dollars, and courts of law would do well to follow their example. It would be a deathblow to the present credit system, and that would be one good thing, and it would create a credit system where the claim to confidence would be based on a known character for probity, which would be a much better one yet. We have spoken before of the saving to the community at large, and will not repeat; but we must add that few look sufficiently to the importance of relieving the community from this immense tax. A tax on their time as witnesses, jurors, plaintiffs, and defendants, and a tax on them (and on the most industrious it falls the heaviest, as all taxes do) to support constables, justices, and unfledged (and never to be fledged) lawyerings, who live and die in the petty courts alone.

FREE BANKING

[June 2, 1846]

The Wisconsin Argus objects to free banking as well as any other, saying it would as soon be shaved by incorporated shinplasters as by individual trash.10 So would we; but we do not want to touch either. When we speak of individual banking, we speak of that free banking that we are inclined to think cannot be properly suppressed by law, and can, of course, do no harm.

Every man has a right in our opinion to issue his note of hand, and it is of but little consequence whether it is printed or written. If, in addition, he can convince men that his promises to pay are trustworthy, we hold he has a right to do so, and has established the only kind of bank that we cannot refuse existence to. We do not ask men to do this, nor do we wish to see any man's paper make a currency, however limited its circulation may be, but still, believing it to be one of his proper rights, we say let him exercise it. Whenever

10 For this article see post, 444.

you take any right away from a man, however unimportant it is, you may be sure you have given someone else a privilege he ought not to have had, and that has of course done injury to the mass of the people. Incorporating banking companies was in fact the mode by which the individual system of banking was destroyed, and the world has suffered enough to throw away privileges and return to rights.

We have no fear that at the present day free banking will ever be able to furnish currency. We believe it will only supply the place of exchange, and take the position that shaving brokers have usurped. We believe that individual bankers will exist and that their paper will be furnished to merchants for exchange, either in the shape of bills on each other or in the shape of individual notes; and this will be a proper business, and one to which no one ought to object.

It may be that men will be enabled to make a currency, and we can only say so be it. We hate banks in any shape with a tolerably bitter hatred; but if a man can make his own notes so good that his neighbors choose to take them as money, why we cannot object to it. If their confidence rests in his property, very well, if in his honesty, better yet; if in nothing at all, it is their lookout. They will not be obliged to take his paper because when there are no incorporations there will be enough specie for circulation.

To us it seems necessary, before passing any law, to ask whether there is in it anything that restricts a man in the exercise of his natural rights, or anything that favors a set of men, or a man, improperly. If either is the case the law is wrong. In banking laws we have been giving privileges

roughout the United States for many a year; and bitterly have we paid for it. Losses upon losses have been borne by

poor because they were unable to help themselves. They ore obliged, not by law but by the effect of law, to receive bonk notes as coin; and, although they had little confidence

them, still the very legislation that made them a currency

made them hard to be come at by the very poor it was pretended they were to assist.

At the present time there is a mixed currency here; and people touch the paper part of it as if it was remarkably hot. Your most inveterate bankite will pocket the silver and hand over the note to pay his bill. Your merchant will at this moment prefer a produce draft to a bank bill, and that is equivalent to saying that he prefers the bill of a private banker whom he can trust of his own knowledge to the bill of an incorporated shaver whose only character is derived from an act of the legislature, and has at last become about as bad as it well can be.

The Argus hopes we will not consider it over ultra. No, we will not. What has generally been called ultraism has been the very place we were sure to stick in. Leggett was ultra, and we stuck closer to him than to anyone else we can remember. No. We are ultra and obstinate, and we hope to remain so; that is, we mean that the timid and conservative, as they style themselves, shall call us so. If a man means to do any good in the world he must be ultra, he must go beyond those around him, and must expect to bear sneers and to feel rubs, and he must also learn to be obstinate enough to care but little about them.

We have got somewhat tired of the common cant about ultraism. Ultraism and reform are precisely the same thing; and it is only the miserably timid, who fear every change of breeze, that fear them. We ought in this country to aim to reform, at ultraism, for years to come. The government of the country was ultra and was condemned as such by all Europe. Bonaparte was ultra in his notions of fighting and he beat all Europe by his very ultraism. Who would not be ultra in good if he could? Who would not go beyond others to do good things? This is all that ultraism means and it frightens none but the timid.

Geology was ultraism once and the whole church was afraid of it. Now it is to be learned by everyone. Astron

omy was in the same position. Everything that is good has been at some time denounced as ultra; but then, it is true, the denunciations come from the weak alone, from those of whom St. Paul says that they must be fed with milk and not with meat. They come from those who dare not believe, cannot think.

We like to see people earnest, to see them state their opinions strongly and defend them boldly. We would ten times rather argue with a bold, obstinate man than with one who will half agree with us. The latter we have no hope of, the former we may convince, and if we do we gain over a man who will fight for us as hard as he fought against us.

THE SCHOOL FUND

[June 16, 1846]

Whatever disposition may be made of the school lands, whether they are made a state fund, a county fund, or a town fund, they ought to be declared by the constitution a sacred deposit, and if by accident they should become diminished, a direct tax should at once be resorted to to make their value good.

We all know of how great value to a state is the education of the children of the whole people, and we likewise know that a liberal fund provided for such purpose is a great economy to the people at large. If knowledge is wealth to its possessor, the knowledge of a people is a still greater wealth to the state, tending not only to advance all in the race of improvement but to diminish crime and excess and to give people a resource above the mere thirst for wealth, that too often urges men to drive a state into expenditures they themselves would avoid as imprudent and useless.

For ourselves, we confess we should consider separate school systems better than one great state system with all its machinery at the capital, and with the interest removed from the people. We do not insist that a state system must be bad,

but it has some very strong objections. Among them are these. The superintendent has too much to do to oversee all the schools of the state. The whole machinery is too far removed from the people. The supervision of the common schools does not excite enough interest at home. The money is not generally funded to the best advantage. Donations are seldom made because a small sum would seem too pitiful to swell so large a fund, and none but rich, very rich men could afford to make one that would.

We are not now going to argue the question whether the whole lands ought to form one common fund for the state, or whether each section ought to be applied to the use of its own town, because we know that this must depend much upon feeling, and must probably be settled in the end by concession. We wish, however, to impress upon the people the necessity of thought upon the subject, and would suggest that, however the lands may be disposed of, either a county or town system, by division of funds, or by aggregation of them, would be preferable to a system too extended, provided that either the town or county be made liable for the funds and in case of its diminution, either by dishonesty or carelessness of officers, be forced to impose upon itself a direct tax to make up the amount. This would oblige us to appoint trustworthy officers and to take such security as should be reliable, and would ensure the safety of the fund in any event, while it might be increased in various ways, and the increase would be secured in the same manner.

We look at small school organizations as the most profitable on many accounts. The whole matter is under the immediate eye of the people and any one organized district, whether it be county or town, can be allowed to tax itself by vote as much as it chooses and make a fund ample enough for its own desires. Men who have the means can give to the fund and will see the benefits that accrue from the gift. Wherever the best organization is, that place will be held up as a model to others, and thus a strife for excellence will be engendered throughout the state that will do infinite good.