M'arthur Democrat. (McArthur, Vinton County, Ohio) 1853-1865, 1858-01-07

paper luOueJ uHuer twenty uOlldTS,
and for a bankrupt act against default
ing banks. Bills were repeatedly
brought into Congress for both pur-
poses, but were always defeated by
the detection OF the paper.money wing
of the Democratic party.
The most plausible of the open OBJ.
jections made against the stamp duty
was in the expense, and the extensive
machinery for its collection. That
was answered by providing a cheap
and simple process for both purposes
"a clerk in the Treasury Department
for q superintendent of the business,
and the clerks of the Federal courts to
deliver out the stamps which thev re.
ceived from the Treasury. The amount
of the duty, and whether it should
apply to all notes, or only to those in
tended to be suppressed, were quos-
tions on which there was room for
some diversity of opinion. The pre-.
dominant opinion was, that there
should be duty upon all notes issued
as a currency, (or what more fit to be
taxed than the moneyed power y the
duty being the same on all notes, and
such as the large ones could easily
carry, and the small ones not The
amount Of the duty was held necessa-
ry to be large--far greater than in
Great Britain for there no note is
reissued; no one goes out Of the bank
second time; SO that the duty in
England is paid every time the bank
puts out note. Not so in the United
States. Here a note is reissued until
it is worn out; until it has become too
ragged to hold together, or too filthy to
be- handled, or too defaced to be deci-
phered. A small duty is, therefore.
sufficient in Great Britain it would
require a very heavy one to be its
equivalent in the United States
Among the penalties for violating the
act either by issuing, receiving, or
passing the unsustained paper should
be disqualification to retain or re-
ceive a Federal appointment; for tho
pursuit of Office is so general at this
time in our country, and SO ardent,
that, in arrayirg class so large, so
influential and active against the un-
stamped notes, their circulation would
be efectually checkmated.
paper-money wing of the Dem
ocracy was still more against the
bankrupt act and against bankrupt
banks than against the stamp tax on
notes and acting with the habt1al
OF the party to which they
professed to belong, easily defeated
all the bills. The open objection came
from the lawyers, with their profes-
siunal idea, drawn chiefly from British
that merchants and traders
were the proper subjects Of the bank
rupt law, although every late British
statute on the subject includes banks,
the Bank Of England excepted and
in single season of suspension, Chat
of 1S13-14-15,) ninety.two of these
banks had been subjected to com.
of bankruptcy. But thjSl
was not Of English, bpt OF
Roman origin, as its name would
show, C'banous" and "ruYSus y and
bankers were the original objects Of
Tho law, as the samo name also shows.
Broken bench" is the English of the
Latin name. and was so called because
the bankers (money.c changers of that
time, as now in the East) had their
benches in public places, on which
hey sat and did business f; and when
any one became delinquent, or crimi-
nal, he was driven away and his bench
was broken. And thus, in its, origin,
bankruptcy was a process against
banks and bankers, and still is in
Great Britain and hence retains its
name of broken bench--the
bench so broken being the sign and
warning to the public that the banker
himself was insolvent, and deprived of
his place of doing business.
Banking in the United States is the
most unrestrained and unsafe that
there is in the world /; and unsafe even
for solid and well-conducted banks,
there being enough of the unsolid and
badly conducted to fall down Of them
selves every few years and to drag the
rest down with them. The laws put
few restraints or penalties upon them;
and these restraints and penalties are
regularly repealed just as often as the
community needs the benefit of them.
1t is by name in some places, and by
fact in others, a system of 'sfree bank
ing" which the hard.money Democra-
cy was accustomed to call "free swind-
ling" Anybody becomes banker that
pleases, and issues small notes and
sends them off to a distance to be cir
culated, and lost, and to sink upon the
hands of the laboring people. A IA
yorite plan is to issue notes at one
place payable at another far of, out of
the way, and difficult to be got at, SO