We come now to consider what is necessary, in order to restore the currency of the United States to a specie footing. This restoration is demanded alike by motives of justice and sound policy. No contracts can be well entered into, unless the currency of the country is upon a substantial and permanent footing of redemption. It is a matter which concerns every individual in the community; it is especially so to the General Government in view of its extraordinary expenditures: and no commercial prosperity can be maintained without it.
A restoration of public and private credit can be accomplished only by an observance of those sound principles of finance that have been announced by the wise men of our own and other countries. Mr. Alexander Hamilton, Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, each in his turn advocated a national institution, by which the currency of the country could be placed upon a reliable and permanent footing. Such an institution should control the currency and receive surplus capital on deposit; but need not interfere with the legitimate operations of the State banks as borrowers and lenders of money, nor encourage in the slightest degree, through loans, any speculative movements among the people.
In the next place our people must resort to and maintain more economy in their individual expenditure, and thus preserve a balance of foreign trade in our own favor. It is shown that, during the fiscal year ending 30 June, 1860, there were imported into the United States goods, wholly manufactured, of the value of ... $166,073,000, partially manufactured, 62,720,000.
We can dispense with two thirds of such articles during our present national reverses, and rely upon our own domestic labor for similar products, viz.:
| Manufactures of Wool, | $37,937,000 |
| Manufactures of Silk, | 32,948,000 |
| Manufactures of Cotton, | 32,558,000 |
| Manufactures of Flax, | 10,736,000 |
| Laces and Embroideries, | 4,017,000 |
| Gunny Cloths, Mattings, | 2,386,000 |
| Clothing | 2,101,000 |
| Iron, and Manufactures of Iron and Steel | 18,694,000 |
| China and Earthenware, | 4,387,000 |
| Clocks, Chronometers, Watches, | 2,890 |
| Boots, Shoes and Gloves, | 2,230,000 |
| Miscellaneous | 15,189 |
| —————— | |
| 166,073,000 |
besides other articles exceeding one hundred millions in value.
Rather than send abroad thirty or forty millions in gold annually, as we have done of late years, let us dispense with foreign woollen goods, silk and cotton goods, laces, &c., and encourage our own mills, at least until the war and its debt are over.
Mr. Madison said much in a few words, when he said:
'The theory of 'let us alone' supposes that all nations concur in a perfect freedom of commercial intercourse. Were this the case, they would, in a commercial view, be but one nation, as much as the several districts composing a particular nation; and the theory would be as applicable to the former as the latter. But this golden age of free trade has not yet arrived, nor is there a single nation that has set the example. No nation can, indeed, safely do so, until a reciprocity, at least, be insured to it. * * A nation, leaving its foreign trade, in all cases, to regulate itself, might soon find it regulated by other nations into subserviency to a foreign interest.'
There is much good sense, too, in the views promulgated by another president, who said, in relation to our independence of other nations: