Democratick Editorials: Essays in Jacksonian Political Economy
By William Leggett
Ten years after Thomas Jefferson’s death in 1826, an outspoken young editor in New York City was reformulating and extending the Jeffersonian philosophy of equal rights. William Leggett, articulating his views in the columns of the New York
Evening Post,Examiner, and
Plaindealer, gained widespread recognition as the intellectual leader of the
laissez-faire wing of Jacksonian democracy…. [From the Foreword by Lawrence H. White.]
Translator/Editor
Lawrence H. White, ed.
First Pub. Date
1834
Publisher
Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc. Liberty Press
Pub. Date
1984
Comments
Essays first published 1834-1837.
Copyright
Portions of this edited edition are under copyright. Picture of William Leggett courtesy of United States Library of Congress. Original contains the inscription: "Engraved by Sealey, from a Painting by T. S. Cummings, N A." and includes Leggett's signature below.
- Foreword by Lawrence H. White
- Part I, 1. True Functions of Government
- Part I, 2. The Reserved Rights of the People
- Part I, 3. Objects of the Evening Post
- Part I, 4. Reply to the Charge of Lunacy
- Part I, 5. The Legislation of Congress
- Part I, 6. Religious Intolerance
- Part I, 7. Direct Taxation
- Part I, 8. The Course of the Evening Post
- Part I, 9. Chief Justice Marshall
- Part I, 10. Prefatory Remarks
- Part I, 11. The Sister Doctrines
- Part I, 12. The True Theory of Taxation
- Part I, 13. Strict Construction
- Part I, 14. Legislative Indemnity for Losses from Mobs
- Part I, 15. The Despotism of the Majority
- Part I, 16. Morals of Legislation
- Part I, 17. The Morals of Politics
- Part II, 1. Bank of United States
- Part II, 2. Small Note Circulation
- Part II, 3. The Monopoly Banking System
- Part II, 4. Uncurrent Bank Notes
- Part II, 5. Fancy Cities
- Part II, 6. Causes of Financial Distress
- Part II, 7. Why Is Flour So Dear
- Part II, 8. Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents
- Part II, 9. Strictures on the Late Message
- Part II, 10. The Value of Money
- Part II, 11. The Way to Cheapen Flour
- Part II, 12. The Money Market and Nicholas Biddle
- Part II, 13. The Pressure, the Cause of it, and the Remedy
- Part II, 14. Connexion of State with Banking
- Part II, 15. The Crisis
- Part II, 16. The Bankrupt Banks
- Part II, 17. What We Must Do, and What We Must Not
- Part II, 18. The Foresight of Individual Enterprise
- Part II, 19. The Safety Fund Bubble
- Part II, 20. Separation of Bank and State
- Part II, 21. The Remedy for Broken Banks
- Part II, 22. Blest Paper Credit
- Part II, 23. Questions and Answers
- Part II, 24. The True and Natural System
- Part II, 25. The Bugbear of the Bank Democrats
- Part II, 26. Bank and State
- Part II, 27. Theory and Practice
- Part II, 28. Separation of Bank and State
- Part II, 29. Specie Basis
- Part II, 30. The Natural System
- Part II, 31. The Credit System and the Aristocracy
- Part II, 32. The Divorce of Politicks and Banking
- Part III, 1. Riot at the Chatham-Street Chapel
- Part III, 2. Governor McDuffie's Message
- Part III, 3. The Abolitionists
- Part III, 4. Reward for Arthur Tappan
- Part III, 5. The Anti-Slavery Society
- Part III, 6. Abolitionists
- Part III, 7. Slavery No Evil
- Part III, 8. Progress of Fanaticism
- Part III, 9. An Argument Against Abolition Refuted
- Part III, 10. Commencement of the Administration of Martin Van Buren
- Part III, 11. The Question of Slavery Narrowed to a Point
- Part III, 12. Abolition Insolence
- Part IV, 1. Despotism of Andrew Jackson
- Part IV, 2. The Division of Parties
- Part IV, 3. Rich and Poor
- Part IV, 4. The Street of the Palaces
- Part IV, 5. American Nobility
- Part IV, 6. The Inequality of Human Condition
- Part IV, 7. A Bad Beginning
- Part IV, 8. The Whig Embassy to Washington, and Its Result
- Part IV, 9. Right Views Among the Right Sort of People
- Part IV, 10. Newspaper Nominations
- Part IV, 11. Foreign Paupers
- Part V, 1. Monopolies: I
- Part V, 2. A Little Free-Trade Crazy
- Part V, 3. Asylum for Insane Paupers
- Part V, 4. Monopolies: II
- Part V, 5. Revolutionary Pensioners
- Part V, 6. Joint-Stock Partnership Law
- Part V, 7. The Ferry Monopoly
- Part V, 8. Free Trade Post Office
- Part V, 9. Stock Gambling
- Part V, 10. Weighmaster General
- Part V, 11. State Prison Monopoly
- Part V, 12. Corporation Property
- Part V, 13. Regulation of Coal
- Part V, 14. Free Ferries and an Agrarian Law
- Part V, 15. Thanksgiving Day
- Part V, 16. Municipal Docks
- Part V, 17. Associated Effort
- Part V, 18. The Coal Question
- Part V, 19. The Corporation Question
- Part V, 20. Free Trade Weights and Measures
- Part V, 21. Associated Effort
- Part V, 22. Sale of Publick Lands
- Part V, 23. Manacles Instead of Gyves
- Part V, 24. The Meaning of Free Trade
- Part V, 25. Gambling Laws
- Part V, 26. Free Trade Post Office
- Part V, 27. Free Trade, Taxes, and Subsidies
- Part V, 28. Meek and Gentle with These Butchers
- Part V, 29. The Cause of High Prices, and the Rights of Combination
- Part V, 30. Omnipotence of the Legislature
- Part VI, 1. Rights of Authors
- Part VI, 2. The Rights of Authors
- Part VI, 3. Right of Property in the Fruits of Intellectual Labour
THE MONEY MARKET AND NICHOLAS BIDDLE
Plaindealer, April 1, 1837. Title added. Text abridged and extract deleted.
