SENATE.] Treasury Circular. circulation no bank note or bank check of a less denomination than ten dollars; and, also, that they will not receive on deposite, or in payment, any bank note or bank check of a less denomination; nor the bank notes or bank checks of any bank, of any denomination, on deposite or in payment, after such period, that issues or puts in circulation bank notes or bank checks of a less amount than ten dollars, as aforesaid." "Resolved, That from and after the 4th day of July, 1938, no bank shall be employed, or continued in the employment of the Treasury of the United States as a deposite bank, unless they shall previously engage in writing, under their corporate seal, to issue and put in circulation no bank note or bank check of a less denomination than twenty dollars; and, also, that they will not receive on deposite or in payment any bank note or bank check of a less denomination; nor the bank notes or bank checks of any bank, of any denomination, on deposite or payment, after such period, that issues or puts in circulation bank no'es or bank checks of a less amount than twenty dollars, as aforesaid." These (said Mr. B.) are the propositions now made to us by a bank of the highest character; and he knew many others which were ready to agree to the same propositions. Compare them with this bill, if it is possible to institute a comparison between two such objects, and observe the immeasurable difference between them. First, in the nature of the process: here there is no bargain, no contract; but Congress is requested to act as a Government, not to deal like a contractor, and to prescribe the conditions on which the deposite banks are to accomplish our purpose. In the next 'place, so far from making a contract for the receivability of their notes in exchange for the suppression of the small ones, there is not even a wish expressed for such reception. In the third place, as to the promptness and efficiency of their action in suppressing the small notes. Instead of waiting three years for putting down those under ten dollars, it is proposed to be done in four months; so far from waiting five years for putting down those under twenty dollars, it is to be done in less than one year and a half. Next, as to the efficiency of the action of the two modes: the bill of the committee acts upon but one bank at a time, and upon the notes only of that one bank, leaving the door open to checks, and the use of the notes of other banks; the proposition of the Manhattan Bank, and which may be considered as a sample of those from all the banks of high character, operates in three different ways, and upon multitudes of banks at the same time. 1. The deposite bank is to bind itself, under its corporate seal, neither to issue nor to put in circulation any bank note or bank check under the denomination of ten dollars, after the 4th of July next, or of twenty dollars after the 4 h of July, 1832. 2. It binds itself, in like manner, not to receive on deposite or in payment any bank note or bank check of less denominations, after the said terms. 3. It binds itself, in like manner, not to receive the notes or checks, of any denomination whatever, of any bank whatever which continues after those dates to issue or circulate notes or checks under the respective amounts of ten and twenty dollars. This (said Mr. B.) is what the respecta ble banks are ready to submit to, if Congress will only act as a Government, and prescribe conditions for all the deposite banks; which, in their turn, are to operate upon all other banks, instead of entering into petty bargains with each bank by itself. One acts effectually, and upon masses; the other acts ineffectually, and upon units. One demands no price; the other is to have the incalculable price of having their paper made legal currency, and put upon a footing, in the receipts and expenditures of the Federal Government, with the gold and silver of the constitution! By one mode, our work will be done [JAN. 27, 1837. speedily and effectually; by the other, tardily and inef fectually. Why grant these three and five years? The only object of delay is to give the banks time to gather specie from abroad to supply the place of the small bills. But that is done to their hand. The Government has done it. The specie is here, and will go away if we do not create a home demand for it. Instead of beginning to suppress their notes, the local banks will put it off to the last moment of the three and five years, and double their small issues in the mean time, to make profit while they can. There is specie enough now, and it is increasing every day. Arrivals from abroad are daily announced. Five hundred thousand dollars arrived at New Orleans on two days only of this month, the 9th and 10th of January. If our hard-money measures are continued, specie will continue to increase for years to come as it has for four years past-at the average rate of more than ten millions per annum. The delay proposed by this bill is not only unnecessary, but injurious to its own object; the mode of acting is either ineffectual or ruinThere are now a thousand banks in the United States, and the distributions of the surplus are breeding multitudes more. If all these banks accept the terms, then our Treasury is ruined by becoming the receptacle--the tomb--of all their paper; if half or a quarter refuse, or even a hundred, then the bill will be ineffectual; for these refusing banks will turn all their strength upon the issue of small paper. Mr. B. said here was a terrible dilemma. If the majority of the banks accept the terms, then they ruin