Litchfield enquirer., 1875-10-21
John Stuart Mill in his "political Econ.

John Stuart Mill in his 'sPolitical Econ omy" says:- io a
 "I apprehend that bank notes, bills or checks, as such, do not act on prices at all What does act on prices is credit, in whatever shape given, and whether it gives rise to any transferable instrument capable of passing into circulation or not. ."-(P. 317.)
 Bonamy Price says of this last extract from page 317:-
 '"This is fundamental truth, of im- mense importance Tn currency 1; it kills of at once a multitude of empty theories about inhations of bank notes, which ex- pand circulation and swell prices, and engender crises and smite the commercial world with desolation. Principles of Currency, p. 16S.) Bonamy Price is Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, and the empty theo- ries he speaks of make up the bulk of Mir. Schurzs speech. -ss
 The third point of Mir. Schurz is:-
 ''There never vas a State ever so we'll administered, there never was Q people ever so frugal, there never was a govern ment ever so careful, which did not by tuC CkuAookOn oA AoA6C 4uuAS4SACo VA AAO- deemable paper money run in the vortex of profigacy and corruption. It has never been, 1t never will be otherwise" Did MT. Schurz never hear of 6 country called Great Britian, wdich used irredeem- able paper money from 1797 till 1921 And all that time she was neither so weak, poor. profigate nor corrupt but that Bowen. Bullion Professor in Harvard College, allows that without irredeemable paper money England could not have con- quered Napoleon; that paper notes fought the battle of Waterloo, kept her working men employed, gave them ease under almost incredible taxes, and secured to trade unexampled prosperity. Our late war tells the same story. Yet there are those who seem never able to learn the lesson.
 Did Mr. Senator Schurz never hear of country called France. which survived the German war by means of a well regula- ted irredeemable paper money. has in- creased her exports since from $500. .0O0,- 900 to $500, ,000, 900, is prosperous. every one employed, her paper, though enor- nous in amount. at par with gold, and that she Is able to return to the old specie system whenever she pleases? While at the same time specie-basis Germany, hav- ing just received S1. .OO0, ,O0O, 900 in coin from this same France, IS herself Tn deep water. tens of thousands of unemployed men in her streets, no money to be had to start her mills, taxes increased, and one of her Berlin writers complaining:-"Wes are in as great distress as if we had to payl thousands of millions instead of having had as much to receive" When Mir. Schurz has studied up these two instances of frugal and careful governments which have issued large quantities of irredeem- able paper money" without tumbling into a vortex of profigacy and corruption we will furnish him with others. Meanwhile, we commend him to the reading at safe intervals of some sound doctrines in 'Carey's letter to Field.
 Fourth-The fourth point of the speech is:-"NOthing but specie basis can give stability to current prices or restore that confidence which is the first requisite of . new field of prosperity"
 Yes, ''confidence" is. indeed. the first great need. No dispute about that. Does it necessarily and always accompany . specie basis Then will Mir. Schurz please explain the present panic and dis ours? Yet Germany reioices in specie basis. So does London, that makes bank rupts of half New York. Will Mir. Schurz please explain California is all gold, but she has just been shaken to her cen- Ire. England was on a specie basis in 1926, when the panic and disorder were so great that Huskisson said, "We are within twenty-four hours of barter" so utterly gone was confidence in currency and each other. Really Mir. Schurz ought to blush for such statements, even in a stump speech. Doubtless he knows that Ricardo, the great bullionist, allows that against such panics as prevail here now we have no security on any system; that the panics in England in 1S47, 1857 and 1866 were all experienced while specie basis prevailed that again ard again in specie basis English history. the permis. sion given by the government to the banks to suspend specie payment has been the salvation of the business com. munity. The men of Ohio must be green, indeed, If such perveFsions of history avail to mislead them, especially when they remember that all our former panics have arisen under a specie system and we got out of them by suspending specie payment.
 A specie basis will ''eive stability to current valuesl" What does Mr. Schurz mean? Does he not know that during our late rebellion gold rose in price more than any article of merchandise except cotton? Talk of such an article giving stability to prices! It is Sinbad anchor. ing on a whale. It is like the other green native of that land of science and philoso- phy, Germany, who, drawing landscape, took COW for the fixed point of his per spective. She moved, and the picture became just such muddle as these spe- cie basis speeches are. God save the Germans from their specie basis friends
 The ablest of European writers, them selves bullionists, allow that the time when it vas either necessary or prudent to tie ourselves to specie has passed away. Even Ricardo, the high priest of bullion lsts, the father of the present British sys- tenn, allows this. He says:- p
 "A regulated paper currency is so great an improvement in tine commerce that should greatly regret if prejudice thould iuduce us to return to a system of less utility. The introduction of the precious metals for the purposes of money may with truth be considered as one of the most important steps toward the improve ment of commerce and the arts of civiliz- ed life. But it is no less true, that, with the advancement of knowledge and sci- ence, we discover that it would be another improvement to bnnish them agaln from the employment to which. during the less enlightened period, they had been so ad- vantagously applied"
 We need larger facilities. We need Q real basis-that is. the country, the sov- ereign people, the wealth of our country not sham like this pretense of specie. Says Bagehot, the highest authority in England:-- rn.s .-, ''So far from our being able to rely on the proportional magnitude of our cash in hand, the amount of that cash is so ex- ceedingly small that bystander ale most trembles when he compares it's mil nuteness with the immensiiy of the credit that rests upon it."-Lombard Street, page 1S.
 We'll may that bystander tremble, as cash is fifty cents coin to $10O paper. To initiate that system is Mir. Schurz' finance! And even that minute quantity in com is sham. Cary tells us that thirty.seven | years ago Albert Gallatin. then President