Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/389

Rh vive it. But let us return from the political features of the subject, to calculation. The annual exports of the products of the United States, have been supposed to amount to about forty millions of dollars, and the bank capital to about fifty; and we have endeavoured to prove, that the five millions paid annually for bank paper, cannot be reimbursed by any additional price bestowed by it on our exports. This glimpse of the manner in which banking, in its infancy, enriches agriculture and manufactures; in its maturity, becomes a clear light. By the return of 1803 to the British parliament, the official value of British manufactures or exports, was less than twenty-four millions sterling, but their real value was estimated by the minister at forty millions. Suppose the quantity of bank paper, publick and private, circulating in England, to be about five hundred millions. It receives between twenty and thirty millions, for enriching those, who export forty millions worth. The agriculture and manufactures of England, are enriched also in the game mode, by the sister of banking, so recently eulogised in this country for possessing these qualities. Above five hundred millions of debt stock, receives annually more than bank stock. Of what is paid to two other members of the same family, named patronage and hierarchy, we have no account; but exclusive of the sum paid to hierarchy and banking, by manufactures and agriculture. to get rich by the bounty of this generous family, the supplies of the same year exceeded seventy millions sterling; so that the scheme of paper and patronage, when matured, takes from a nation about one hundred millions sterling, to enrich agriculture and manufactures, by enhancing the price of forty millions worth of their commodities.

And after paying all this money, it remains a question, whether bank currency does not moreover diminish prices, to enrich capitalists, at the expense of agriculture and manufactures. In 1803, the United States contained something more than one-third of the people of Britain, and exported much more than a third of her official exports, and nearly