DATE: April 5, 1848

TOWN: Washington

SOURCE: Daily National Intelligencer

The invention of the present circulating medium has generally been regarded as the foundation of the extended system of commerce which has contributed so largely to the happiness of mankind. Whether it was expedient in barbarous times to use such a method of facilitating exchanges we cannot pretend to decide; but that it is not the best adapted to the present times may be made obvious to the meanest capacity. The matured commercial energies of the nineteenth century need not lean on the props which assisted the infancy of traffic. To vulgar minds--and such are those of all practical and theoretical men--the divisibility and portability of the precious metals have always appeared the qualities which particularly adapted them for medium of exchange. These we have long considered as precisely the causes of some of the greatest evils of our social intercourse; evils which we can see no mode of obviating, except that of boldly renouncing the dangerous use of metals, returning to the wise customs of our antediluvian forefathers, and effecting all exchanges by the natural process of barter, or, at any rate, permitting no other than the ancient circulating medium, horned cattle.

Gold eagles, we are ready to admit, would not be such bad things, if it were not for their detestable division into dollars, shillings, and cents. There would be few objections to the revival of the ancient talent; but, as long as we have our present scale of small moneys, so long must the great practical evil of existence--the demand for ready money and prompt payment--harass that unfortunate class of men, the payer. The payment of small bills is the greatest annoyance of man in a civilized state. For large bills he makes up his mind; these he generally incurs with some deliberation, and the prospect of being called on to pay them is always present to his mind, and induces him to shape his expenses accordingly. At any, rate he is generally allowed to take time to discharge them. But a small bill is an active poison; no long day is allowed by it to its victim, and their number makes up for their diminutive size. Their name is legion; they come in quick awful succession like a train of phantoms that haunt the opium-eater. They do not, once and calmly, drain the life-blood from you with the deadly avidity of a vampire, but haunt your waking and sleeping hours with the pertinacious sting of the mosquito, and render life a constant and burdensome succession of petty but maddening annoyances. And then, who is there on whom they produce that impression which the payment of money ought always to make on those who possess it in but a limited supply? Alas! it is in these small driblets that our money imperceptibly glides from our hands. We forget that great law of nature, that the sum of the parts makes up the whole; we heed not the evanescence of our fifty and twenty-dollar notes in the shape of small changes; we convert the solidity of eagles into the fluidity of dollars--the pence-table is not before our eyes. Who is there that keepeth watch and ward over single dollars? Who counteth the outgoings of dimes and fips? Who charisheth the cent and its moiety as the seeds of greater coin? Few, indeed, there be who are endowed with such wisdom, and few who do not repent over the emptiness of a gradually eviscerated purse.