Private Banks (Quotation)
From Thomas Jefferson Wiki
The following quotation, or parts thereof, is seen on many Internet sites as well as in some print sources:
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
This is often cited as being in an 1802 letter to Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, and/or "later published in The Debate Over the Recharter of the Bank Bill (1809)." Unfortunately the above quotation is at least partly spurious.
The first part of the quotation ("If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered") has not been found anywhere in Thomas Jefferson's writings, to Albert Gallatin or otherwise. It is identified in Respectfully Quoted as spurious, and the editor further points out that the words "inflation" and "deflation" did not come into use until 1864 and 1920, respectively.[1]
The second part of the quotation ("I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies...") may well be a paraphrase of a statement Jefferson made in a letter to John Taylor in 1816. He wrote, "And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."[2]
The third part of this quotation ("The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs") has not been found in any of Jefferson's writings either. In fact, he said something rather different in 1813: "The States should be applied to, to transfer the right of issuing circulating paper to Congress exclusively, in perpetuum, if possible..."[3]
Lastly, we have not found a record of any publication called The Debate Over the Recharter of the Bank Bill. There was certainly debate over the recharter of the National Bank leading up to its expiration in 1811, but a search of Congressional documents of that period yields none of the verbiage discussed above.
Footnotes
- ↑ Suzy Platt, ed., Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations Requested from the Congressional Research Service (Washington D.C.: Library of Congress, 1989; Bartleby.com, 2003), http://www.bartleby.com/73/1204.html.
- ↑ Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, Monticello, 28 May 1816. Ford 11:533.
- ↑ Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, Monticello, 24 June 1813. Ford 11:303.
Further Sources
- Library of Congress. A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html
- University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center. Thomas Jefferson Digital Archive. Thomas Jefferson on Politics and Government: Quotations from the Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Money and Banking. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1325.htm
- Yale University. The Avalon Project. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. "Jefferson's Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 1791." http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/amerdoc/bank-tj.htm
