Not being able to do anything himself, however, what does he urge
upon the wise and patriotic State legislatures? Why, a series of
flimsy restrictions, which would have about as much effect in
preventing the tremendous abuses of banking which he himself depicts,
as a bit of filigree iron-work would have in restraining the
expansion of steam. Restrictions! restrictions! _toujours_
restrictions!--as if that method of correcting the evil had not been
utterly exploded by nearly two centuries of experience! Mr. Buchanan
calls himself a Democrat; he is loud in his protestations of respect
for the sagacity, the good-sense, and the virtue of the people; his
political school takes for its motto the well-known adage, "That
government is best which governs least"; his party, if he does not,
purports to be a great advocate of the emancipation of trade from
all the old-fashioned restraints which take the names of protections,
tariffs, bounties, etc. etc.; and we wonder how it is, that, in his
presumed excursions over the entire domain of free-trade, he should
have got no inkling of a thought as to the benefits of free-trade in
banking. We wonder that so great a subject could be dismissed with
the suggestion of a few petty restraints.
"If the State legislatures," remarks the President, summing up his
entire thought, "afford us a real specie basis for our circulation,
by increasing the denomination of bank-notes, first to twenty, and
afterwards to fifty dollars; if they will require that the banks
shall at all times keep on hand at least one dollar of gold and
silver for every three dollars of their circulation and deposits;
and if they will provide, by a self-executing enactment, which
nothing can arrest, that the moment they suspend they shall go into
liquidation; I believe that such provisions, with a weekly
publication by each bank of a statement of its condition, would go
far to secure us against future suspensions of specie payments.
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