live on the interest.  He therefore gives it to A, in exchange for A’s certificates of public stock.  Now, then, A has the money to employ in business, which B so employed before.  B has the money on interest to live on, which A lived on before:  and the public pays the interest to B, which they paid to A before.  Here is no new creation of capital, no additional money employed, nor even a change in the employment of a single dollar.  The only change is of place between A and B, in which we discover no creation of capital, nor public blessing.  Suppose, again, the public to owe nothing.  Then A not having lent his money to the public, would be in possession of it himself, and would go into business without the previous operation of selling stock.  Here again, the same quantity of capital is employed as in the former case, though no public debt exists.  In neither case is there any creation of active capital, nor other difference than that there is a public debt in the first case, and none in the last; and we may safely ask which of the two situations is most truly a public blessing?  If, then, a public debt be no public blessing, we may pronounce a fortiori, that a private one cannot be so.  If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to any body, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent, on it.  As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which, they have given us two hundred millions of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air, as Morris’s notes did.  We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of ‘a public debt being a public blessing,’ and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself.  In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy:  but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper.  I have called the actual circulation of bank paper in the United States, two hundred millions of dollars.  I do not recollect where I have seen this estimate; but I retain the impression that I thought it just at the time.  It may be tested, however, by a list of the banks now in the United States, and the amount of their capital.  I have no means of recurring to such a list for the present day:  but I turn to two lists in my possession for the years of 1803 and 1804.

In 1803, there were thirty-four banks, whose capital was $28,902,000

In 1804, there were sixty-six, consequently thirty-two additional ones.  Their capital is not stated, but at the average of the others (excluding the highest, that of the United States, which was of ten millions) they would be of six hundred thousand dollars each, and add.........19,200,000