They will not be in a condition to extend their discounts,
but, in all probability, obliged to curtail them. Whence, then, are the
means to come for paying this debt? and in what medium is payment to be
made? If all this may be done with but slight pressure on the community,
what course of conduct is to accomplish it? How is it to be done? What
other thirty millions are to supply the place of these thirty millions
now to be called in? What other circulation or medium of payment is to
be adopted in the place of the bills of the bank? The message, following
a singular train of argument, which had been used in this house, has a
loud lamentation upon the suffering of the Western States on account of
their being obliged to pay even interest on this debt. This payment of
interest is itself represented as exhausting their means and ruinous to
their prosperity. But if the interest cannot be paid without pressure,
can both interest and principal be paid in four years without pressure?
The truth is, the interest has been paid, is paid, and may continue to
be paid, without any pressure at all; because the money borrowed is
profitably employed by those who borrow it, and the rate of interest
which they pay is at least two per cent lower than the actual value of
money in that part of the country. But to pay the whole principal in
less than four years, losing, at the same time, the existing and
accustomed means and facilities of payment created by the bank itself,
and to do this without extreme embarrassment, without absolute distress,
is, in my judgment, impossible.
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