WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1843
168
value and what you ought to receive it at. You surely cannot regard its nominal value when taken for goods, as any criterion for you. Take it for what you can fairly sell it for in the market, and then you will reach the fair standard. You think the law "odious in its character, " or bad. If so we have had all the odium that can result. Now I want to secure all the benefits-if we do not, the country cannot stand. The drafts which I ordered to be drawn on the Custom House, I expected to be met by the amount chargeable to the Govern- ment and corresponding to the rates, and dollar for dollar of the receipts of the Custom House. This will test the principle. If this tallies, then the rule works well; if it does not, there is discordance somewhere. I solicited you not to raise the exchequers at the Custom House till they came up to you, and were established at that. You cannot raise them again without a positive violation of law until they are current in cash in the town. You now allow one fourth, or twenty-five per cent for speculation. The law is either a law, or it is no law. It is either a law in whole, or it cannot be in part. J say it is whole and entire, and as such ought to be preserved and maintained to the letter and spirit of its intention. It is no standard what a merchant may or may not sell his goods nominally for. He may say he will take a note, or any representative of value at any price, but it must be recollected that he pays in goods at his own price, without reference to the real value of what he receives. His own price and per cent when he says that he will allow seventy or one hundred cents on the Exchequer dollar, may be more than one hundred per cent more than his cash price for goods, and so reduce in effect the cost to him to thirty-five or fifty cents. This criterion would be unsafe. It will be in vain for the Executfve to strive to sustain the currency, unless he is assisted. The lower it is taken at the Customhouse, the sooner it will be consumed, and the demand increased. If thirty thousand dollars were in circulation and it was received at three for one, it would be consumed in less than one third of the time than if it were taken at par. Before any more advances are made by you, as to what you will receive it at, it will be proper to advise with the Treasury Department, as no evil can grow out of a little delay; and every subject meets direct notice as soon as it is presented.
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