Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/307

Rh the use of the paper, equivalent to the interest he pays; otherwise he could not borrow. From his continuing to borrow, it is evident that he only advances the tax, and that it is reimbursed". This regular result is of the nature of fate or necessity, and not of free will or discretion. The residue of a nation composes the class, throughout which, A, the borrowing; class, circulates the paper, and it is unable to exercise any volition, adequate to the avoidance of his reimbursement.

Excluding the idea of the class of borrowers, the certainty and simplicity with which a bank inflicts and collects its profit, becomes still more visible. The operation is carried on between a nation and a banking corporation. The nation, through the channel of its members, exchanges a thing called credit, reduced to the form of bonds or notes for the payment of money, with the corporation, giving a boot, profit or difference, of about eight per centum per annum, which the bank bond, note or credit, is arbitrarily made by law to be worth, beyond the national bond, note or credit. This effect is produced by subjecting the members of the nation to the payment of a compound interest to the corporation on their bonds, notes or credit, and absolving the corporation from the payment of any interest to the members of the nation, on its bonds, notes or credit; and exhibits both the inevitability of the tax, and a mode of its collection.

It is asked, whether the borrowing class, may not forbear to borrow, and whether this power of forbearance, is not an evidence, that the profit or income collected by banking, proceeds from the voluntary act of individuals. Should bread and water be placed in abundance, before a hungry and thirsty multitude, could their eating and drinking be fairly said to be merely voluntary? Currency is the medium for exchanging necessaries. If gold and silver, the universal medium, are legislated out of sight, all human wants unite to compel men to receive the tax collecting substitute. This is bunking. By the help of law it creates a