successive intervals the best and most enterprising men have been
tempted to their ruin by excessive bank loans of mere paper credit,
exciting them to extravagant importations of foreign goods, wild
speculations, and ruinous and demoralizing stock gambling. When the
crisis arrives, as arrive it must, the banks can extend no relief to the
people. In a vain struggle to redeem their liabilities in specie they
are compelled to contract their loans and their issues, and at last,
in the hour of distress, when their assistance is most needed, they and
their debtors together sink into insolvency.

It is this paper system of extravagant expansion, raising the nominal
price of every article far beyond its real value when compared with
the cost of similar articles in countries whose circulation is wisely
regulated, which has prevented us from competing in our own markets with
foreign manufacturers, has produced extravagant importations, and has
counteracted the effect of the large incidental protection afforded
to our domestic manufactures by the present revenue tariff. But for
this the branches of our manufactures composed of raw materials,
the production of our own country--such as cotton, iron, and woolen
fabrics--would not only have acquired almost exclusive possession of
the home market, but would have created for themselves a foreign market
throughout the world.

Deplorable, however, as may be our present financial condition, we
may yet indulge in bright hopes for the future. No other nation has
ever existed which could have endured such violent expansions and
contractions of paper credits without lasting injury; yet the buoyancy
of youth, the energies of our population, and the spirit which never
quails before difficulties will enable us soon to recover from our
present financial embarrassments, and may even occasion us speedily