“A Plain System, Void of Pomp” is an inscription found on an 1834-dated Hard Times Token. It satirizes the seventh president Andrew Jackson and his idea of democracy for the working class and a railing against the aristocratic Whigs.
The phrase comes from a letter of protest that Jackson sent to the United States Senate on April 15, 1834, wherein he wrote:
The ambition which leads me on is an anxious desire and a fixed determination to restore to the people unimpaired the sacred trust they have confided to my charge; to, head the wounds of the Constitution and to preserve it from further violation; to persuade my countrymen, so far as I may, that it is not in a splendid government supported by powerful monopolies and aristocratical establishments that they will find happiness or their liberties protection, but in a plain system, void of pomp, protecting all and granting favors to none, dispensing its blessings like the dews of heaven, unseen and unfelt save in the freshness and beauty they contribute to produce. It is such a government that the genius of our people requires– such an one only under which our States may remain for ages to come united, prosperous, and free.
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Sources
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/ajack006.asp
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