should approve the contract, such loan was to be a fund for the redemption of the certificates. An appropriation of $2,000 was made for expenses. The salt springs and lands attached thereto were to be leased, and the lessees were to stipulate that they would take these certificates for salt at the rate set by law. The State revenue from the salt springs, and all the State property and credit, were pledged, with the faith of the State, to redeem the certificates.
A comparison of this institution with the great Banks of the States, above described, will show what, if any, difference there was between them. If the Loan Office had been called a bank, and the commissioners directors, and if it had been said of the latter that they were "incorporated," no difference would have been discernible.
There was understood to be a strong implication that this Loan Office was to issue no more than the sum mentioned in the act; but within a few months another $100,000 were issued. The depreciation increased thereupon from 33 1-3 per cent. to 50 per cent.[1]
The law was declared unconstitutional in the St. Louis Circuit Court, in February, 1822, in Missouri vs. Lane, the issue being pronounced to be bills of credit. The Judge in his decision gives us some glimpses of the situation. "Kentucky had got the start of us in the paper money system, and her citizens, finding there was nothing else to be had at home for their products, brought them here and sold them to us at reduced prices. The advantage of this to the consumer was overlooked, and we determined to adopt the paper system, to exclude the commerce of Kentucky. This purpose has been accomplished. The price of produce has been so reduced that that of Kentucky comes here no longer." "We are told of the 'pestilent effects of paper money on the industry and morals of the people.'" On this subject, let us look to the listlessness, the broken-hearted indifference to exertion, which, under the pressure of great pecuniary distress (the strongest incentive to exertion, where every ray of hope is not excluded) pervades the hardy population of this fertile country. Let us look for its effect on morals to the criminal docket of this court, at this term. Offenses, the offspring of wantonness, of folly, of desperation, of a cultivated contempt for the rights and feelings of others, and disregard for the opinion of the world, and disrespect for what men have been accustomed to hold respectable,—and in short of a total depravation of the moral sense and dissolution of moral obligation, encumber our proceedings and disgrace our records."
In connection with the Loan Office, a new and wider stay law was also enacted December 28, 1821. Each county court might appoint three valuers. The plaintiff might endorse that he would take property at two-thirds of the valuation. When the Sheriff makes a levy, the valuers are to value the property. After twenty days it is to be put up for sale. If no
- ↑ Missouri vs. Lane, in the St. Louis Circuit Court, February, 1822. Supplement to 22 Niles, 128.
