THE THEORY OF MONEY AND BANKS INVESTIGATED. BY GEORGE TUCKER, PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, BOSTON: CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1839, BY GEORGE TUCKER, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of Massachusetts. PRINTED BY WILLIAM A. HALL & CO. PREFACE. THE reverse of what Hobbes, with as much justice as wit, says of words, may be said of bank notes: they are the money of wise men, and the counters of fools. When prudently and judiciously used, they perform all the functions of money; but, when foolishly made cheap by excess, they are little better than counters, to mark how much has been lost by the gambling of the community. There are few subjects of a practical character on which men differ so widely as have the people of the United States on the policy of banks, or on which their conflicting opinions have been pushed to such violent extremes. Thus, while the more zealous friends of these institutions, confounding wealth with its signs, overrate the utility of paper credit, and attribute to it a creative power which metallic money itself does not possess, their opponents, not distinguishing between the uses and abuses of banks, see, in those useful, almost indispensable, handmaids to commerce nothing but mis |