taxes under which we groan, both State and
federal, are attributable to this horrible sys-
tem of paying interest on money. If this is
not the most extraordinary argument I ever
beard ! I paid careful attention to the gen-
tleman's argument, and it seemed to be that
all the accumulated woes under which the
world labors are attributable to the horrible
practice of paying interest on money! I
would advise tire gentleman to abandon the
profession of the law for the writing of trea-
tises on political economy, and especially on
the subject of interest. All the treatises on
political economy on that subject are entirely
thrown in the shade. The world is travelling
backwards instead of forwards if the theory
which he advances is true. It is a great and
monstrous sin ! I suppose it is the cause of
original sin perhaps! I should not wonder if
it should turn out in the end that this horri-
ble practice was the cause of our unfortunate
mother Eve eating the apple I should not
be surprised if the gentleman should conjure
it up as the cause of the epidemics that tra-
verse the entire world, causing the yellow
fever in the south, and perhaps the Asiatic
cholera, and the plague that ran over the east
in olden times! We have now got new light
upon the subject of finance, certainly, it is
a very plain thing; but the system of the
gentleman is to befog the minds of this con-
vention and to becloud them. He is like the
cuttle fish in the sea, that to avoid detection
beclouds the water around him. If anybody
can listen to such an argument as that, and
not be beclouded, he has got more than mor-
tal faculties.
Mr. SANDS. The gentleman is evidently in
a cloud.
Mr. NEGLEY. I do not know, if the gentle-
man bud continued, where I would have got
to. I could not for the soul of me keep up
with the gentleman, and got pretty nearly as
wild as he was in trying to keep up with him,
This is a very plain thing. Why can you
not let money alone, as you let anything else
alone? Why can you not let money be a
subject of bargain and sale, just as you leave
anything else to be a subject of bargain and
sale? Money has two characters. It has the
character of being the instrument of effecting
exchanges between man and man. In that
character there is no interest accruing from it.
While a man has money in his pocket, while
it is passing day by day from one man to an-
other, it pays no interest, it is used as an
instrumentality to effect the exchanges of the
world. That is one character. But money
has another character; that of property. A
great many men have their property in lands.
A great many men halve their property in
ships on the sea, A great many have their
property in houses, or in factories. A great
many have their property in the merchandise
of the world; and a great many have their
property—their all—in money. What is the |
difference? If a man has ten thousand dol-
lars and does not use that for the purpose of
exchanging commodities, it is to him proper-
ty. What does he do? He goes into the
market, and be loans it to his neighbor or
hires it to his neighbor as he hires his horse,
as he hires his house, as he hires his land, as
he hires anything that he can use and that
another man can use, for a consideration.
Now, in the name of common sense, why can
you not let a man, when he has money, go
into the market and make a disposition of it?
The commercial world to-day is getting out
of that age in which the gentleman's mind
seems to live, out of that beclouded state of
intellect that was prevalent five hundred years
ago. I think a lawyer is the poorest and
most unsafe of all financial advisers. He is
very good authority in law; very good au-
thority in cases that have been tried in the
courts; but send him down to the exchange
in Baltimore, and he would be like a fish out
of water. We have here a petition of some
of the most respectable men and the best in-
formed men in Maryland as to the effect of
this restriction—the gentlemen of the Mary-
land Corn Exchange. Is their opinion enti-
tled to no respect? Must we follow the gen-
tleman from Howard in his lucid arguments,
and transcendently convincing, reasoning and
abandon the experience of the commercial
world, and especially the unanimous voice of
the people of Baltimore city, who absolutely
pay one-half the taxes into the treasury of the
State of Maryland? Are you to turn a deaf
ear to them, and pay no attention to them?
If they were ignorant, if they were actuated
'by any political considerations or improper
motives, we might have some reason to doubt
it. But here are men of all shades of politics,
of all kinds of business, who come before you
and make a statement and reiterate the very
argument that we heard here on a former oc-
casion; and it is the experience of the world.
We merely ask you to keep your hands
away from money; not to protect it, not to
legislate for it, but to quit protecting it, to quit
legislating for it. Money will take care of
itself; and the people who have it will take
care of it, just as they take care of any other
species of property. That is what usury
means, legislating about a thing that ought
not to be legislated about. That is all we
ask. Can we not come up to the enlightened
view of our sister States. The States in the
west have done this—the new States—and
even the old governments of England and
France have done it. It is 80 in all the com-
mercial centres in the world; and perhaps
Baltimore is the only city practically cut off
from it. It may be that Philadelphia is sub-
jected to the same restrictions. But do these
restrictions keep money from going up and
down? Do not we all know, by looking at
the papers day by day, under the head of
" finance," that paper is worth sometimes |
