Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/309

Rh nor entitle it even to that unsubstantial defence. As the circulator of the paper, he indicts and enhances the tax for his own benefit. And the payer, not being the borrower, has no check over, or volition in relation to the tax. It will even be collected from individuals whom the paper never reaches, by its capacity ts cause the value of property and even of coin itself, to fluctuate.

Those who create new banks, to protect one state against the calamity of bank paper, coming from another, also assert that bank paper is a blessing. Bold contradictions sometimes hide truth, as vehemency does cowardice. Will elimate, or the names of stockholders have the effect of making bank paper sometimes a curse, at others a blessing? Then a tribute; now a mine of wealth? Sincerity, as a citizen of Virginia, wishing to introduce banks, after having truly urged that Virginia paid a tax to stock holders in other states, would have simply requested that the sane individual tax might be transferred to Virginians. This would have brought the question fairly before the publick. Shall a tax be created for the sake of its expenditure at home? Shall we foster separate sinecure interests at home, because a contribution towards their support abroad, is an evil? And even these questions would have resulted in a very simple numerical calculation; namely, whether it would be wise to extract a revenue from the state, payable by all its citizens, except about one thousand, who should receive it; in order to save half the sum, collected by citizens of other states, towards the payment of which these thousand also contributed? This degree of sincerity might reasonably have been expected of stock itself; but disinterestedness would have added, that the idea of one tax driving out the other, that is, of domestick bank paper, driving out bank paper issued without the authority of the state, was delusive. The extraneous paper, being possessed of the quality which collects the tax (currency on circulation) would continue to circulate and tax; and the remedy would therefore simply amount to an addition of a