the Treasury; if they do not, then they continue to injure the country; and he quo ted, to sustain his opinion of the inefficiency of this mode of acting, the following sentiments expressed, when the United States Bank charter was under consideration, in 1832, by a Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. WEBSTER:] ous. "It may, perhaps, strike some gentlemen that the circulation of small notes might be effectually discouraged by refusing to receive not only all such notes, but all notes of such banks as issued them, at the customhouses, land offices, post offices, and other places of public receipt, and by causing them to be refused also, either in payment or deposite, at the Bank of the Uni ted States. But the effect of such refusal may be doubtful. It would certainly, in some degree, discredit such notes, but in all probability it would not drive them out altogether; and, if it should not do this, it might, very probably, increase their circulation. If in some degree they become discredited, to that degree they would become cheaper than other notes; and universal experience proves that, of two things which may be current, the cheaper will always expel the other." Mr. B. had been at work for five years to procure the suppression of paper money under twenty dollars. lig exertions, on that point, had brought him into communication with the officers of many banks; and it was due to them to say, that all the banks of high character, with which he had communicated, were in favor of the suppression of small notes; and he was fully persuaded that many of them, and as a mere condition of retaining the public deposites, if the deposite banks were reduced to the proper number, would give up their circulation entirely, and introduce into our country the example of banks of discount, deposite, and exchange, alone, as they exist in Europe, and where they give all the real benefits of banks, without the dangers and mischiefs of issuing paper money. In his opinion, about thirty deposite banks were enough; they were more places of deposite than existed during the time of the Bank of the United States, which had but twenty-four branches; and if the deposites were confined to about thirty banks of good capital and high character, these banks would imme diately, that is to say, within one or two years, and now while we have the specie to justify the operation, enter heartily into the measure of putting down the circulation of notes under twenty dollars. With the additional inducement of relinquishing the interest which they now pay on deposites, he felt certain they would quickly accomplish this great work for the country. Now is the time, as Mr. C. P. White says in his letter, now is the time to do it, when our specie is between seventy and eighty millions of dollars. Certainly this is the time, while forty-five millions of that specie is locked up in the vaults of banks-and while our paper circulation is so redundant as to have undergone a depreciation which is heavily felt in the price of every article of consumption by all persons who live upon wages and fixed income. This is the time to effect the suppression; and it was afflicting to see it lost; for to postpone it five years was to lose the golden opportunity. And at whose instance was this to be done? At the instance of the small banksthe two-and-sixpenny concerns-to which it was an object to put out small notes, for the sake of the gain to the bank upon the loss to the community, in the wear and tear of small notes. Mr. B. said it was the small banks which cling to the small notes, and some of them since they became deposite banks, and in violation of the deposite law. He would give an instance; it was from that same Clinton Bank of Columbus, from which he had before read. In the statement of its condition made to the Legislature of Ohio on the 9th day of January of the present year, the circulation of the bank is thus stated: One-dollar bills, $6,226; two-dollar do. $4,916; three-dollar do. $6,669; five do. $60,085, ten do. $10,910; twenty do. $12,140; fifty do. $13,400; one bundred do. $300. Now, here is a bank whose total circulation is $115,000, and of which the whole, except about $25,000, is under twenty dollars; and yet this bank, on this question, and in this chamber, is to outweigh the Manhattan, and the other great banks of the country! Mr. B. said it was curious to observe that the small country banks in England had governed the legislation of the British Parliament in the suppression of the small notes, precisely in the manner now going on in this country, and with the same disastrous results there which may be expected to ensue here. He would, to show this, read an extract from the testimony of the governor of the Bank of England, Mr. Horsley Palmer, before Lord Althorp's committee, in 1832. He says: "By the resolution of the House of Commons of 1819, the Bank of England was required, within four years, to pay off in gold the amount of their one-pound notes then in circulation, (about £7,500,000;) further, to provide the coin for paying off the country small notes in 1825, (about £7,800,000 more;) in addition to which, the necessity was imposed of providing the requisite surplus bullion for insuring the convertibility of all their liabili ties; which addition of bullion to their stock could not be estimated at less than £5,000,000; making in the ag gregate £20,000,000 of gold as necessary to be procured from foreign countries within the space of four years from 1819. The bank cancelled their own small notes in 1821, (two years before the time limited by Parliament.) In 