The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Foreword
• Part One: the Doctrine of Equal Rights
• True Functions of Government
• The Reserved Rights of the People
• Objects of the Evening Post
• Reply to the Charge of Lunacy
• The Legislation of Congress
• Religious Intolerance
• Direct Taxation
• The Course of the Evening Post
• Chief Justice Marshall
• Prefatory Remarks
• The Sister Doctrines
• The True Theory of Taxation
• Strict Construction
• Legislative Indemnity For Losses From Mobs
• The Despotism of the Majority
• Morals of Legislation
• The Morals of Politics
• Part Two: Separation of Bank and State
• Bank of United States
• Small Note Circulation
• The Monopoly Banking System
• Uncurrent Bank Notes
• Fancy Cities
• Causes of Financial Distress
• Why Is Flour So Dear?
• Thoughts On the Causes of the Present Discontents
• Strictures On the Late Message
• The Value of Money
• The Way to Cheapen Flour
• The Money Market and Nicholas Biddle
• The Pressure—the Cause of It—and the Remedy
• Connexion of State With Banking
• The Crisis
• The Bankrupt Banks
• What We Must Do, and What We Must Not
• “the Foresight of Individual Enterprise”
• The Safety Fund Bubble
• Separation of Bank and State
• The Remedy For Broken Banks
• “blest Paper Credit”
• Questions and Answers
• The True and Natural System
• The Bugbear of the Bank Democrats
• Bank and State
• Theory and Practice
• Separation of Bank and State
• “specie Basis”
• The Natural System
• The Credit System and the Aristocracy
• The Divorce of Politicks and Banking
• Part Three: Abolition Insolence
• Riot At the Chatham-street Chapel
• Governor Mcduffie’s Message
• The Abolitionists
• Reward For Arthur Tappan
• The Anti-slavery Society
• Abolitionists
• Slavery No Evil
• Progress of Fanaticism
• An Argument Against Abolition Refuted
• Commencement of the Administration of Martin Van Buren
• The Question of Slavery Narrowed to a Point
• “abolition Insolence”
• Part Four: the Division of Political Classes
• Despotism of Andrew Jackson
• The Division of Parties
• Rich and Poor
• The Street of the Palaces
• American Nobility
• The Inequality of Human Condition
• A Bad Beginning
• The Whig Embassy to Washington, and Its Result
• Right Views Among the Right Sort of People
• Newspaper Nominations
• Foreign “paupers”
• Part Five: the Principles of Free Trade
• Monopolies: I
• “a Little Free-trade Crazy”
• Asylum For Insane Paupers
• Monopolies: Ii
• Revolutionary Pensioners
• Joint-stock Partnership Law
• The Ferry Monopoly
• Free Trade Post Office
• Stock Gambling
• Weighmaster General
• State Prison Monopoly
• Corporation Property
• Regulation of Coal
• Free Ferries and an Agrarian Law
• Thanksgiving Day
• Municipal Docks
• Associated Effort
• The Coal Question
• The Corporation Question
• Free Trade Weights and Measures
• Associated Effort
• Sale of Publick Lands
• Manacles Instead of Gyves
• The Meaning of Free Trade
• Gambling Laws
• Free Trade Post Office
• Free Trade, Taxes, and Subsidies
• Meek and Gentle With These Butchers
• The Cause of High Prices, and the Rights of Combination
• Omnipotence of the Legislature
• Part Six: Literary Property
• Rights of Authors
• The Rights of Authors
• Right of Property In the Fruits of Intellectual Labour

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Plaindealer,

June 17, 1837.

A correspondent puts the following questions to us, in relation to the free-trade system of banking:

1. What guarantee can be given to the hard workingman, in need of money, that he will not be obliged to pay private bankers exorbitant rates of interest?

2. Is there bullion enough at command wherewith to supply a constitutional currency?

To the first question we answer, competition between money lenders; to the operation of the same principle which regulates the profits of all other branches of business. The banks, under a free-trade system, would be governed by the same motives, and subject to the same influences, which impel and guide men in other classes of occupation. There is just as much need for legislative regulation to restrain the dealers in other kinds of commodities from demanding enormous profits, as there is for restraining the dealers in money or credit. The relations of demand and supply fix the rates of profit in all callings, left free from the impositions of arbitrary enactments.

To the second question we answer yes. There is an ample amount of bullion for all the purposes of a currency. But freedom of trade does not imply the abolition of paper credit. It merely contemplates the separation of government from the credit system, whether in the way of restraint, regulation, or encouragement. There is an ample quantity of bullion in the world for an exclusive metallick currency, but prices would, of course, have to undergo a vast reduction, to adjust them to a hard money scale. But an exclusive metallick currency could only be instituted and maintained by the force of arbitrary government edicts, totally contrary to the first principles of natural justice. Bank-notes, in their intrinsick nature, are nothing more than the promisory notes of one individual to another, they are merely one of the forms which confidence between man and man assumes. So long as the laws do not interfere, and give an adventitious character to these notes, there is no reason, in natural justice or social expediency, why they should be interdicted. If left to themselves, they will not extend beyond the limits of a secure foundation, nor the demands of general convenience.