Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/381

Rh becomes onc order, and the unprivileged, another. The dollar which can multiply itself, is more puissant, than the dollar which cannot. One is a patrician, the other a plebeian. These dollars will represent their owners, or the owners their dollars.

But to prevent any mistake, it is necessary more particularly to explain the mode or process, by which the enhancement of the value of an incorporated dollar, beyond an unincorporated one, is effected. It consists chiefly of two items. First, the surplus of notes circulated, beyond the amount of the stock or capital, produces a surplus of interest. beyond what the stock or capital could produce; the whole of which is an addition to the value of incorporated, beyond that of unincorporated specie; and will transfer a correspondent surplus of property. For instance, if a capital of half a million stock, can circulate two millions of paper at six per centum only, one-fourth of the paper produces the whole interest which unincorporated specie can produce; therefore the other three-fourths are additional value given to the incorporated specie by an exclusive privilege, destroying an equality of rights in the national pecuniary partnership, and transferring unjustly all the property covered by such additional value. The second important item of this process of appreciation, consists of the artifice of taking out a portion of the stock or capital, and acquiring with it the whole property it represents, and ought in justice to transfer; and of circulating paper currency, upon the credit of an opinion, that the stock thus used remains deposited. It is obvious, that the interest of the whole of the paper, circulated upon the basis of ideal stock, is an addition to the value of the specie, which has in person transferred all the property it ought to transfer; and that this unjust enhancement arises from the exclusive privilege. If it is recollected that there are about fifty millions of bank stock in the United States, and that even a moiety of it could not possibly have been deposited in specie, the great effect of artificial stock, in transferring property will at a glance be conspicuous.