1822, being three years prior to the time fixed by Parliament, they were in a situation to furnish the gold for paying off the country small notes, (that is, they had procured the whole 20 millions in gold, near 100 millions of dollars, from foreign countries in three years,) when, without any communication with the bank, the Government thought proper to authorize a continuance of the circulation of the country small notes until 1833." Mr. B. said it was here seen that the governor of the Bank of England complained that, when the Bank of England bad procured twenty millions sterling in gold in three years, (equal to near one hundred millions of [SENATE. dollars,) and had suppressed its own small notes, and had gold enough to supply the place of all the country banks' small notes, that these country banks got the time extended for the suppression of theirs-got it done in Parliament, without consultation with the Bank of England-and extended up to the year 1833. This is the testimony of the governor of the bank, and the point of it is this: that the Parliament lost the golden moment of doing the great work, and lost it by conforming to the interest of the small country banks, whose friends were numerous and powerful in Parliament, in opposition to the interest of the empire, and against the wishes of the Bank of England. The rest is matter of history. That history is, that these country banks never enjoyed the seven years which Parliament granted them. Having seven years to go upon, they resolved to make hay while the sun was shining. So to work they went, and put out more small notes than ever. The consequence was, the vast and disastrous explosion of the paper system which took place in 1825, an explosion which covered all England with the wrecks of broken fortunes, and in which so many families who thought themselves affluent were suddenly sunk, without any fault of their own, and, as if by magic and enchantment, from the enjoyment of wealth and happiness, to the suf ferings of poverty, misery, and despair. History, said Mr. B., is said to be philosophy teaching by example. But how many of her lessons are lost upon the world! Here is a great lesson given to us in our own time, and by the nation from whom we have borrowed our whole system of banking. Yet this lesson is lost upon us; and we must go through her sufferings, and learn it ourselves, as she did, before we can know it. Our circumstances are the same; we have accumulated upwards of 70 millions of gold and silver; it is increasing every day; we are ready for the operation of drawing in small notes, and putting out hard money; the strong and respectable banks wish us to do it; the public interest requires it to be done; the policy of President Jackson's administration prescribes it; yet we lose the golden opportunity; we put it off for five years! and instead of adopting an efficient course to act upon masses of banks, and upon every variety of their circulation under twenty dollars, we take an impotent, inefficient course, and to act upon units, and upon the notes which they issue only, and by way of bargain, which either party may terminate when it pleases, a bargain which must be fatal to our Treasury if the banks accept it! Mr. B. having gone over these objections to the committee's bill, would now ascend to a class of objections of a higher and graver character. He had already remark ed that the committee had carried out a resolution, and had brought back a bill; that the committee proposed a statutory enactment, where the Senator from Ohio, [Mr. EWING,] and the Senator from Virginia, [Mr. RIVES,] had only proposed a joint resolution; and he had already further remarked, that in addition to this total change in the mode of action, the committee had added what neither of these Senators had proposed, a clause, under a proviso, to enact paper money, into cash--to pass paper money to the credit of the United States, as cash--and to punish, by the loss of the deposites, any deposite bank which should refuse so to receive, so to credit, and so to pass, the notes "receivable" under the provisions of their bill. These two changes make entirely a new measure--one of wholly a different character from the resolutions of the two Senators-a measure which openly and in terms, and under penalties, undertakes to make local State paper a legal tender to the Federal Government, and to compel the reception of all its revenues in the notes "receivable" under the provisions of the committee's bill. After this gigantic step--this colossal movement--in favor of paper money, there was but one SENATE.] Treasury Circular. step more for the committee to take, and that was to make these notes a legal tender in all payments from the Federal Government. But that step was unnecessary to be taken in words, for it is taken in fact, when the other great step becomes law. For it is incontestable that what the Government receives, it must pay out; and what it pays out becomes the currency of the country. So that when this bill passes, the paper money of the local banks will be a tender by law to the Federal Government, and a tender by duresse from the Government to its creditors and the people. This is the state to which the committee's bill will bring us! and now, let us pause and contemplate, for a moment, the position we occupy, and the vast ocean of paper on which we are proposed to to be embarked. [JAN. 27, 1837. B.; and strong as he felt in the correctness of what he then said, he would yet now reinforce it with authority— authority drawn from different sources-but both entitled to deference