Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Speech of Hon. Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri, on the Cabinet Plan for a Federal Exchequer: Delivered in the Senate, January 13, 1842
If there Were a thousand constitutional provi sions in favor of paper money, I should sxilkhe against ?it-against the thing itself, 'per so and propter. Se - On account of its own inherent baseness and vice. But the Constitution is against it clearly so upon its face; upon its history; upon its early practice; upon 11s uniform interpretation. The universal expression at - fthe time of its adop tion was, that the new Government was a hard money Government, made by. Hard money men, and that it was to save the country from the curse, of paper money. This Was the universal Ian guage - this the universal sentiment, and this hard money character of the new Government was once of the great recommendations in its favor, and one 01 the chief inducements to its adoption All the° early action of the Government conformed to this ideas-all its early legislation was as true to hard money as the needle rstto the pole. The very first netot Congress for the collection of duties on im ports. Passed in the first year of the new Govern ment's existence, and enacted by the very men who had framed the Constitution - this first acttren' quired those duties to be paid in gold and silver; coin only; the word only, which is a contraction. For the old English o'nelyhbeing added to cut off the possibility of an intrusion, or an injection of a par ticle of paper money into the Treasury of: that United States. The first act for the sale of publictt lands required them to be paid for 111 speeiezl-'uthe specie circular of 1836 was only the enforcement t. Of that act; and the hard money clause in the Inde pendent Treasury was a revival of these two origi nal and fundamental revenue laws. Such were the early legislative interpretations of the Constitu j tion by the men who made it; and corresponding with these for a long time after the commencement of the Government, were the interpretations of all public men, and of no one more emphatically than oi him Who is now the prominent member of this, Administration, and to whose hand public opinion attributes the elaborate defence of the Cabinet Ex chequer plan which has been sent down to us. In two speeches, delivered by that gentleman in the House of Representatives in the year 1816, he thus expressed himself on the hard money character of our Government, and on the fully and danger of the paper system.
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