Boon's Lick times. [volume] (Fayette, Mo.) 1840-1848, 1842-06-25
LETTERS FROM CUBA.
By REV. LEANDER KER.
No. ".

No. w.
The wealth and resources. of this Island
are immense. The active capital employed
in agriculture and commerce is between
forty and fifty millions of dollars, and this
is all gold and slver-there being no such
things as banks and paper money in the
Island. And besides the capital employed,
there are millions unemployed, as there are
many citizens in the possession of millions,
not one dollar of which is invested in any
thing. These are facts that can be relied
on, as have them from the most authentic
sources. / have been among the chief
business men and merchants, some English,
Americans and Spanish; and with the ex-
cep:ions of few arbitrary and burden
some restrictions on trade and commerce,
inseparable from despotism, was charmed
with the ease and facility of doing bust
ness here. Such thing as panic, con-
fusion, embarrassment and fuctuaton, ex-
pansion or suspension in monetary mat
ters, are unknown in Cuba. Nothing dis
turbs or deranges the commercial commu-
nifty of the Island, but war. Every thing
in trade and commerce goes on with the
regularity and uniformity of the laws of
nature; for the whole community is found
ed upon gold and silver currency, which
is always Of the same value; and every
man from the princely mer chant down to
the street sweeper, knows two things of
great Importance to themselves, how much
each is worth, and on what each may de.
pend. Labor is well rewarded here; being
well paid, and always paid. No banks
here to suspend when it suits them, and
create panic and confusion in all the
commercial circles; or fail, and spread ruin
and distress over the community.
do not affect the political economist
and financier; these things are out Of my
profession; but upon calm, deliberate and
philosophical view of the whole subject,
believe, it was an evil day for the CONNER
ciai world, and for the political and moral
world too, that saw the first paper money,
and credit was substituted for capital; for
truth must always, and in all things, be bet
ter than fiction-the substance better than
its shadow, and reality a much safer and
surer rule for men and societies, than vi
sionary speculation. The ancient world
knew nothing of those embarrassments
distress and panic, which from time to
time visit and afflict modern commerce
where paper money and the credit system
are in full operation; and these countries
now that have nothing but gold and silver
know and feel nothing of these things, I'M
less through others. Look at Cuba, King
ridden and Priest ridden as she is; under
despetism as childish, stupid and brain
less as despotism can be, yet look at her
commercial prosperity, welfare, happiness
and security. Look at her merchants, ira
ders, and all, with what placid, composed
and contented faces they wear in their
counting rooms, on the quays, or wherever
you meet them. And contrast all this
with the blanched cheek, the quivering lip
that tells of fearful anxieties within--the
haggard brow prematurely ploughed with
care and the burrows of age, the wonder
ing eye, the anxious and hurried step we
meet in Chestnut street, Wall street and
Broadway, or any other great commercial
thoroughfare, in times of panic, and distress
among our merchants, traders, mechanics
and all. Give TO our country the currency
of Cuba, and what will she not speedily be-
what must she not be with her superior in.
telligence, industry, skill and enterprise ?
And | conceive that it would be childish
in the extreme to affirm that ,Ue cannot
have such a currency,-how has Cuba
gotten it? how has Holland gotten it? how
did the greatest commercial nations of an
tiquity obtain it, just simply by determn
ing to have no other.
There is Unnecessary connection between
paper money, or an extended credit system
and immortality, vice, and prohigacy o
every kind. And there is and must be
necessary connection between cash sys
tem a gold and. silver currency, and NOR
atty, honesty and integrity, and virtue il
general, other things being what they
should be. And we will never be the grea
commercial people, and happy people We
can be, until we have such a currency
And believe as firmly that God has fur
nished the gold and silver in the bowel
of the earth for a-currency, as that he fur
nished "seed to the sower and bread t.
the eaters" and that there is but one mod
for man and nations to obtain the one ant
the other of these-that is labor.
Banks must fail-paper money w'H fail
and when they have run their career, !
will be discovered that these things Wi