because the bankers (money chang ers of that time, as now in the east) half their benches in public places, on which they sat and did business ; and when any one became delin quent, or criminal, he was driven away and his bench was broken. And thus, in its origin, bankruptcy was a process against banks and bankers, and still is in Great Britian : and hence retains its original name of Broken-Bench—the bench so broken being the sign and warning to the public that the banker himself was insolvent and deprived his place ol doing business. Banking in the United States is the most un restrained and unsafe that there is in the world ; unsafe even lor solid and well conducted banks there being enough of the tinsolid and badly conducted to fall down of themselves every few years, and to drag down the rest with them. The laws put few restraints or penalties upon them : and these restraints and penalties are regularly repealed just as often as the communi ty needs the benefit, ol them. It is by name in some places, and by fact in others, a system of "free banking," which the hard-money Dem ocracy was accustomed to call "free swindling." Anybody becomes banker that pleases, and iss ues small notes and sends them offto a distance to be circulated and lost, and to sink upon the heads of the laboring people.f A favorite plan is to issue notes at one place payable at another far off, out of the way, and difficult to begot at, so as to compel the holder to submit to a shave. That mole of doing business was invented by a Scotchman of Aberdeen in 1806; hut he was in Great Britain, not in the United States : and the British Ministry and the British Parliament immediately took cognizance of the inventor and his imitators, and placed them all iri the category of swindlers, and so [>ut an end to their operations. No stamp duty, no bankrupt act, and no requisition to keep any proportionate amount of hard money on hand completes the license and unbounded freedom, arid the perfect title to periodical explosions, which belong to American banking. This last requisition, that of keeping on hand an amount of hard money proportionate to their liabilities, seems to be unknown (even in name) in the United States: yet that requisite is a legal and fundamental condition of the Bank of Eng land ; and the proportion of one-third in gold of the total amount of its liabilities in circulation and deposits is the rate enforced ; and below that proportion the Bank of England does not deem itself safe. Thus swore Mr. Horsley Palmer, Governor of the Bank of England, be fore Lord A Ithorpe's committee, in 1832 : "The average proportion, as already observed, of coin and bullion which the, bank deems it prudent to keep on hand, is at the rate of a third of the total amount of all her liabilities, including deposits us well us issues." And thus swore Mr. George Ward Norman, a director of the Bank : " For a full state of the circulation and deposits, say twenty-one millions of notes and six millions of deposits, making in the whole Iwenfy-seven tuitions of liabilities, the proper *The American lawyer seldom looks beyond the statute ot Elizabeth, which was the first to confine the bankrupt process to merchants and traders : it they would look a tittle further hack—look into the reign of that Queen's father—they would find a stat ute sufficiently comprehensive to include others be sides merchants and traders; and the preamble to which is an accurate description ol many ol those who in our country, and at this day, follow the pur suit of issuing "currency" lor the American people. That preamble says; ""Whereas divers and sundry persons craftily obtained into their hand* great snb * tan re of other men's good*: do suddenly flee, to partit unknown, or keep their houses, not minding to pay or restore, to any of their creditors their debts and duties, hut at their ou-n wills and own pleasures consume the substance obtained by credit of other men for their own. adornment and dainty living, against all reason, equity, and good conscience." Anno >4, Henry \ 111. fA specimen of modern banking in the United States is seen in one ofthe latest ol these institutions, duly chartered to issue "currency"—lhe " Granite Itauk of Voluntown," Connecticut: whereol the Hartford (Connecticut) Times gives this brief and no doubt, veracious account: "1 he charter was passed, and tor four or five months it was not heard of again. But suddenly, on or about the first of November instant, the bills ot the Granite Bank of Voluntown appeared in the mar ket. The bank commissioners were in this city at the time, arid though having their hands full of busi ness in various parts ofthe State, they repaired at once to Voluntown. There a very rich scene was o pened to them. They found, we understand, the lol lowing state of affairs. "The managers of Ihe bank, on or about the first instant, procured (i. e. borrowed for the occasion) a package of bills, or a package of something which they calleds3o,ooo. This was the paid in capital of the bank, and upon this they commenced business, though on Saturday last they sent this same package back to New York, as they clatm, to procure specie for it. They have issued $17,000 in bills and had circula ted them in various parts ofthe country. "Five thousand dollars in bills were taken by a rr.an who was to circulate them in Ohio. I his man leit a receipt for them,and verbally promised to send on a note when he arrived in Ohio. "The assets were between three and four hundred dollars in coin, a one dollar bill on Windham County Bank, and a second-hand iron safe, not yet paid lor. Also ihe receipt of the Ohio man lor $5,000 in the Granite bills." This is a sample of