James Madison to Littleton Dennis Teackle, February 28, 1831.
Mentioned in this letter
- Business, Economy, and Travel
Banks
- Historic Homes and Places
Montpelier
- Home, Health, and Social Life
Health
About this letter
- Description
- Letter from James Madison to Littleton Dennis Teackle, February 28, 1831.
- Creator
- Madison, James
- Creation Date
- February 28, 1831
- Subjects
- Teackle, Littleton Dennis, 1777-1848
- Madison, James, 1751-1836
- Item Type
- letter
- Identifier
- Series: Series 1, General Correspondence, 1723-1859 Microfilm Reel: 23
- Publication Information
- Teackle, Littleton Dennis, and James Madison. James Madison to Littleton Dennis Teackle. 1831. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mjm020895/.
- Institution
- Library of Congress
- Collection
- The James Madison Papers at the Library of Congress
Dear Sir, Montp, Feby 28-31
I received in due time, the copy of your "Report on a State's Bank," for which I offer my acknowledgements with the apology for the delay furnished by the unsettled state of my health. The Report certainly does justice to the plan of which it espouses. But I am not yet weaned from the opinion long entertained that the only adequate guaranty for the uniform and stable value of a paper currency, is its convertibility into specie1 the least fluctuating and the only universal currency.
I am sensible that a value equal to that of specie, and even beyond it, may be given to a paper of any medium, by making a limited amount necessary for necessary purposes and with special privileges not enjoyed by specie itself; but what is to ensure the inflexible adherence of the Legislation [illegible] to own these principles and purposes. Among such a number of independent States, the danger of aberrations is sufficiently suggested by experience; and to say nothing of the integral effects of the tendency of such examples of that sort to imitation or irritation among the co-States as they may be relatively debtor or creditor to each other, is a consideration also suggested by experience.