US Presidency
1840

It is for the people and their representatives to decide whether or not the permanent welfare of the country ( which all good citizens equally desire, however widely they may differ as to the means of its accomplishment ) shall be in this way secured, or whether the management of the pecuniary concerns of the government, and by consequence to a great extent those of individuals also, shall be carried back to a condition of things which fostered those contractions and expansions of the currency and those reckless abuses of credit from the baleful effects of which the country has so deeply suffered, a return that can promise in the end no better results than to reproduce the embarrassments the government has experienced, and to remove from the shoulders of the present to those of fresh victims the bitter fruits of that spirit of speculative enterprise to which our countrymen are so liable and upon which the lessons of experience are so unavailing. The choice is an important one, and I sincerely hope that it may be wisely made.