in this debate. The first was from Mr. Jefferson's Manual, and to show the nature of a resolution, and wherein it differed from a statute. Mr. Jefferson says, of the two Houses of Congress: "Facts, principles, their own opinions and purposes, are expres sed in the form of resolutions." Here, then, is the of fice and nature of a resolution: it is to declare a fact, or a principle, or to express an opinion or purpose of the House or Houses. In these senses innumerable resolutions have been passed by Congress, and in the third of these senses, that of expressing an opinion, the joint resolution for the better collection of the revenues was passed in 1816. It was a resolution in aid of the constitution and the hard-money statutes, and not in derogation, or repeal, of them. On the next point, that no open attack had ever been made, in the legislation of Congress, on the hard-money statutes, he would quote the Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. WEBSTER,] whose speeches on this subject he had often read with satisfaction and profit. He quoted from a speech of 1816, on the bill to charter the late Bank of the United States: "No nation had a better currency than the United States. There was no nation which had guarded its currency with more care; for the framers of the constitation, and those who enacted the early statutes on this subject, were hard-money men; they had felt, and therefore duly appreciated, the evils of a paper medium; they therefore sedulously guarded the currency of the United States from debasement. The legal currency of the United States was gold and silver coin: this was a sub We stand upon a constitution which recognises nothing but gold and silver for money; we stand upon a legis. lation of near fifty years, which recognises nothing but gold and silver for money. Now, for the first time, we have a statutory enactment proposed to recognise the paper of a wilderness of local banks for money, and in so doing to repeal all prior legislation by law, and the constitution by fact. This is an era in our legislation. It is statute law to control all other law, and is not a resolution to aid other laws, and to express the opinions of Congress. On this point he must be permitted to refer to what he had said in a former part of this debate, when he dwelt upon the difference between an act of Congress and a resolution of Congress, and congratulated himself that no act of the national Legislature had ever attacked the great fundamental acts for the collection of the revenues in the gold and silver money of the constitution. This is what he then said: "The exclusion of paper money was as carefully en-ject in regard to which Congress had run into no folly." forced by the constitution as the adoption of gold and silver was sedulously guarded. The words of the constitution and the history of the times, and especially the 44th No. of the Federalist, written by Mr. Madison, all prove this. The early legislation of Congress conformed to the words and spirit of the constitution, and adopted the plainest and strongest language to guard the currency which it had adopted. The two acts fundamental for the collection of the two great branches of the reveuue--lands and customs: that of 1789 for the latter, and 1800 for the former-were express that gold and silver coin only should be received for the customs, and specie and evidences of the public debt only, for the public lands. These two great acts, being faithful in terpreters of the constitution, have never been openly attacked in either House of Congress. In all the changes which subsequent legislation has made in the laws, of which the hard-money enactments are part, these clauses have been retained in the same, or equivalent, expressions; so that a hard-money currency still remains the constitutional and the statutory currency of the Federal Government. Temporary enactments in favor of Treasury notes, and United States Bank notes, have ceased; and the joint resolution of 1816 neither does nor can repeal a law. Resolutions, whether joint or several, are not the mode of national legislation. They are only declaratory of facts or principles, or expressive of the opinions and purposes of the House or Houses from which they emanate. The joint resolution differs from the single in nothing but in being the declaration, the opinion, or the purpose, of both Houses, instead of one. This being the case, and the two fundamental enactments of 1789 and 1800 being still in force, as retained in subsequent alterations of the laws to which they belong, the question is, how comes it that they have been treated as dead letters on the statute book, and paper money received in place of the hard money which they imperatively required? The answer to this question," &c. This is what was said four or five weeks ago, said Mr. This (said Mr. B.) settles the question up to 1816. It shows that up to that time Congress had run into no folly on this subject; it had passed no act to impair the constitutional currency-done nothing to derogate from the early hard-money statutes, and the hard-money clauses of the constitution. All was safe on the statute book up to 1816; and the joint resolution of that year, as he had often said, was in aid, and not in derogation, of these early statutes. The legislation since 1816 is within our own knowledge. Leaving out temporary enactments in favor of scrip, Treasury notes, &c., and the term used is always the same, or the equivalent, of what is found in the constitution. The act of 1820, for reducing the price of the public lands, directs them to be sold for "cash." The word cash" is there used as ready money, and that the hard money of the constitution. The framers of that act were also hard-money men, for they had just got a tremendous lesson from the paper system. They had just gone through the paper agonies of the late war. Hard money, then, by our constitution, and by all our statute laws, is still on the statute book the only legal currency of the Federal Government; and now, for the first time in near fifty years, is a statute proposed to repeal all these hard-money statutes, and to make the paper of a myriad of banks, known and unknown, born and to be born, the legal currency of the Federal Government. And, at what a time is this proposition made? At the time when the country contains more specie than it ever saw before; when banks of the highest character are for checking paper money; and while that President is still alive, and in power, who has made it the pride and glory of his administration to revive and extend the gold and sil ver currency. Mr. B. said, the effects of this statute would be, to make a paper government-to insure the exportation of our specie-to leave the State banks without foundations to rest upon-to produce a certain catastrophe in the whole paper system-to revive the pretensions of the United States Bank-and to fasten, for a time, the Adam Smith system upon the Federal Government and the whole Union. Mr. B. then inquired, emphatically, what was the system of Adam Smith? and then said that Dr. Smith should answer this question himself, and that he would read the extracts from his works which would exhibit his response. This inquiry was rendered the more necessary, because, having named Dr. Smith as the founder of the paper system in England, the Senator from Virginia [Mr. RIVES] had thought him mistaken, and maintained the contrary. He then read the following extracts: As "The substitution of paper in the room of gold and silver money replaces a very expensive instrument of commerce with one much less costly, and sometimes equally convenient. Circulation comes to be carried on by a new wheel, which it costs less to erect and maintain than the old one. There are several different sorts of paper money; but the circulating notes of banks and bankers are the species which is best known, and which scems best adapted for this purpose. When the people of any particular country have such confidence in the fortune, probity, and prudence, of a particular banker, as to believe that he is always ready to pay, upon demand, such of his promissory notes as are likely to be presented to him, those notes come to have the same currency as gold and silver money, from the confidence that such money can at any time be had for them. A particular banker lends among his customers his own promissory notes, to the extent we shall suppose of £100,000. these notes serve all the purposes of money, his debtors pay him the same interest as if he had lent them so much money. This interest is the source of his gain. Though some of these notes are continually coming back upon him, part of them continue to circulate for months and years together. Though he has generally in circulation, therefore, notes to the extent of £100,000, yet £20,000 in gold and silver may frequently be a sufficient provision for answering occasional demands. By this operation, therefore, £20,000 in gold and silver perform all the functions which £100,000 could otherwise have performed; £80,000 of gold and silver, therefore, can, in this manner, be spared from the circulation of the country; and if different operations of the same kind should, at the same time, be carried on by different banks and bankers, the whole circalation may thus be conducted with a fifth part only of the gold and silver which would otherwise have been requisite. Four fifths, therefore, of a full circulation of gold and silver may be exported. But though so great a quantity of gold and silver is thus sent abroad, we must not imagine that it is sent abroad for nothing, or that its proprietors make a present of it to foreign nations. They will exchange it for foreign goods of some kind or another, in order to supply the consumption either of some other foreign country, as their own.”—Vol. 1, pages 434, '5, '6, '7. "A paper money consisting in bank notes, issued by people of undoubted credit, payable upon demand with out any condition, and in fact always readily paid as soon as presented, is, in every respect, equal to gold and silver money; since gold and silver money can at any time be had for it. Whatever is either bought or sold for such paper must necessarily be bought or sold as cheap as it could have been for gold and silver. The increase of paper money, it has been said, by augmenting the quantily and consequently diminishing the value of the whole currency, necessarily augments the money price of commodities. But as the quantity of gold and silver which is taken from the currency is always equal to the quantity of paper which is added to it, paper money does not necessarily increase the quantity of the whole currency."-Vol. 1, p. 490. "The Bank of England is the greatest bank of circu [SENATE. lation in Europe. It was incorporated, in pursuance of an act of Parliament, by a charter under the great seal, dated the 27th of July, 1694. It at that time advanced to Government £1,200,000 for an annuity of £100,000, or for an annuity of £96,000 a year interest, at the rate of 8 per cent., and £4,000 a year for the expense of management. The stability of the Bank of England is equal to that of the British Government. All that it has advanced to the Government must be lost before its creditors can sustain any loss."