Litchfield enquirer., 1837-11-09

I the Atlantic States, where the money had been collected, and where, in the course oi trade, it belonged, and it's transfer to State banks in the West, to be there discounted up- on, was partly instrumental in producing the { fever of speculation in public lands, which i9he te President thought it necessary 70
 HecSby the Specie Circular. and It was me tnexampled demand for public lands when | filled the Treasury with surplus TOT tnc revenue from customs alone has nelo an 1v- cV craze of about twenty millions annually TOT | twenty wears, and has not equnlled the ex- penditures of the Government.
 The importations of gold by the direction ,of the Executive were also p'rniclous every way. Being forced importttions, contrary to inc current of trade, they increased our foreign debt, and so contributed to raise ex- change, and to depress our staples: So far from diminishing the paper circulation of the country, as it was tanciad the operation would do, it increased the amount, by mere- ly serving to enlarge the basis of bank issues, instead of taking their place. It contributed to alarm the capitalists of Great Britain, and to produce that panic action of the Bank of England, to which the President justly refers as one of the immediate causes of our com mercial endorsements.
 Another of the conSpiring acts of the Ad- ministration has been it's loud cry against banks and bank paper; the clamor of its presses and it's public men against merchants; their attempts to band the poor against the rich, and to strike down every form of the investments of property their schemes for the overthrow of charters all the radical ism and jacobinical projects of disorganiza- tion, which are so rife at this time, to the dis couragement of that confidence between man and man, and that trust in the stability of bu- siness, which are the very life-blood of com mercial prosperity.
 CONDITION OF OTHER COUNTRIES.
 Without dwelling upon these and other pertinent considerations, proceed to a part of the Message which seems to me singularly inaccurate in it's facts and deductions. To escape the conclusion that the existing evils are ascribable to the acts of the Government, the President proceeds to say that "eviis, similar to those suffered by yourselres, have been experienced in Great Britain, on the conti- nent, and, indeed, throughout the commercial world" This confidently deny. chal- lenge any gentleman to produce proofs of the existence of similar euils any where else m the world at the present time. fIs
 What arc these evils! The President produces no specification of facts out of Great Britain; and we'll he might not for as the bug-bear of the day is " bank paper," he could not venture to suggest any excess of l this on the continent of Europe, or among the semi barbarian communities of Asia and Af- rica. The commerce of the world is, as it l were, great lake. The water, disturbed at one point, is gradually disturbed at every I point. There cannot fail to be uneasiness in Europe-nay, in the remotest India, when the vast commerce of the United States is shaken to it's foundations.
 I concede to the President, for the sake of a fair view of the whole case, that recently, very recently, there have been commercial embarrassments in parts of Europe and Asia. But these embarrassments have been limited nscope, and comparatively trivial in amount, 1 as every merchant in the United States knows they have been the direct conse- quence of the Arrangement of our own trade, to which they have cnleTly been confined :; and they have not constituted a state of facts it Gny degree corresponding to that which
 now exists in the United States.
 Now, for Great Britain. What are the evils, the similar evils" existing there
 Are the domestic exchanges in England all in confusion? Is the foreign exchange be.
 tween her and us against her Does she
 owe us commercial debt which she canno pay? Have her banks un yersally, or any of them, suspended cash payments? Are , there any widespread bankruptcies among her merchants? Is the island flooded with
 depreciated, unequal, irredeemable paper currency! Has her treasury, in the space
 of six months, passed from redundancy tc insolvency? Not at all. None of these
 things have occurred in Great Britain. It is a delusion to imagine it.
 But, says the President, "a reference tc the amount of paper credit issues in Great
 Britain. during the years 1884, 1885, and 1856, twill show an augmentation ot the pa per currency there, as much disproportioncd to the real wants of trade, as in the United States" am constrained, with all due res- pect to the President to say, that such q re- ference will not show any such analogy. It IS however, Q remarkable fact, and gentlemen
 are welcome to the benefit of it, that, during
 the last few years, there has been bank
 controversy in England, not wholly unlike to the contemporaneous bank controversy in
 this country, between the friends of the Bank of England and the friends of provincial
 banks, which has led to the multiplication oi the latter, and has tempted the latter into CT. TOTS, somewhat analogous in nature, but no
 wise analogous in,dcgree, to those committed by the banks in some of the different State. in the Union. Fe
 ! But as for "similar evils" in Great Brit ain, as compared with the United States, there is no such thing. Commercial embarrass | of business only by the usual sympathy o all the commercial operations of a great mar
 like London. Money is at this moment g drug there. And it is n most extraordinary proposition to speak as the President does, oi there having been in both countries s' neGrl, the some overwhelming catastrophe" The Brit. ish Government will smile at this. With all imaginable gravity and simplicity, the Mes