Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/514

496 and consequently of bonds would be needful? The Secretary of the Treasury or the congressional committee who should be called upon to determine this point would require the same degree of omniscience that would be required to fix the proper limit of irredeemable legal tenders. The objections to any arbitrary regulation of the volume of currency have been so often pointed out as to make needless their recital in this connection.

To maintain, for the purposes of bank-note security, a Government debt anything in excess of the Government's needs, would be, in effect, to levy a tax upon the community at large for distribution as a bounty on bank-note circulation. It may be said that the benefits inuring to the issuers would be slight and incidental—a not undue reward for the service rendered—and that the real purpose would be the protection of the note-holder, which protection would be worth more than its cost. Thus stated, the proposition would be to make the note-holders a preferred class of creditors, secured at the public cost. It would be pertinent to ask here, By what logical method is the conclusion reached that this preference should be given to the note-holders alone? Are there not other classes of creditors with equal claims for protection? The depositors in savings-banks, the beneficiaries of life-insurance policies, and divers other corporate and private trusts, are now very largely secured by Government bonds, and it is not easy to see why, if the note-holders are to have special protection, these can not with perfect justice ask that they too shall continue to be cared for by the Government. That such demands should be acceded to few will assert, but it would be quite as proper for the Government to furnish security for all as for a part. But it is idle to discuss this proposition at length. Whatever differences of opinion there may be as to the rate at which reduction of the debt should go on, there is little difference as to the general principle that it should be reduced as fast as may be consistent with a proper distribution of the burden. The proposition that it is a good thing to pay one's debts, when abundantly able to do so, is sound, and it applies to an aggregate of individuals—the state—precisely as it does to a single individual. Public opinion will doubtless demand s it certainly would be right in demanding, that the volume of the public debt shall be regulated without reference to national-bank-note issues; the idea that it should, or might with propriety, be regulated with reference to their needs, is radically unsound. Nor, it maybe added, are there any reasons, economic or political, for a resort to such strained methods.

That a paper currency is one of the requirements of a great commercial country is generally admitted. That such a currency can best be furnished by banks of issue, if not so generally admitted, would seem to be demonstrated by universal custom among civilized nations. The issuance of circulating notes is a legitimate, if not necessary, function of the business of banking. It is one of the forms of the