TJ - Born April 13, 1743 at Shadwell, Virginia "Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper, as we were formerly by the old Continental paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burthen all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs. Prudent men must be on their guard in this game of Robin's alive, and take care that the spark does not extinguish in their hands. I am an enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. But our whole country is so fascinated by this Jack-lantern wealth, that they will not stop short of its total and fatal explosion."
--Letter To Dr. Thomas Cooper
Jan 1814
"This institution [The US Bank] is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution. The nation is, at this time, so strong and united in its sentiments, that it cannot be shaken at this moment. But suppose a series of untoward events should occur, sufficient to bring into doubt the competency of a republican government to meet a crisis of great danger, or to unhinge the confidence of the people in the public functionaries: an institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries."
--Letter to Albert Gallatin
Dec 1803
"Not Quixotic enough to attempt to reason Bedlam to rights, my anxieties are turned to the most practicable means of withdrawing us from the ruin into which we have run. Two hundred millions of paper in the hands of the people (and less cannot be from the employment of a banking capital known to exceed one hundred millions), is a fearful tax to fall at haphazard on their heads. The debt which purchased our Independence was but of eighty millions, of which twenty years of taxation had, in 1809, paid but the one-half. And what have we purchased with this tax of two hundred millions which we are to pay, by wholesale, but usury, swindling, and new forms of demoralization?"
--Letter To Charles Yancey
Jan 1816