-Vol. 1, p. 479. The bank has lent its whole capital, now about fourteen and a half millions sterling, to the Government; so that the Government stands security for the bank to that amount, being near seventy millions of dollars. "Joint stock companies are well adapted to carry on the trade of banking. The constitution of joint stock companies renders them in general more tenacious of established rules than any private copartnery. Such companies, therefore, seem extremely well fitted for this trade. The principal banking companies in Europe, accordingly, are joint stock companies, many of which manage their trade very successfully, without any exclusive privilege."-Pages 146, 148, vol. 3. "If bankers are restrained from issuing any circulating bank notes, or notes payable to the bearer, for less than a certain sum, (£5 sterling,) and if they are subjected to the obligation of an immediate and unconditional payment of such bank notes as soon as presented, their trade may, with safety to the public, be rendered, in all respects, perfectly free. The late multiplication of banking companies, in both parts of the United Kingdom, an event by which many people have been much alarmed, instead of diminishing, increases the security of the public. In general, if any branch or any division of labor be advantageous to the public, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so."-Vol. 1, pages 498, '9. This, said Mr. B., is the answer of Dr. Smith; and if it does not constitute him a paper-system man, there is certainly no virtue in language, and no power in words. He is for the Bank of England, he is for joint stock banks, he is for individual bankers, and he is for making the banking trade, on condition of issuing no notes under £5, and promising to pay them on demand, as free as any other trade in the country; and he thinks the greater the number of banks, the greater the security of the public. He is for a currency, four parts paper and one part gold; and he is in favor of exporting every four guineas out of five, and of supplying the place of the exported gold by paper money issued by the Bank of England, by joint stock companies, by individual bankers, and by any person that chooses to issue paper, and promises to pay it on demand in gold, and agrees not to issue any note below £5. This is his system; a paper system out and out, and without one mitigating feature in it except the £5 limit, which to us looks like a restriction, but was in reality an enlargement of the banking privilege; for at the time that Dr. Smith wrote, above fifty years ago, the Bank of England issued no note of less denomination than £10. This is the sytsem of Dr. Smith; a system that has blown up in England three times in twenty-five years; which is now upon the eve of another catastrophe, and requiring and receiving the interposition of the British Government to save it; which is now in all that concerns banks of issue, except the issues of the Bank of England, condemned even by his own political school in England; and which system, brought into our country by General Hamilton, above forty years ago, maintaining a struggle with our institutions ever since, it is now proposed to fasten upon the Federal Government by law. Mr. B. proceeded to other objections to the committee's bill. It gave the Secretary of the Treasury, in the first section, a boundless discretion to do what he thought necessary to effect the collection of the reve nues in the currencies specified in the section; and it gave him, in the second section, a supervisory power and control over the receivability of all local bank paper; and it gave him, in the proviso to that section, a power to punish any deposite bank which should refuse to receive and pass, as cash, to the credit of the United States, the notes "receivable" under that act, and received in the ordinary course of its business, on general deposite. This was a power which he did not wish to see any Secretary of the Treasury possess. He did not wish to see any one vested with power to operate upon the hopes and fears of a thousand banks; nor did he wish to see a thousand banks invested with claims, and placed in a position to operate upon the hopes and fears of any Secretary. He did not wish to see the members of Congress, who possessed an interest or took an interest in local banks, marching in columns upon the Treasury Secretary, and soliciting him to admit the banks which they represented to be admitted to the favor of furnishing a national currency for the Federal Government. Such things gave a Secretary too much power over banks and members, or they might give the banks and the members too much power over him. Mr. B. was the friend of the new administration; had assisted to create it, and, of course, had confidence in it; but he objected to vesting with this extraordinary power. He wanted law, and not executive or departmental grace or discretion, for the tenure of his rights. Wherever law could be applied, he wanted it applied. This was a case in which it could be applied. It was a case in which it was easy to apply it. It was only to let the old statues, and the constitution, remain in force, and follow out the policy of President Jackson, and gold and silver would remain the sole currency for the receipts and expenditures of the Federal Government. Besides his objections to the power which this bill would give to the Secretary, he should be sorry personally to see any friend of his subjected to the exercise of that power. He had seen Mr. Crawford subjected