hundred millions of gold among the people, we have seen it so put away,
that no charm or bait could allure it from its hiding-places.

Need we go any farther, then, than these simple truths, to lay our
finger on the primal fact which underlies all financial embarrassments
and panics? The mass of the transactions in commerce rests upon credit;
the solvent of that credit is gold; and gold has not only a sliding
scale of value, but is apt to disappear when most wanted. While business
is moving on in the ordinary way, it is more than ample for every
purpose; but the moment any event arises, such as a rapidly falling
market, inducing hurried sales, or a drain of specie, disturbing the
general confidence, everybody gets apprehensive, everybody calls upon
everybody for payment, and everybody puts everybody off,--till a feeling
of _sauve qui peut_ becomes universal.

If there were no currency anywhere but a metallic currency, this
liability to sudden revulsions would still hang over trade, provided
credit and paper tokens of credit continued to be the media of
exchanges; and the instinctive or experimental perception of this truth,
combined with other motives, is what has led men to their various
attempts to provide a money substitute for gold and silver. Lycurgus, in
Sparta, found it, as he supposed, in stamped leather; but modern wisdom
has preferred paper. The degree of success attained by Lycurgus we do
not know; but of the success of the moderns we do know, by some one
hundred and fifty years of recurring disaster. There are some steeds
that cannot be ridden; they are so fractious and intractable, that, put
whom you will upon their back, he is thrown, and invent what snaffle or
breaking-bit you may, they will not be held to an equable or moderate
pace. And of this sort, judging by the past attempts, is Paper Money.
All the ingenuity and efforts of the most skillful trainers of the Old