JEFFERSON ON BANKS
This just in:
We tracked down the origin of this famous quote through the Wayback Machine, and finally hit pay dirt (below).
However, there seems to have been a concerted effort to discredit the authenticity of the citation, as per the following three refs.:
...........Private Banks (Spurious Quotation) | Monticello
image.jpeg
monticello.org
https://www.monticello.org › research-education › privat...
Scholars do not believe Jefferson wrote or said, "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."
Did Thomas Jefferson Say 'Banks and Corporations Will ...
image.png
Snopes.com
https://www.snopes.com › Fact Check
Claim: Thomas Jefferson said that “banks and corporations will deprive the people of all property.”
Fact check by Snopes.com: Misattributed. . . . . . . . .
And, as if desperately striving to dismiss the validity of the quotation's content, references to it have evidently been 'culture cancelled' to protect the banking establishment:
Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 28 May 1816
image.jpeg
National Archives (.gov)
https://founders.archives.gov › documents › Jefferson
Taylor sought TJ's opinion on a complicated legal case in 1782, and TJ corresponded with him on agricultural matters beginning in 1794.
MY SEDONA EXPERIENCE After enduring over 30 winters in the frigid deep snow of Lake Tahoe/Donner Pass area of N. Cal, I finally got an offer I couldn't refuse: a ride to Arizona! Sedona AZ in particular. I had heard of this town many times, and had acquired an interest in its legendary mystique and a yearning to visit some day. I am very glad I did make the trip just last December, arriving. providentially, on the Winter Solstice [2023]. I have been captivated ever since with its extraordinary beauty, favorable climate and hospitable people, and hope to spend a good part of my life here. It turns out however, that this is not my first visit: after looking over area maps I noticed the little town of Jerome, not far down the road. Now I knew I came through Jerome some 50+ years ago on a road trip with an interesting fellow in his VW van. The hair-raising route from Prescott over Mingus Mountain with all its hairpin turns in a heavy snowstorm in the dark of night was unforgettable: T...
"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 [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThis reference affirms the quote was in a letter from Jefferson to one John Taylor in 1816:
https://web.archive.org/web/20241123115201/https://whitlockco.com/blog/thomas-jeffersons-top-10-quotes-on-money-and-banking/
This quote and others continue as follows:
"I sincerely believe 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." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23Related Post: Internal Control Assessments for Billion-Dollar Banks"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. 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 burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:61"The art and mystery of banks... is established on the principle that 'private debts are a public blessing.' That the evidences of those private debts, called bank notes, become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when called on."
The ref. continues with: "I own it to be my opinion, that good will arise from the destruction of our credit. I see nothing else which can restrain our disposition to luxury, and to the change of those manners which alone can preserve republican government. As it is impossible to prevent credit, the best way would be to cure its ill effects by giving an instantaneous recovery to the creditor. This would be reducing purchases on credit to purchases for ready money. A man would then see a prison painted on everything he wished, but had not ready money to pay for." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1786. ME 5:259"If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to anybody, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air... We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of 'a public debt being a public blessing,' and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:423Related Post: How Tax Reform Affects Community Banks"The Bank of the United States is one of the most deadly hostilities existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution. 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. What an obstruction could not this bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?" --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1803. ME 10:437
ReplyDelete