a recent chartered bank in one of Ihe oldest Slates. Here is another recent sample from one of the youngest Territories: "The Legislature of Kansas at its last winter ses sion (1850-'57) chartered a number ol Banks to is sue currency, one of which at Lecomplon was re quired to have $50,000 in specie, before it could be gin work. In the late Convention, while providing for a new bank of three millions, the (act came out in debate that the Lecompton bank, without a dollar in hard money, obtained its certificate from Ihe Gov ernor this summer past in this wise: It borrowed $2,000, and, putting SI,OOO into two bags, and, while the Governor counted one bag at a time, the other was carried out and brought in again: and this was done until SSO,QQO were counted, and the certificate obtained." BEDFORD, PA., FRIDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 11,1857. sum in coin and bullion for the bank to retain is nine millions." And to the same effect swore other directors. But in Great Britain it is not sufficient that this proportion of one-third is required to be on hand, but it must be show n and that continually, that it is there.* This is accomplished by the publication of the quar terly weekly average of the liabilities and assets ol the bank, lrom which the public can always see when the bank has crossed the line ofsafetv. How different this from banking in the United States, where no proportionable rate of specie to the liabilities is even prescribed; and when five, ten, fifty, and hundred paper dollars for one hard one in the vault, are Irequently issued. But one thing was wanting to complete the title of our banking system to utter unworthi ness, and that one thing has been discovered—it is the dispensation of the specie basis! Through out the world, so far as papei money is known, a specie basis is deemed necessary to an institu tion which issues promises to pay specie. Not so in the United States. Paper upon paper has become the vogue with us. Stocks, and the notes of other banks, are the tl sandy" founda tion upon which a large propoition of our banks are built. I do not expatiate upon the evils of small pa per money ; they are palpable to every observer, and only require enumeration .1. It drives away all hard money of equal denominations ; for, in a competition between two currencies, the meanest is always the conqueror and chases the other out of the field. r~2. It is the great source of the crime of counterfeiting : for the mass of the counterfeits consist of small notes. 3. It demoralizes the community : for people, not being willing to lose a note for which they have given value, instead of burning it when rejected by a knowing one as counterfeit, put it back in the pocket and offer it again to an ignorant person, who receives it, and who goes through the same process when rejected in his hands. 4. Small notes make the panic and bring or. the runs which break down good banks: for these small notes being in the hands of the masses, when they get alarmed, thev assemble by thousands at the doors of the institution which issued the notes, demand the money, break the banks, and propagate the alarm which they themselves feel until it becomes general; for nothing is more contagious than a monied panic, nor anything more unmanageable. 5. It pillages the poor and the ignorant ; fir every base note, every one that is counterfeit, or on a broken hank, or on a bank that never existed, although it will run for a while, must stop somewhere: and when it does, is sure to stop in the hands of the poor and uninformed, upon that class least able to bear the loss, who have no advantage lrom banks while in operation, and who bear the loss when they stop. 6. It excites to swindling ; for knaves, with nothing but brass tor their capital, and that in their faces instead of their coffers, are induced to set up manufactories of small paper, to be sent abroad and sunk upon the hands of those among whom it is scattered ; all that is so sunk being clear gains to the manufacturer. 7. It induces and even compels people to he wasteful of their money ; for such is the natural honest and just contempt and distrust of small notes, that he or she that receives one, hurries oil'to lav it out for something not needed, while a piece of gold of the same amount would be valued and cherish ed, and iaidjby and added to, until enough ac cumulated to make a purchase of something needed and useful. 8. It subjects the paver to be cheated or worsted in change; for, giving paper in payment, he must receive the change in other paper, and lor this purpose, the meanest most ragged, dirfv, and worthless will always be picked out and shoved upon him. In short, such are the evils, the crimes the demoralization and cheating of small paper mony, that all na tions, except the United States, place it in the category of a criminal agent, and suppress it accordingly. Twenty-odd years ago, when we were la boring to restore the constitutional currency to the Government and the people, the ready ob jection, repeated by all the friends of paper money, was, that there was not gold and silver in the world to carry on the business of the United States ; and the ready answer to that objection was, that the<-e was precisely enough! and that exactly enough would come to the United States if we would only create a demand lor it by correcting the gold standard, make it the Government currency, and suppressing small paper. Only a part of these things have I been done, and there have flowed into the Uni- ! ted States, or been obtained from our own mines, about four or five times as much gold as the bu- i siness of thp United States could employ. The : supply has been