The money-market has been in a violent ferment during the past week. Meetings of the merchants, “protracted meetings,” and frequent informal conferences have been held. The result of the whole matter has been an application to the Philadelphia Money Autocrat, Nicholas Biddle,
*27 for his gracious and merciful interposition. “Drowning men catch at straws,” and a mere
man of straw has the bank potentate proved himself to be on this occasion. His worshippers, however, reverence him as possessing the attributes of potentiality, and their homage is as fervent as that of a race of croakers of old to King Log….
*28
Either Nicholas Biddle has the prodigious money power which the merchants ascribe to him, or he has not. If he has in truth the power of relieving the financial distresses of the times, then the ground of the last administration for opposing the renewal of the charter of such a potential institution, which holds the destinies of the Confederacy in the hollow of its hand, and which can create plenty or scarcity, prosperity or ruin, at the volition of a single mind, is shown to have been correct. If he has not this power, what a wretched farce is now played off before the community. But the merchants obviously believe in his potentiality, and thus, so far as they are concerned, acknowledge the validity of General Jackson’s original and chief position. Yet they opposed him for assuming it. This, then, shows that their temporary pecuniary interest outweighs with them the eternal political interests of their country. What a commentary on the patriotism of the desk and the ledger!
But are the proposed measures
*29 truly measures of relief, or are they only calculated to arrest, for a brief space, the descending blow, to fall at last with accelerated force and augmented weight, not on the heads now justly exposed to the shock, but on the heads of those who, not having been participants in the enormities of mad speculation, have not merited its terrible consequences? The latter clause of this alternative question, it seems to us, must be answered in the affirmative.
What has produced the evil state of things under which the community now groans? A too wide extension of credit, far surpassing the demands of healthy and legitimate business, and diffusing itself to all sorts of chimerical enterprizes. The legitimate business of a country is measured by the amount of its exportation and the domestick consumption of its own products. When it exceeds this limit it becomes unhealthy speculation, certain to terminate, sooner or later, in revulsion and ruin; as the machine, driven beyond the rate of speed fixed by the laws of its mechanism, is sure to be thrown out of repair, if not broken all to pieces. That this is the case with our community is a position too self-evident to require argument. The plan of relief, as it is called, which is now proposed, is a mere plan to put off the day of payment of the immensely over-inflated amount of debt. But the means of procras[tina]tion are of the most expensive kind. Those who are to receive the benefit of the extension of credit, will be obliged, in the nature of things, to pay prodigious rates of interest for the present funds they realize, and the day of ultimate payment will find them less able to meet their obligations than they are now. Those whose imaginary wealth consists in houses and lands held at a nominal value far exceeding their intrinsick worth, will not suffer the bubble which they have so long fancied actual substance, to burst into empty air, as long as they can keep up the sparkling nothing by forced loans, procured at any rate of extortion. Neither will they retrench their luxurious style of expenditure, assumed in the confidence of sudden wealth. The shock which is thus deferred will thus fall at last with accumulated force. But in the meanwhile one set of creditors will be substituted for another. The banks, which, if the crisis were now to take place, would sustain their share, or
a share, of the loss, will, in the interval of prolonged credit, take good care to entrench themselves behind triple securities. The foreign creditors, in extending indulgence, will be equally on the alert to secure ultimate payment; and the blow will finally fall on the mechanick and labourer, on thousands of general creditors, who, if men were now suffered to experience the natural consequences of their rashness and folly of speculation, would come in for an equal portion of indemnity.
It is our s[i]ncere conviction that the proposed measure of procrastination, and any measure of procrastination, can be followed only by an increase of ultimate evil. That evil may be spread over a wider surface, but it will not be diminished in amount. The old saying, that
the hair of the dog is a cure for his bite, will be found as false in its present, as in its more usual application. It is seldom the same thing possesses utterly opposite qualities. There is a new theory in medicine which administers as a remedy that which caused the disease. The merchants and Mr. Biddle are now for applying this theory to business. An excessive inflation of bank credit caused the evil; and they now propose a still further inflation as the cure. The traveller who warmed his frozen hands with his breath in the cave of the Satyr, and afterwards blew in his porridge for an opposite purpose, excited the admiration of his host. We shall not less admire the miraculous qualities of Nicholas Biddle if the breath of his nostrils can produce such contrary results. The frog, in the fable, when he was blown up to unnatural dimensions, finding himself in pain, asked to be still further distended; but he was destroyed, not relieved, by the experiment. When the rain for forty days and forty nights covered the earth with a deluge, it was not a continuation of the storm that caused the waters to subside. We doubt if the community can be rescued from the dreadful consequences of a deluge of bank credit, by a further effusion from the fountain of evil.
The Rivals (1775).—Ed.
THE MONEY MARKET AND NICHOLAS BIDDLE
THE PRESSURE—THE CAUSE OF IT—AND THE REMEDY
CONNEXION OF STATE WITH BANKING
THE CRISIS