Morning journal and courier., 1882-08-17

dealers Of every variety, who thereby become possessed of the power to exchange or to re- move them, while, at the same time, the property interest to the extent agreed on if always in the bank itself. And banks are simple devices for concentrating and ex changing the fruits of industry from hand to hand and from place to place, making it cur rent and divisible They dispense, as far as possible, and more and more so as social life is elevated and refined, with the necessi- ty of money as practical medium, by taking title to property, and by issuing to and accepting from their dealers the written attestations of the money 'value received. These written or printed papers, in their va- rious forms, actually and in their very na- ture possess the potency as well as the prom ise to respond in money or it's equivalent in other forms of useful industry Banks are thus the very embodiments of labor, existing in tangible and exchangeable forms in any community, the plvots upon which industry and social comforts continually revolve. And accordingly, experience has proved that in the current daily business of commercial cities less than five parts in hundred, eith- CT of deposits in banks or of the sums with drawn from them, consist of money. That IS to say; more than ninety five per centum of financial transactions in society only an exchange of one useful thing for another, and banks simply perform the func ion of effecting those exchanges In whatever of the various forms of paper instruments the obligations of banks may be made, they are not money in any sense. Money cannot be made from paper. It is independently and of itself one form of property, and therefore 1t IS money. Any human attempt to create it is only weak and intellectual encroach- ment upon the divine prerogative. Papers are nothing, and can 1egitimately be nothing. but the record of concurrent or precedent that that property has moved from ono pos sessor to another, to the extent of the money value they represent"
 AS to the best form and basis of bank cur rency he said
 "A currency of country should be based directly upon the property of the country, not upon it's debts upon what it has, not upon what 1t owes. Taking into considera- tion all the chances of human frailty, it may confidently be asserted that safer, more natural and healthier system of circulating notes can be provided by few simple and practicable legal restraints, through the transactions, than through any form of pub lie debt. It is strange and palpably absurd position in political economy, that 8 popular government must be kept poor and in debt, in order that the people may be provided with means to become rich. It is not neces- sary that either our local or our general gov ernment should prolong it's poverty, so that the people may be insured against poverty and loss, but rather that the wealth of the community should provide it's own facilities for defense and independence.
 eff this exposition be correct, 1t solves many of the vexed questions respecting paper money that have so long puzzled us as bankers, and vexed the public mind. How to secure the proper quantity and quality de- sired, of requisite hexibility and elasticity, as it is ambiguously called, of adequate supply at the special time, and in the particular place demanded by the trade? Coming through the channels that commerce itself creates, believe that such currency can be provided and be sufficiently protected by the true and only security which the country possesses, viz: it's own property and productions running concurrentiy with the paper it represents. That Is value to National, State or munici ly allied. Thus would it be made coincident with, at the place where and at the time when existing products are to be moved, and it would be redeemed and retired by the pro- ceeds of those products after they have reach ed the market and been converted into money value. Quantity would be regulated by the property conveyed, and quality secured by the fact that redemption and withdrawal would be vigorously exacted by the facilities and competitions of modern business. I ap- peal to you all to say whether it would not, like all other and larger forms of commercial obligations, regularly proceed by law with in itself. following the law of nature ?"
 Addresses were also delivered on banking in the West by A. D. Lynch, president of : bank in Indianapolis; on the future currency of the country by Professor Atwater o1 Princeton, N. J., and on our financial situa tion and the dangers of the future by John Thompson of New York. The convention adjourned till 10:3O 8. m. tomorrow.