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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO O. WOLCOTT, SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 8 (Letters and State Papers 1782-1799) [1853]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 8.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

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TO O. WOLCOTT, SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

Sir,

In your letter of the 13th you hint that “attempts are making to draw into question the solidity of the public credit;” but you have not explained the particulars, and I am at a loss to conjecture the facts which you may allude to.1

Public credit can never be steady and really solid without a fixed medium of commerce. That we have not such a medium, you know has been my opinion for several years. The fluctuations of our circulating medium have committed greater depredations upon the property of honest men, than all the French piracies. To what greater lengths this evil may be carried, I know not. The Massachusetts legislature are authorizing a number of new banks. The cry is, the immense advantage to agriculture. Credit cannot be solid, where a man is liable to be paid a debt, contracted to-day, by one half the value a year hence.

[1 ]A part of Mr. Wolcott’s letter is printed in Mr. Gibbs’s work, vol. ii. p. 242.