WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1838
224
it was not expected. It has approximated nearer to it than any other new Government has ever done in the period of time. What cause of complaint, then, is there? If our own citizens will not give a brief credit to the Government, can we expect for- eigners to lend us theirs? Shall the frail currency we have be prostrated, the public faith violated by the incapacity of the Government to meet prior en- gagements, and accumulated evils inflicted on the country to satisfy the eagerness and impatience of individuals? The amount authorized by the Congress, at its former session, re-issued as received into the Treasury, is in my judgment, as much as the operations of trade and credit of the country can sustain. By the act to sustain the currency of the country, passed in December last, nothing but gold and silver, or the promissory notes of the Government, can be received in payment of duties on goods imported, or other dues of the Government. These sources of demand, with such amounts as will naturally be paid in this species of paper in the collection of the direct tax, cannot fail to return to the Treasury a sum more than sufficient to meet every disbursement and appropriation con- templated by the bill. A little investigation will satisfy the Congress of this fact. . If they should now maintain, steadily, the policy heretofore adopted, and issue only the amounts returned into the Treasury, no shock would be given to the credit this paper has already acquired, either at home or abroad; but on the contrary, a large addition of confidence and credit would be secured; and the de- mand for its use would, it is firmly believed, within thirty days after the termination of the present session of Congress, place it at par throughout the Republic, and in the city of New Orleans. We should then have a currency equivalent to gold and·silver, and instead of paying two or three dollars for the value of one in the price of merchandise, and articles of commerce, all classes of the community would receive an equivalent for the money they paid. The present amount of circulation, when raised to this char- acter, would be worth more to the community, and would form a medium for the transaction of a larger amount of business than the issue of a million depreciated as this pap~r has been. It would have afforded me great pleasure to have co-operated with the Congress in a measure of this kind. It is, perhaps,
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