American politician and lawyer (1780-1865) who served briefly as United States Secretary of the Treasury in 1833; his refusal to withdraw federal deposits from the Second Bank of the United States led to his dismissal by President Andrew Jackson. ALS signed “Wm. J. Duane,” four pages on two adjoining sheets, 8 x 10, March 18, 1832. Lengthy handwritten letter, in part: "I have seen all the reports that have been issued, by Senate, H. of Rep's and Treasury, and read sometimes with pleasure, more frequently with pain, those reports and speeches made upon them. You will have perceived that my mode of thinking is not in accord with any of the Reports, bills, or speeches on the subject: tho' I endeavoured by conciseness to awaken enquiry rather than dogmatize…In Europe—in France and Great Britain, as well as Italy (where all the modern political economy was generated) and Germany, are laboring under much the same sort of illusion on this subject, as all Europe was until DesCartes blew up the Aristotelian metaphysics. In one word—there are about 140 treatises of English production, about 60 French, about 215 Italian, about 50 German, 6 American, 2 Russian, 10 Spanish, all professing to be the true theory of political Economy—among all these, there are no two that agree…and who do note give different interpretations to the same words, as employed by all the others. So that Pol. Economy is like religion, a matter of educated dogmas at war with the professed simplicity of truth and reason…Our information we derive from incongenial sources—from Adam Smith who struck out of the French Economists and the Italian Economists a few sparks, from which he lighted up a pile producing only smoke and no light.
There is nothing in Smith's book which has not its prototype in French or Italian authors, unless it is the abuse of words by introducing new forms…the words money, wealth, wages, labour, standard, and others become technical by the…use of them for fifty years past by his imitators and copyists, who have done little more than what Sterne happily lists off—'pouring out of one bottle into another,' only sometimes with a coloring ingredient to disguise the plagiarism…Judge Cooper of S. Carolina has embodied all the fancies of the Smith school whom I distinguish from the old French Economists, by the title of Economistics, from their…making all they have profited to explain more mystical and incomprehensible…
I have for some years been preparing and digesting a special treatise, which must necessarily embrace an exposition of the past as well as a clear elucidation of the nature and truth of Political economy, which is not in reality a new or a modern science, only in its perception, since it was truly described by Aristotle, and no one since has improved upon the terms."
He goes on to offer commentary on the banking system: "Congress alone has power to coin—and coin must be of gold and silver only—to imitate or debase the coin, is felony and he who does so is hanged—Then Congress can make no law violating contracts, nor ex post facto law;—yet in opposition to those obviously sacred principles, Congress transfers to an unknown and irresponsible body, a power to do that for which others are hanged; and in gross excess too, for a gold eagle issued a few grains less than the legal weight or worse coined, would…be worth as much as it weighed and the Congress has in disregard of the contract with the public to issue no money but of gold & silver—authorized an irresponsible body to issue a worthless article." In very good to fine condition, with partial separations to folds, overall toning, and scattered creases and staining.
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