10 After these facts have been unveiled to the world, it becomes every true democrat— every lover of his country—not to look carelessly on our national indebtedness to Great Britain. Once involved deeply in her debt, she may exert an influence through her debtors which shall peril American liberty. She will have the power to cripple us, to say the least. We shall have states, and corporations, and cities, and companies, and individuals dependent on her leniency for the means of their luxury and wealth; and strange indeed will it be if this do not corrupt the public mind. If private individuals, and private banks, (as contradistinguished from a national one,) and individual states, think proper to run in debt to foreign powers, let them do so. They have the right, and true democracy would let them enjoy it. But never let the general government countenance it, nor stimulate it, but leave all to the judgment of private citizens. The chain of dependence on England which great Chartered Monopolies forge. In the Annual Message of 1840, of our present Chief Magistrate, this fact is so ably and graphically drawn, that we copy it here; simply premising that every democrat ought to carefully study its bearings. Mr. Van Buren speaks as a man to men, although he knew that his frankness would give offence to the moneyedspower of the day. But it was right that he should speak out, and he has done so. “ But this chain of dependence,” says he, “doeSnot stop here. It does not termis nate at Philadelphia or New York. It reaches across the ocean and endsin London, the centre of the credit system. The same laws of trade which give to the banks in our principal cities power over the whole banking system of the United States, subject the former, in their turn, to the money power in Great Britain. It is not denied that the suspension of the New York banks in 1837, which was followed in quick succession throughout the Union, was produced by an application of that power; and it is now al* leged in extenuation of th* present condition of so large a portion of our banks, that their embarrassments have arisen from the same cause. “ From this influence they cannot now entirely escape, for it has its origin in the credit currencies of the two countries, it is strengthened by the current of trade and exchange, which centres in London, and is rendered almost irresistible by the large debts contracted there by our merchants, our banks and our states. It is thus that an introduction of a flew bank into the most distant of our villages, places the business of that village within the influence of the money power in England. It is thus that every new debt which we contract in that country, seriously affects our own currency, aud extends over the pursuits of our cilizens its powerful influence. We cannot escape from this by making new banks, great or small, state or national. The same chains which bind those now existing, to the centre of this system of paper credit, must equally fetter every similar institution we create. It is only by the extent to which this system has been pushed of late, that we have been made fully aware of its irresistible tendency to subject our own banks and currency to a vast controlling power in a foreign land; and it adds a new argument to those which illustrate their precarious situation. Endangered in the first place by their own mismanagement, and again by the conduct of every institution which connects them with the centre of trade in our own country, they are yet subjected, beyond all this, to the effect of whatever measures policy, necessity or caprice, may induce those who control the credits of England to resort to. I mean not to comment upon these measures, presenter past, and much less to discourage the prosecution of fair commercial dealing between the two countries, based on reciprocal benefits; but it having now been made manifest that the power of inflicting these and similar injuries, is, by the resistless law of a credit currency-and credit trade, equally capable of extending their consequences through all the ramifications of our banking system, and by that means indirectly ob^ taining, particularly when our’banks are used as depositories of the public moneys, a . dangerous political influence in the United States, I have deemed it my duty to bring the subject to your notice, and ask font your serious consideration. “Is an argument required beyond the exposition of these facts, to show the impropriety of using our banking institutions as depositories of thepublic money? Can we venture not only to encoun ter the risk of their individual and mutual mismanagement, but, at the same time, toplace our foreign and domestic'policy entirely under the control of afos reign moneyed interest ? To do so is to impair the independence of our government, as the present credit system has already impaired the independence of our banks. It is to submit all its important operations, whether of peace or war, to be controlled or thwarted at first by our own banks, and then by a power abroad greater than themselves. I cannot bring myself to depict the humiliation to which this government and people might be sooner or later reduced, if the means for defending their lights are to be made dependent upon those who may have the most powerful of motives to impair them.” At the commencement of the present year (1840) the foreign debt of our states, corpcw
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