from all forms of internal taxes for the support of our Government.

All our financial legislation has been calculated to build up and maintain a union of more than two thousand National Banks, for banks are a unit in their endeavor to obtain for the use of their money the largest amount, that the laws will allow them to receive.

The persons, having charge of the banks will always be on the alert to get their powers enlarged by legislattive enactments, though I am compelled to hope, that the day will come, when the bankers themselves will do themselves everlasting honor by asking Congress to expunge all those unjust financial laws from the statute books of our country, as a disgrace to the civilization of the age.

The first of the laws passed for the preservation of our nation's life was for the issue of Treasury notes, that were made a legal tender and convertible at the pleasure of the holder, into five and six per cent. bonds. These notes were always as valuable as gold, until the bankers persuaded a majority of Congress to pass an act, that took away from the legal money its power to pay duties on imports and interest on bonds. This was an invalidating act and clearly at variance with both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution.

FINANCE CATECHISM.

(From the Daily Express.)

“REPUBLICAN.—Why do the Greenbackers or Nationals oppose the national banking system?

NATIONAL. Because it is unjust to the people. REPUBLICAN.-But will you make it plain, so that all can

see it as you do?

NATIONAL.-We will try. Let us go into the bank across the street and prove it by the banker himself.

NATIONAL.-Mr. Banker, how much money did you loan to the Government?

BANKER.-One million dollars, sir.

NATIONAL.-What security did you take for the loan?

BANKER.-I took the Government's bond payable in twenty years, drawing six per cent., gold interest. NATIONAL. Do you still hold that bond?

BANKER.-No; I pawned it to the Government, and received on it $900,000 of currency.

NATIONAL.-What did you do with the $900,000 of cur

rency?

BANKER.-I paid it out to the people for property. NATIONAL.-What security have the people, that the money you paid them is good?

BANKER.-My bond is on deposit as collateral for its final redemption by the Government.

NATIONAL.-Then you have parted with nine-tenths of your claim against the Government by passing it over to the people in exchange for their property? Or, in other words, the people have refunded to you ninety per cent. of your loan to the Government, and taken a lien on your bond?

BANKER.-Yes.

NATIONAL.-Do the people draw from the Government nine-tenths, or their proportion of the interest on the bond? BANKER.-Oh, no, I still continue to draw the entire interest, without being taxed; while the people, who own nine-tenths of the claim, draw no interest, and are taxed to pay mine.

NATIONAL.-Then really the Government owes you but $100,000 of the million, you having transferred $900,000 of the claim to the people, and at the same time the latter are taxed to pay you interest on the whole?

BANKER.-Those are about the facts under the law. NATIONAL.-To what extent does the law allow you, bankers, to carry this system of speculation? BANKER.-We are not limited by law.

to the

We can carry it

extent of the bonded debt of the nation.

It is one

of the nicest schemes ever invented. It is like a ratchet wheel; it takes all and gives nothing. The whole people are taxed to pay us interest on what they do not owe, while we are exempt even from our own burdens.

NATIONAL.-Do you expect to hypothecate more of your bonds for currency and transfer them to the people for property?

BANKER.-Yes, as soon as we can get the infernal greenbacks out of competition, and property values are depreciated enough to enable us to rope in three dollars worth for one of our currency. This we intended to do, when we got a clause inserted in the Redemption Act to allow us to inflate our bank currency without limit.

NATIONAL. What amount of bonds do you now hold, which you are at liberty to put up for bank currency?

BANKER. Nearly ten thousand million dollars, with what we already have up.

NATIONAL.-By handling the $2,000,000,000 of bonds and the nine-tenths or $1,800,000,000 of currency, as you did your million dollars and $900,000 of currency, what would be the result, financially, of your investment?

BANKER. The result will be, we shall carry but onetenth, or two hundred millions of the public debt, while drawing interest on the whole. The people will carry ninetenths of the burden, draw no interest, but have the priv ilege of paying ours.

to?

NATIONAL.-How much will your annual interest amount

BANKER.-About one hundred million.

NATIONAL.-What do the taxpayers get in return?
BANKER.-Nothing.

NATIONAL.-Then you contracted to extend a certain favor to the Government, for which you were to receive $100,000,000 in gold per year, from the people. But through the agency of your national banking machinery, you are enabled to make the people perform nine-tenths of your contract, while you receive the entire reward. Is not this a most outrageous robbery-a swindle upon the people? BANKER. (John G. Deshler, President Franklin National Bank, Columbus, Ohio).-If the people are such d-d fools, as to vote for men to put saddles on their backs, spurs

on my boots, and then invite me to ride, I am not going on foot. If it is robbery, the people, who sustain the party, that authorized the robbery, are to blame and not the robbers."

If this is not an overdrawn picture of our present system of banks, deceitfully called national, I would most sincerely implore the owners of these banks to ward off such a train of evils, as fell to the lot of Belshazzar, as a consequence of his not taking the advice of his prophet Daniel, when he said, "O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor." By not availing yourselves of the law, passed by a corrupt Congress, you will save yourselves and your country from the disasters indicated by the handwriting on the wall!

Bastiat, the French political economist, uttered a great truth, when he said:

"When a Government fails in its duty to organize and execute Constitutional laws, such a failure opens the door for the introduction of all forms of corruption and plunder, and plundering will go on just as long as plundering is allowed to be a profitable business."

It is time, that we made plundering unprofitable; and I hope I shall be so fortunate as to convince the owners of National Banks, that this is their great opportunity to secure to themselves, to our country, and to the world, one of the greatest blessings, that ever fell to the lot of man.

If this should come to pass, I should be able to say with one of old: "Now, O, Lord, let thy servant depart in peace; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."

HON. A. A. HARDENBERG, M. C.

PETER COOPER.

NEW YORK, June, 1882.

DEAR SIR: I received your kind letter of May 24, with pleasure, seeing that your speech was misreported, as the term "infamous" does not occur in it. Honest difference on any subject is fair, whereas personal abuse is unfair.

Throughout your discourse you speak of the danger of withdrawing bank reserves, amounting to $128,000,000, if the banks are not re-chartered; but you seem to overlook, that Congress alone has power to replace this amount by legal tender Treasury notes, a power, which it cannot delegate.

Page 5, you say: "My position is simply this: if you compel these banks to divide up all their reserves, you will thereby force a contraction of the currency to the extent of $128,000,000, which no greenback theory can provide against. And the men, who are now struggling to make a living for themselves and their families with their wages of a dollar and a half or two dollars a day, will be presenting themselves before you here, as they did during the years of 1877 and 1878, in their meetings every night about your Capitol, demanding some protection, demanding that some action be taken by you, that would furnish them with bread or with labor."

In my humble opinion, legal tender Treasury notes would amply provide against the dividing up of all the bank re

serves.

In your speech you do not tell these "struggling men," that their parental Government is paying four per cent. interest in gold on $343,834,000, circulated by 2,200 banks, which ask now to be rechartered for twenty years longer. You do not tell them, that the interest on this sum amounts to $13,753,360 per year, and $275,067,200 in twenty years, besides the cost of keeping the deposits, besides liquidating the banks, that fail through mismanagement, and beside the lost and mutilated bills during twenty years, all of which belong to the people, and cannot be given away by Congress without violating the Constitution.

You observe, page 6: "First educate the people, not to communism, not to socialism, but to the principles of Democracy and of a pure Government."

I think it will be difficult to educate the American people of 1882 to perceive "principles of Democracy and of a pure Government" in a Congress, that legislates $275,067,200 in