nearly a thousand millions ol dollars, and the business of the United States would only employ about two hundred millions. This is not guess work, but bottomed upon au thentic data ; for the statistics of political econ omy show that nations can only use certain j amounts of money, some more, some less accor- j ding to their pursuits. Thus, a highly manu- ; factuiing country, where the employer needs j monev incessantly to carry on his business in ! the purchase of raw materials, and the payment j j of operatives, and in the construction or repair j of buildings and machinery, and where the op- ; ! eratives themselves need money daily for the; support of their families, the quantity of money j | required is lar greater than in an agricultural and planting country, where the farmer raisrs his own supplies, and has his crops and produce J to pay large demands. And therefore England, j •Every three month* you may see in the leadiig London newspaper* a notice in about these words: i.Quarterly average of the weekly liabilities aid assets of the Bank of England, from the 12th day of i December, 1847, to the Gth of March 1848, both in clusive, published pursuant to the act 3d ot William , IV., cap. 98: LIABILITIES. ASSETTS. | Circulation £ 18,600,000 Securities £22,792000 | | Deposit? 11,535,000 Bul'n & coin 10,015000 £30,135,000 £32,807000 Freedom of Thought and Opinion. j the forrnost manufacturing country, requires the | greatest amount of money : and has it, to wit : j about eleven dollars a head : and Russia, so largely agricultural, requires the least amount I of money, and can employ but about four dollars a hetd. So the United States, in small part | manufacturing and largely agricultural and planting, would find her maximum demand for money somewhere half way between the two— say, eight dollars a head ; which, at the present amount of the white population, (sav twenty five millions,) would give two hundred millons as the rational demand ; always remenbering ! that the great payments are made with crops I and bilfi*p# exchange founded on the proceeds iof industry. And thus it becomes a proposition ! demonstrated t hat the United States, since the correcffon of the gold standard twenty-three years ago, have received a supply of gold to : four or five times the amount which the busi i nessoperations of the people could employ. Of 1 that amount the leading banks estimated two i hundred and ninety millions to be remaining in the country at the commencement of the pres- I ent panic ; and since that time more than twelve j millions have arrived, and verv little gone ; so i that three hundred millions would be the pres ent estimate of the amount of gold and silver lin the country ; being one hundred millions more than the business of the country would I employ. 'I hree hundred millions is exactly fifteen times as much as the United States pos sessed in the timeofthe late Bank of the United I States. Twenty millions was the whole amount • at that time, and that all in silver—not a par | ticle of gold being then in circulation. And it is exactly thirty times as much as the whole j I niori possessed at the time of the termination iof the first National Bank: the whole supply being then hut ten millions, and that all silver, i Under these circumstances, ($300,000,000 !in gold in the country, peace and prosperity | throughout Europe and America, great crops and good health,) there was nothing in the state of the country to justify the suspension, or anything to justify its continuance. The only 'solution of such a catastrophe is the obvious one, to wit, the failure of had hanks and the I consequent run which their failure made upon j the good ones. The insolvent pulled down the | solvent: and the Legislatures of several States ; have put all on an equality ; but the solvent | should repulse the association. The living body | should not be tied to the dead one. The sol vent should recommence their payments, and i make visible the broad line between the sound I and the rotten, which the Legislatures have : covered up; and public sentiment would then : sigf the most popular and mischievous writers ever produced by a country which, though it gave the world such men as FEMCLON, PASCAL, BOSSUET, and MASSILLON, also casi up, on the scum of its society, such men as VOL TAIRE, ROUSSEAU, PAUL DE KocK.and ALEXAN DER DUMAS. Infidels, scoflers at all religious belief, socialists, and steeped in the very foul est obscurity, were the writers w ho, for seveial years, corrupted ttie mind of France. Chief among these ministers of evil was EUGENE SUE. Nor was the mischief he did confined to his own country. He wrote so remarkably well that his works got translated into almost every liv ing language of Europe. They circulated widely in England, and here in America they commanded a sale so large that we should prob ably be considered romancing if we stated it. But, even at this risk, we will add that over a million of copies of" The Mysteries of Paris," "The Wandering Jew," and "The Seven Cap ital Sins," have been sold in the Tlnitpd States, at a price and in a form calculated to throw them into the hands of the masses. They fig ured largely among the infamous "yellow-cover literature," for some years a disgrace to our country, and they demoralized the public mind to a greater extent than can readily be calcu lated. Communism and Socialism, with the strongest infusion of impiety and indecency, were the staple of EUGENE SUE'S popular fictions. He painted vice in the most attractive manner, so that, looking at her gorgeous habiliments, the spectator scarcely heeded her laidly features. He was sensuous in his descriptions, and, even while sometimes