About the time of these foreign events, our own bank system underwent a change; and all these causes, in my view of the subject, concurred to produce the great shock which took place in our commercial cities, and in many parts of the country.  The year 1819 was a year of numerous failures, and very considerable distress, and would have furnished far better grounds than exist at present for that gloomy representation of our condition which has been presented.  Mr. Speaker has alluded to the strong inclination which exists, or has existed, in various parts of the country, to issue paper money, as a proof of great existing difficulties.  I regard it rather as a very productive cause of those difficulties; and the committee will not fail to observe, that there is, at this moment, much the loudest complaint of distress precisely where there has been the greatest attempt to relieve it by systems of paper credit.  And, on the other hand, content, prosperity, and happiness are most observable in those parts of the country where there has been the least endeavor to administer relief by law.  In truth, nothing is so baneful, so utterly ruinous to all true industry, as interfering with the legal value of money, or attempting to raise artificial standards to supply its place.  Such remedies suit well the spirit of extravagant speculation, but they sap the very foundation of all honest acquisition.  By weakening the security of property, they take away all motive for exertion.  Their effect is to transfer property.  Whenever a debt is allowed to be paid by any thing less valuable than the legal currency in respect to which it was contracted, the difference between the value of the paper given in payment and the legal currency is precisely so much property taken from one man and given to another, by legislative enactment.

When we talk, therefore, of protecting industry, let us remember that the first measure for that end is to secure it in its earnings; to assure it that it shall receive its own.  Before we invent new modes of raising prices, let us take care that existing prices are not rendered wholly unavailable, by making them capable of being paid in depreciated paper.  I regard, Sir, this issue of irredeemable paper as the most prominent and deplorable cause of whatever pressure still exists in the country; and, further, I would put the question to the members of this committee, whether it is not from that part of the people who have tried this paper system, and tried it to their cost, that this bill receives the most earnest support?  And I cannot forbear to ask, further, whether this support does not proceed rather from a general feeling of uneasiness under the present condition of things, than from the clear perception of any benefit which the measure itself can confer?  Is not all expectation of advantage centred in a sort of vague hope, that change may produce relief?  Debt certainly presses hardest where prices have been longest kept up by