At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about ’a public debt being a public blessing’; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures, and agriculture.  This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams, and the gulls of that size entered bona fide into it.  But the art and mystery of banks is a wonderful improvement on that.  It is established on the principle, that ’private debts are a public blessing;’ that the evidences of those private debts, called bank-notes, become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of the United States.  Here are a set of people, for instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from the repayment of these debts beyond a given proportion, (generally estimated at one third.) And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead of paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we see in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is levied again on us through the medium of commerce.  And they are so ready still to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to let themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them the same premium of six or eight per cent, interest, and on the same legal exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the debt, when it shall be called for.  But let us look at this principle in its original form, and its copy will then be equally understood.  ‘A public debt is a public blessing.’  That our debt was juggled from forty-three up to eighty millions, and funded at that amount, according to this opinion, was a great public blessing, because the evidences of it could be vested in commerce, and thus converted into active capital, and then the more the debt was made to be, the more active capital was created.  That is to say, the creditors could now employ in commerce the money due them from the public, and make from it an annual profit of five per cent., or four millions of dollars.  But observe, that the public were at the same time paying on it an interest of exactly the same amount of four millions of dollars.  Where then is the gain to either party, which makes it a public blessing?  There is no change in the state of things, but of persons only.  A has a debt due to him from the public, of which he holds their certificate as evidence, and on which he is receiving an annual interest.  He wishes, however, to have the money itself, and to go into business with it.  B has an equal sum of money in business, but wishes now to retire, and