pretending to condemn TERHS, s 3 PER YEAR. NEW SERIES VOL 1, NO. 19. s>n, drew its semblance ao attractively that the opposite of repulsion was the effect produced. He was constant and consistent in insinuating and declaring that Reason, (as he called it, in the slang of the old Encyclopedists) was a surer and better guide than Revelation. All through his works there is a ruling doubt of God's good ness and merciful justice, of man's honor, of woman's chastity. >UE had no faith in Virtue. He professed to champion popular rights, and, while he lived in luxury which an epicurean might havp envied, invariably turned a deaf ear to all personal appeals from Poverty. He was returned as a member of the National Assembly, between the last French Revolution and the re-organization of the Empire, but made a very remarkable failure in public life. Finally, suspected of complicity in some of the plots against what is called 'The State' in Paris, lie became an exile. Once ofl'his own soil, it seemed as it his skill as a writer had vanished. He commenced a Socialist novel, called "Lei Mysteries du Peuple;" the publication of which was prevented by the Government—a needless prohibition, for his iormer admirers, the work men contemptuously pronounced that he had written himself out. He died, in exile, at the age of fifty-two. Such, and so contrasted, were THOMAS HICK and EUGENE SUE, the believer and the infidel. Unauestionably, large intellectual gifts Mere bestowed upon each. How one used, and how the other misused them, we have briefly indi ; cated. These nrm might almost stand as repre sentatives, among modern writers, of Good and Evil. One felt that his mission was to teach, to Look through Nature up to Nature' 9 God, and the other acted as if he were convinced that his allotted work was to defile the purest and holiest decencies of life, and impress dsrk doubts, of a world beyond the grave upon the minds of all who read his works. The Chris tian philosopher to whom, at the age of eighty, a pension of J£so a year was comparative wealth lived in privation, self-denial, and frequent pov erty. The popular novelist was surrounded with all that wealth can supply, and with the flattery and adulation of millions. Yet who, life's fitful fever ended, would prefer a career like SUE'S? With indignant truth has the poet said: " I'd rather be One of those hinds that round me tread, With just enough of sense to see The noonday's sun tnat's o'er bis head, Than thus, with high-built genius curst. That hath no heart for its foundation— Be all, at once, that's brightest, worst, Sublimest, meanest in creation." [Fornty'sPrest. When I lived up in Maine," said Uncle Ned," I helped to break up a piece of ground: , we got off the wood in the winter, and earlv in the spring we began ploughing on't. It was 33 consarned rocky that we had to get dorty yoke of oxen to one plough, we did, faith, and I held the plough more'r. a week—l tbo't I should die. Jt e'ena' most killed me, I vow. Why, one day I was holdin', the plough hit a gtump which measured just nine feet and a half through— hard and sound white oak : the plough split it, and I was going straight through the stump, when I happened to think it might snap togeth er again ; so T threw my feet out, and no sooner done so than it snapped together, taking a smart hold of the seat ot mv pantaloons. Of course I was tight, but 1 held on to the plough handle, and though the teamsters did all they could, the i team ofSO oxen couldn't tear my pantaloons, nor cause me to t let go my grip. At last, though, after letting the cattle breathe, they gave anoth er strong pull together, and the old stump came out about the quickest. It had monstrous long roots, too, let me tell you. My wife made the cloth for them pantaloons, aud I hain't worn any other since." The only reply made to this was—"l should have thought it would have come hard upon your suspenders." "Powerful hard:" [Cp-Qld Lucre lives near Union Square.— He was applied to for a contribution to the Washington bronze monument, but declined. "I do not see." he said, " what benefit this stat ue will be to me -. and five hundred dollars is a great deal ot money to pay for the gratifica tion of other people." "Benefit to you? why, sir, it will benefit you more than anybody else. The statue can be seen from every window of your house ; it will be an ornament and add dignity to the whole neighborhood, and it will perpetually remind you of the Father of his Country —the immortal Washington!" "Ah!" answered old Lucre, "] do not require a statue to remind me of him, for I always carry Wash ington here," and he placed his hand upon his heart. "Then, let me tell you," replied the applicant, "if that is so, all I have to say is, that you have got Washington in a very tight place!" . is said that the kind mothers of the East have got so good, that they give their children chloroform previous to whipping them. 1 [LP*A hospitable man is never ashamed of his dinner, when you come to dine with him. young man who cast his pye on a vonng lady coming out of church, has had it replaced, and now sees as well as ever. IP""Did you ever see such a mechanical genius as my son ?" said an old lady ; "be has i made a fiddle out of his head, and has wood enough left to make another." To the Memory of a Miser. Here lies old thirty-tbree per cent, The more be got the more he lent ; The more he had the more he craved.— Great God, can such a soul be saved ! OP~The man who "retraced" the past is sup posed to be a harness maker. [LP*Blessed are the orphan children; for they have no mothers to spank them. —lt is said that Forrest receives $5,000 for his ten nights engagement in St. Louis.