Mr. President, take away this credit, and what remains?  I do not ask what remains to the few, but to the many?  Take away this system of credit, and then tell me what is left for labor and industry, but mere manual toil and daily drudgery?  If we adopt a system that withdraws capital from active employment, do we not diminish the rate of wages?  If we curtail the general business of society, does not every laboring man find his condition grow daily worse?  In the politics of the day, Sir, we hear much said about divorcing the government from the banks; but when we abolish credit, we shall divorce labor from capital; and depend upon it, Sir, when we divorce labor from capital, capital is hoarded, and labor starves.

The declaration so often quoted, that “all who trade on borrowed capital ought to break,” is the most aristocratic sentiment ever uttered in this country.  It is a sentiment which, if carried out by political arrangement, would condemn the great majority of mankind to the perpetual condition of mere day-laborers.  It tends to take away from them all that solace and hope which arise from possessing something which they can call their own.  A man loves his own; it is fit and natural that he should do so; and he will love his country and its institutions, if he have some stake in that country, although it be but a very small part of the general mass of property.  If it be but a cottage, an acre, a garden, its possession raises him, gives him self-respect, and strengthens his attachment to his native land.  It is our happy condition, by the blessing of Providence, that almost every man of sound health, industrious habits, and good morals, can ordinarily attain, at least, to this degree of comfort and respectability; and it is a result devoutly to be wished, both for its individual and its general consequences.

But even to this degree of acquisition that credit of which I have already said so much is highly important, since its general effect is to raise the price of wages, and render industry productive.  There is no condition so low, if it be attended with industry and economy, that it is not benefited by credit, as any one will find, if he will examine and follow out its operations.

Sir, if there be any aristocrats in Massachusetts, the people are all aristocrats; because I do not believe there is on earth, in a highly civilized society, a greater equality in the condition of men than exists there.  If there be a man in the State who maintains what is called an equipage, has servants in livery, or drives four horses in his coach, I am not acquainted with him.  On the other hand, there are few who are not able to carry their wives and daughters to church in some decent conveyance.  It is no matter of regret or sorrow to us that few are very rich; but it is our pride and glory that few are very poor.  It is our still higher pride, and our just boast, as I think, that all her citizens possess means of intelligence and education, and that, of all her productions, she reckons among the very chiefest those which spring from the culture of the mind and the heart.