Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/178

172 limited. All that is required of the two latter, therefore, is, that its paper should be redeemed in specie, as specie shall be wanted.

In a country like America, a purely specie currency is utterly impracticable. Although money is not actually wanted for a tithe of the debts that are due, at any one moment, so much more is wanted than can be obtained in the precious metals, that a recourse to the credit system is unavoidable, as a single feature of the true condition of the country will show.

America, in the states and territories, contains about twelve hundred thousand square miles. This immense country is in the course of settlement, and the transfers of real estate, are a hundred-fold what they are in Europe, on the same extent of surface. A piece of land is frequently sold several times in the course of a single year, whereas centuries often elapse in older countries, without the sale of a given property. Every transfer of title causes an indebtedness, and consequently a necessity for a circulating medium to represent it. The earth does not probably contain a sufficiency of the precious metals, at their present value, to represent all the debts of this one country.

On the other hand, nothing is easier than to abuse a system of credits. The unrestrained issue of paper-money, with its attendant contractions, keeps the value of property unsettled, creates pressures and bankruptcies, and otherwise produces the instability that so peculiarly marks the condition of American trade.

Specie should be the basis of all currency. There should also be enough of the precious metals floating in the community, to meet its minor daily wants, the proper office of credit being to represent money in large sums, and not to represent money in small sums. For all the purposes of payments from the pocket, nothing is so convenient, or so safe, as gold and silver,