largely reduced at such a time, an accumulation of distress will follow, such as is rarely seen. With the proposed currency, however, and the proposed mode of reduction, if a reduction be agreed on, the change from the condition of war to that of peace may take place without producing the prostration of business so justly anticipated, because so fully warranted by experience of a credit-currency, and so earnestly to be deprecated, because so evidently and so easily avoidable by the adoption of a national currency that is capable of regulation, and that, being properly regulated, cannot fail.
Though this currency, like that of bank-notes, is wholly nominal, the words of which it consists are those of a nation, and represent power. Accordingly, they give to the currency power to perform its allotted function; but they give it no other power. Has any other currency any other power? A specie-currency may be converted into ear-rings, but it is no longer a currency; it may be buried in iron pots, or locked in iron safes, but it is not then a currency; it may be exported to foreign lands, but it is not there a currency until reauthorized. Currencies, properly speaking, are ideas clothed in words,—the words of a nation, otherwise called laws. The merchandise attached to a specie-currency is an evidence of former barbarism,—a remain of the primitive practice of barter,—an incongruous element, tending to impede rather than to assist circulation, to destroy rather than to create a currency.
But is a value-currency possible? It is, to a people enjoying universal equality before the law, and knowing that every individual has a direct and immediate interest in it,—knowing that it is a part of the business-policy of each. And it is only such a people that will dare to inaugurate, and persevere to sustain it. Nevertheless, as it cannot but appear problematical to minds that have not given to the subject the most earnest attention, its adoption will doubtless be most strenuously opposed, by habits of thought, by modes of action, and by interests, as ancient, as universal, and apparently as fixed as the race itself. Yet, as M. Arago justly remarks in one of his biographies addressed to the French Academy,—"The moral transformations of society are subject to the laws of continuity; they rise and grow, like the productions of the earth, by imperceptible gradations. Each century develops, discusses, and adapts to itself, in some degree, truths—or, if you prefer it, principles—of which the conception belonged to the preceding century; this work of the mind usually goes on without being perceived by the vulgar; but when the day of application arrives, when principles claim their part in practice, when they aim at penetrating into political life, the ancient interests, if they have only this same antiquity to invoke in their favor, become excited, resist, and struggle, and society is shaken to its foundations. The tableau will be complete, Gentlemen, when I add, that, in these obstinate conflicts, it is never the principles that succumb."
