supporters in opposition to this article in the constitution. As to justice, that will probably be administered at an earlier day. From his course it seems that one man has a perfect right to be discharged from all his liabilities "at one fell swoop." But woe to the measure that is general in its operation in benefiting all. The latter he characterizes as a fraudulent conception and as a professed Democrat contends in objecting to exemption that it will injure the credit system. That to our mind is one of its greatest beauties. "Consistency is a jewel," about these times.

SELECTIONS FROM THE MADISON WISCONSIN ARGUS THE LAST PRAYER

[October 13, 1846]

The Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette is out with a long prayer imploring the convention now in session not to shut the gate upon all banks whatever, but to leave some chance for the dear creatures. to live in some form. And rather than not have them live in any form, he would have them exist in a Democratic form, in an unexceptionable form-some such form as is tolerated by Democrats in the older states any form in fact which will secure the substance.

The arguments are of the same old blue stamp which have been trumpeted by bankites for the last half century and exploded as often as there have been new movers in the course of that time. The first of these arguments used by the Sentinel is that "we are in want of capital for our ordinary business purposes Of the thousands and tens of thousands who are flocking to our territory few possess more than barely enough to provide themselves with a homestead, or to start in the business in which they propose to embark.

Wisconsin thus far has suffered materially for the want of sufficient business capital. For several years we have been without any bank of discount and destitute of any local currency, except what has been furnished by the Insurance Company of this city.”

The people have indeed suffered a heap for the want of such a local "currency" as was furnished by the Wisconsin bank, the Mineral Point bank, the Hydraulic bank, the Milwaukee bank that wanted to be, and if the Insurance Company should now mizzen, the people would be flat broke!

But how is a bank to increase any man's capital? Every man can now have just as much money as he has the means to buy. How is a bank to increase his means wherewith to buy money? The banker will not give him his money, miserable stuff as it is, without an equivalent, and such an equivalent as supposes that his money is as good as specie. The argument of the bankite is that by chartering a bank the same man will become possessed of two yoke of oxen instead of one, and five pigs instead of three; else the bank would do him no good, for he would have no more means to buy money with than he had before, and buy it he must or go without it.

But the Sentinel and Gazette says that our citizens want to borrow money and they must have banks of their own from which to borrow. "We must remember that the question is not now bank or no bank;

but whether Wisconsin shall have moneyed institutions of her own, subject to her own supervision and control, and in which her own citizens can take an interest." Aye, gentlemen, that is the idea, and a capital one it is, too; our citizens are poor and want to borrow, and so they must have banks and lend-go to banking upon their debts-go to manufacturing capital from paper rags! Well, they have a precedent for it. Ohio has instituted an extensive state banking system, and the capital stock is the debts of the state. If debts make good banking capital, we have some amongst us who have judgments enough standing against them to enable them to go into banking again on a pretty extensive scale.

Our Whig neighbor says that he is "aware of strong prejudices existing in many quarters against banks, and as these institutions have heretofore been conducted in many of the states, these prejudices are not without good foundations." Prejudice? What is a prejudice? Why, according to our notion of the word, it is an opinion formed without evidence. An opinion, then, exists against banks, founded upon no evidence, but yet rests upon good evidence. We have repeatedly seen expansions and contractions of the currency by the agency of banks, inducing speculation, panic, and ruin in their turns, but the dread of the same consequences in future is all a "prejudice." The country has been swindled by millions through bank failures, bank suspensions, and bank frauds, but the indignation excited by this continuous train of villainies is all a "prejudice." But, says our neighbor, "Because one banking system has been found defective or odious, does it follow that all others are necessarily and equally bad?" Not exactly; but when every banking system which has ever been devised (and they are almost without number) has proved "defective and odious," and when the immutable laws of currency and trade clearly demonstrate the utter uselessness of paper money, it does follow that the whole rotten system should be suppressed.

