with questions of finance to which I must
confess I have not been accustomed. The
gentleman may say that they get along in
Pennsylvania with six per cent.; but it is a
notorious fact that in every community where
six per cent. is the rate of interest, there is
more money loaned to-day at twelve per cent.,
more money at twenty, more money at thirty,
than there is at six. The law may be
evaded by selling your note for any amount,
whatever may be its face. The law can be
evaded at every step and turn you choose to
take; and the man that must have money will
have it at any price. There are times that
come to every man that needs money when
money may be worth twenty, thirty, or forty
per cent. In the crisis of 1837, when the
largest merchants of the whole United States
went down, there were times when they
offered cent per cent., offered all they were
worth in the world if they could but raise
money enough to pay their mercantile debts ;
brought down the accumulations of years of
business, and offered them all for money
enough to be advanced to save their mercan-
tile credit.
An act to restrict the rate of money? It
flows like water. If money, is plenty and is
not worth six per cent., men of undoubted
security can get it for less. But the man
whose security is not good will not get it for
six per cent. because the lender runs a risk of
losing the whole. It is not to be expected
that a man who may break to-morrow can
obtain a loan of money to-day at six per cent.,
which to-morrow may be gone. Is it accord-
ing to the ordinary operations of trade, and
ordinary common sense, that a man will lend
money to-day at six per cent., taking the risk
that to-morrow the man may break and he
may lose the whole? No; they ask enough
in addition to pay for the risk, whether that
risk be twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty per cent.
The gentleman from Anne Arundel (Mr.
Miller) brought up the case of the man in
Georgia who borrowed four thousand dollars
at such a rate that estate to the value of forty
thousand dollars bad to be sold to pay prin-
cipal and interest. If the money was not
worth an amount sufficient to swamp his
whole estate, he need not have borrowed it.
Nobody forced him to borrow it. The lender
did not force his money upon him at such a
rate. It was because the security he had to
offer was such that he could not command the
money at a lower rate. If the security had
been undoubted, there were men enough who
would have been ready to lend him their
money at the market rate of money at the
time.
The gentleman brought forward an argu-
ment that money was different from any other
commodity because money is the representative
of value. Why is it the representative of
value? It is because the precious metals
have in themselves the most labor in the |
least quantity, that they serve as a circulating
medium, for large representative values, for
purposes of commerce. They have always
been used for this purpose; but they have not
always bad the same value in themselves. It
is within the memory of every gentleman upon
this floor, that but a few years ago the Con-
gress of the United States found it necessary
to debase the whole silver circulation of the
country, because silver had become propor-
tionately higher than gold in its value. And
if the discoveries in gold continue, the time
may come when the world may be driven to
employ some metal still more rare and valua-
ble than gold or silver, as its circulating me-
dium. Gold is to-day used as an article of
commerce; it is shipped from your mines un-
stamped as an article of commerce. The only
thing which gives the least shadow of weight
to such an idea., is that the government puts
its stamps upon it to attest that it has been
assayed and weighed; and it has the seal of
the government to show that the coin con-
tains a definite value. It is shipped every
day in the form of dust and bars, as a simple
article of commerce.
(The twenty minutes allowed by the order
having expired, the hammer fell.)
Mr. CHAMBERS Mr. President—
The CHAIRMAN (Mr. Pugh.) The gentle-
man has already spoken upon this question.
Mr. CHAMBERS. If there is any other gen-
tleman who wishes to speak, I will give way
with cheerfulness, I have not a word to say
that I cannot say two hours hence as well as
now.
Mr. THOMAS. I give notice that I will at
the proper time move an amendment that the
rate of interest shall be six per cent. per an-
num ' but that parties may contract for any
higher rate of interest not exceeding seven
per cent.
Mr. THRUSTON. I give notice that I will
move to amend the report by inserting after
"recoverable" the words "not exceeding
seven and three-tenths per cent." My object
in fixing this sum is that seven and three-
tenths is a very convenient rate for computing
interest; and that it is a little above the New
York rate of interest, and therefore will have
the effect of bringing home that capital which
has been sent there at seven per cent, I am
opposed to allowing contracts at any rate of
interest.
Mr. ABBOTT. I have an amendment of
which I wish to give notice, that the legal rate
of interest shall not exceed seven per cent.,
leaving to the legislature the power to fix a
lower rate if they think proper.
Mr. CHAMBERS. I have been exceedingly
surprised at the argument which baa been
urged by the gentleman from Baltimore (Mr.
Cushing,) with regard to stump-speaking, &c.
1 understand that that is passed over to an-
other gentleman; for I do not suppose the
gentleman alluded to any remarks of mine. |
