Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/371

Rh produces national capital, instead of national capital producing money. The value of labour is real capital. If a nation had an hundred millions of money, but did not labour, it would presently be without capital; but if its labour was worth five millions annually, though it had no money, it would have an hundred millions of capital, which would soon attract money. The introduction of bank paper is uniformly the epoch from which the diminution of specie is dated. If specie therefore is capital, bank paper diminishes capital; if not, neither can its representative be capital. It is by real capital, that specie is equalised among commercial nations. As a representative, it is subordinate and responsible to its principal. Bank paper cannot possess an intrinsick value, if the value of specie is representative; therefore it cannot increase capital; and a surplus, beyond a necessary currenecy far from falling within any idea of the term capital, can only exist by feeding on capital, the principal of currency. If bank paper was new capital, so far from expelling the representative of the old, it would require more representation, and attract specie. Or if, like specie, it was the responsible representative of capital or property, it would be subordinate to its principal. On the contrary, it is made bylaw, an irresponsible representative of capital or property; and a currency converted from the servant into the master of property, necessarily becomes a tyrant, to secure its power.

The advocates of banking admit this doctrine, by contending that it is beneficial to a nation to expel specie by paper; as it causes an exchange of the representative of capital, for the thing itself. If the capital, thus gotten front foreign nations, by the expelled specie, would produce it permanent profit, superior to the annual cost of the substituted paper, this would be true; but the difficulty of discovering any such profit, and the visibility of the cost, as strong evidences that it is false. This stratagem for enriching a nation can be practised but once, whereas the cost of bank paper substituted for expelled specie is an-