We

The Sentinel says that "we cannot destroy bank paper. cannot even drive it from our borders. In spite of the most stringent laws that we can adopt, the bills of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Canada, and the eastern states, generally, will continue to circulate in our territory," and then he inquires whether we shall not choose the least of two evils, and have paper money of our own. Will the Sentinel hold his horses while we tell him that we can drive the bills of other states from our circulation, and will he be satisfied with a provision in the constitution which will do that very thing? Our

principle is: Of two evils choose neither. Just outlaw all paper money, whether of this state or any other, and the work is done. "What then," continues our contemporary, "will the convention do? Will they heed the testimony and profit by the experience of the older states, or will they carve out a new and untried path for themselves?" Well, they won't do anything else. "Will they discard all moneyed institutions, thus bringing us down to the hard currency, or making us dependent upon foreign banks which are strangers to us and our interests?" Indeed that is beyond our ken. That they will exclude banking from our state is quite certain. That ball is in motion, and neither the cries, the tears, nor the prayers of bankers can stop it; but whether they will exclude the trash of other states. or not is a problem. If they do not, we shall regard the whole antibank movement as a total failure; for the banks of other states can make our currency and swindle us out of our earnings just as easily as banks of our own, and they will just as certainly do it if we do not bar the door against it.

The article which we have been noticing is replete with errors from beginning to end, and it would require a volume on political economy to refute them all, and that we have not time just now to write.

BE SURE YOU'RE RIGHT-THEN GO AHEAD

[October 20, 1846]

Our friend of the Rock County Democrat is much alarmed lest the bank question should distract and divide the Democratic party of the territory and suggests that some compromise be made whereby banks may be permitted to exist within the state after a specified period. We think our neighbor is unnecessarily alarmed on this score. If we have not utterly mistaken the public sentiment upon this question, the Democratic party will be triumphantly sustained in prohibiting banks in the state of Wisconsin both now and forever. If there was ever a distinct issue placed before the people, the question of bank or no bank, the question whether there should be incorporated in the constitution a positive and absolute prohibition upon banking within the state without any compromise, qualification, or drawback, was before the people of this territory during the late canvass; and it was this issue coupled with the long cherished and loudly professed principles of the Democratic party which gave to that party its overwhelming majority in the constitutional convention; and it appears to us like a most preposterous idea that the

safety of the Democratic party requires any sort of compromise with banks or bank paper. On the contrary, if there is any dishonor attached to false professions and faithless promises (we allude to the party and not to individuals) such a compromise must inevitably involve the disgrace and ruin of the Democratic party in Wisconsin. The Democrat says:

We are opposed to banks and banking altogether, out of our great commercial cities, where the facilities afforded by them to trade seem to be needed. But we can scarcely pretend to foresee the condition and wants of this section of our vast republic fifteen or twenty years from this time-and not being able to foresee them, it strikes us that it would be very much beyond the stretch of our capacity to pretend to legislate for the people who are to be the actors on the stage at that day. With all our opposition to banks and banking, therefore, we do not see that any wrong would be committed, or any principle compromised, by fixing upon a limited time during which banking under all forms should be excluded from the commonwealth of Wisconsin, leaving it after that time an open question to be decided by the people as their own principles and the interests of the state may seem to require.

If we admit the principle that banks are necessary, either in city or country, now or hereafter, we abandon the doctrine of a metallic currency as a fallacy, and plead guilty to the oft repeated charges of our opponents of insincerity in professing it.

If we have at all comprehended the Democratic doctrine upon this subject, it is that the banking system in all its phases is radically wrong in principle and mischievous in its tendency and that it never can be otherwise. If this is the doctrine contended for by the Democratic party, and that doctrine be sanctioned by the principles of political science, the doctrine must hold good so long as the principles of science endure. If it be true in theory that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, it will prove true and safe in practice, and it will be just as true in theory and safe in practice one thousand years hence as it is now.

If, on the other hand, the Democratic doctrine is that banks and bank paper are indispensable facilities for the transaction of business and that the only question between parties has been one of expediency merely as to the plan, time, place, etc., then we must confess that there has been a great cry about a little wool and that upon this question there is no definable difference after all between the two leading parties of the country.

But we do insist that there is a more substantial difference between parties than this—that the question is and has been for the last fifteen years, substantially, bank or no bank, a mixed currency of specie and bank notes, or a pure currency of specie only