to the exercise of a small part of it; and he had seen him assailed, defamed, vilified and persecuted, on account of the manner in which he had exercised that power, when he was certain that no man could act with more honesty, impartiality, and patriotism, than he had done. Mr. B. objected to the bill, for want of certainty in the kind of money which was to be received in the land offices. The whole question was left afloat. Nothing was fixed; nothing was stationary. What was land-office money to-day might not be so to-morrow. The or ders for the reception and rejection of different paper, or the same paper, might vary from day to day. A farmer hears that the notes of a particular bank are receivable; he supplies himself with those notes, and goes to the office. When he gets there, he may meet an order to exclude them; and then be turned over to a money dealer to furnish himself with other notes, no better than those he had, but at a cost of five, ten, or fifteen per cent, to him to effect the exchange. Far better would it be for the farmers and settlers to have the permanency and uniformity of gold and silver only for land-office payments; then they would always know what they had to rely upon, and would be free from disappointments and impositions. Mr. B. further objected to the receivability of paper money at the land offices, on account of the advantages which it gave to bankers and their favorites over the rest of the community. To a banker, or his favorite, it was pretty immaterial whether he gave a quire or a ream-a handfull, or an armfull-of his paper, for a parcel of land; and whether this paper was speckled over with figures for five dollars or fifty dollars, or five [JAN. 27, 1857. hundred dollars. It was all pretty much the same thing to him. To a farmer, however, who had to give labor, or produce, or property, for every dollar he obtained, it was quite another affair; and it was impossible for him to stand the competition with the man of quires, with his machine to impress letters and figures, for as many dollars as he pleased, on the little oblong slips of paper which constituted bank notes. It was a shame in the Government to put the farmer in competition with such wholesale manufacturers of paper dollars. Mr. B. further objected to this bill, because its tendency was to inundate the new States with strange and unknown bank paper. In the new States, whatever was land-office money was current money. It was current, not only at the land office, but in every place, and all over the State. It was a Government endorsement, which gave credit to the whole issue of the bank. Taking advantage of this, it was quite usual for enterprising banks to get their paper made receivable in the land offices; then go to the new States, and lay out immense quantities of it in the purchase of produce, or property; and then leave it to be shaved out of the hands of the people when it ceased to be land-office money, or when specie was wanted for it. He Finally, Mr. B. objected, totally, to the idea of continuing to receive paper money for the dues of the Federal Government. This bill was intended to be a permanent law; there was no limitation of time in it. It was intended to continue paper money forever as the currency of the Federal Government. There was no longer any plea of necessity to justify such a gross departure from the constitution. It is not now as it was in 1816, when the joint resolution of that year was passed. Then there was less specie in the country than ever was known; now there is more than ever was known. The joint resolution of 1816 was a great advance upon the existing state of things at that time; the same resolution would be a retrograde movement, and a great falling back, at the present day. We have now near eighty millions of specie. The Secretary of the Treasury computed it at seventy-three millions two months ago, and it has been increasing ever since. A New Orleans paper computes it at eighty millions. Say the amount is seventy. five millions; that sum is far beyond any possible demand that the collection of the revenues in specie could create. On this point, Mr. B. spoke with data in his hand, and could demonstrate and prove up what he said. had two different data to go upon, either of which would be sufficient, and both of which, together, would be conclusive. First, as to the amount of money which it requires to effect a given amount of payments in transacting the business of the country. Every body knows that it does not require an amount of money equal to the whole amount of annual payments, to make those payments. This might be the case if every creditor ate all the money which he received; but as he does not eat it, but pays it over to somebody else, it follows that the same piece of money performs many payments in the course of the year; and, consequently, that a sum far below the amount of annual payments will be suffi cient to effect all those payments. A proportionate sup ply, then, is all that is wanted; and that proportion is fixed by political economists at the one tenth. annual payments to the amount of ten millions may be effected by means of one million; and so on in the same proportion, for any amount. Upon this data it would require but a small part of our seventy odd mil lions to ffect all the annual payments to the Federal Government. Then, try another data. Take the experience of the Bank of the United States. During the time that that bank was the fiscal agent of the Govern ment, nothing was received by the Federal Government but its own notes and silver, for there was then no gold Thus, |