Saturday, October 14, 2023

Richard Rush to Senator Robert M. T. Hunter, April 3, 1852

SYDENHAM NEAR PHILADELPHIA, [Pa.], April 3rd, 1852.

MY DEAR SIR: My thanks for your Report on a change in the coinage, which I have not failed to read. The subject, as it has always appeared to me, is not an easy one to manage. In reading upon it, I have sometimes been ready to give up; and the most skilled in it are, after all, prone to end in guess-work, which they prefer to call "approximation." You are aware of this I see, though handling the whole matter very well.

I fully go with you in your most material point, the proportion of currency to production. What harm can arise you ask (page 9) from any probable increase of the precious metals, if both are allowed to swell the volume of currency? Your just answer follows. To my view, your closing sentences of the paragraph on page 7 are equally sound. An enlightened manufacturer in England once said to me that England could supply the whole world with manufactures. China included I asked? Yes he replied, "and another planet toboot, as large as our globe, if we could only open a market in another. Markets are all we want." He assumed that modern machinery gave England a productive working power equal to a population of three hundred millions. This is about the calculation of the Prince Joinville in his novel pamphlet, when he said that steam would now give to one French sailor the power of twenty. If this be anything like good guess-work, production must be greatly ahead of currency in the world. I confess I should rather be disposed to say, (to go on a little with guess-work,) that if the yield, annually of the precious metals were five times greater than it is at present, or than it is all likely to be for years and years to come, it would still lag much behind. production, and therefore be insufficient to produce the best results upon the wealth comforts and prosperity of communities. I observe that our minister in London, Mr. Lawrence, no bad guesser I should think on such matters, appears under no apprehension of a surfeit of gold from California. Your bill may lead us to expect silver change enough for our present wants; and I hope that the principles of your well-matured and carefully drawn Report may lay the foundation of more extensive good, by helping to keep down, under the authority of such a senatorial document, all fears among us of the metalitic currency ever becoming too over-abundant, though the California mines, with those of Australia in addition, should yield far more than they have ever yet done.

I received your cordial acknowledgment of the 9th of February of one of my antiquated Treasury Reports. I always visit Washington with pleasure, being sure to meet with so many there to make it agreeable; but it seems to me that, just now, only two classes of persons have any business there; our Legislators and our President-makers!

SOURCE: Charles Henry Ambler, Editor, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1916, in Two Volumes, Vol. II, Correspondence of Robert M. T. Hunter (1826-1876), p. 139-40

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