20 BANKING THEORIES IN UNITED STATES
never will.” ! And Thomas Jefferson, who seems to have profited
little from a reading of Hume and Smith, favored “banks of
discount for cash” and banks of deposit, but was irreconcilably
opposed to banks with the privilege of note issue.2 “I sincerely
believe, with you,” he wrote to John Taylor in 1816, that
banking establishments are more dangerous than standing
armies.’ ” 8 His fellow patriot, John Adams, condemned the in-
stitution with characteristic vigor. “Our whole banking system,”
he wrote in 1811, “I ever abhorred, I continue to abhorr [sic] and
I shall die abhorring.” For “every bank of discount, every bank
by which interest is to be paid or profit of any kind made by the
deponent, is downright corruption. It is taxing the public for the
benefit and profit of individuals; it is worse than old tenor, con-
tinental currency, or any other paper money.” * Every dollar of
a bank bill that is issued beyond the quantity of gold and silver
in the vaults,” Adams maintained, ‘‘represents nothing, and
is therefore a cheat upon somebody.” ?
The dislike of banks that Jackson’s hard-money school had
nurtured during the period of the “bank war” was fanned to
fever heat by the suspension of 1837. An anti-bank convention
was held in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on July fourth of that
year, and the Loco Foco party held indignation meetings in
several cities.® As late as 1853 the secretary of the treasury
expressed the hope that the increase in supply of the precious
metals in this country (following upon the California discoveries)
would continue a few years longer, so that we might yet find it
possible to abolish banks and return to a purely metallic cur-
rency.” This animosity toward banks found reflection in their
L «Country Clown,” cited in Matthew Carey’s Letters to Seybert (1810), p. 56.
2 Writings, ix, 417.
Se dbid., %, 31.
t John Adams, Letter to Benjamin Rush (August 28, 1811), Works (C.F. Adams
edition), ix, 638.
5 Letter to F. A. Vanderkemp (February 16, 1809), ibid., ix, 610. See also,
Letter to John Taylor (March 12, 1819), ibid., X, 375.
6 See Niles’ Register (1837), vol. lii, for an account of these.
7 James Guthrie, Finance Reports (1853), p. 10. Cp. Message of the Governor
of Michigan (January 2, 1843), in United States House of Representatives, 29th
Congress, First Session, Document 226, p. 1215.
