It is true, the system does not come into operation all at once. But it begins its demands for specie immediately; it calls upon the banks, and it calls upon individuals, for their hard dollars, that they may be put away and locked up in the Treasury, at the very mo ment when the country is suffering for want of more specie in the circulation, and the banks are suffering for means to enable them to resume their payments. And this, it is expected, will improve the currency, and facilitate resumption!

It has heretofore been asserted, that the general currency of the country needed to be strengthened by the introduction of more specie into the circulation. This has been insisted on for years. Let it be conceded. I have admitted it, and, indeed, contended for the proposition heretofore, and endeavored to prove it. But it must be plain to every body, that any addition of specie, in order to be useful, must either go into the circulation, as a part of that circulation, or else it must go into the banks, to enable them the better to sustain and redeem their paper. But this bill is calculated to promote neither of those ends, but exactly the reverse. It withdraws specie from the circulation and from the banks, and piles it up in useless heaps in the Treasury. It weakens the general circulation, by making the portion of specie, which is part of it, so much the less; it weakens the banks, by reducing the amount of coin which supports their paper. The general evil imputed to our currency, for some years past, is, that paper has formed too great a portion of it. The operation of this measure must be to increase that very evil. I have admitted the evil, and have concurred in measures to remedy it. I have favored the withdrawing of small bills from circulation, to the end that specie might take their place. I discussed this policy, and supported it, as early as 1832. My colleague, who, shortly after that period, was placed in the chair of the chief magistracy of Massachusetts, pressed its consideration, at length, upon the attention of the Legislature of that State. I still think it was a right policy. Some of the States had begun to adopt it. But the measures of the Administration, and especially this proposed measure, throw this policy all aback. They undo at once all that we have been laboring. Such, and so pertinacious has been the demand of Government for specie, and such new demand does this bill promise to create, that the States have found themselves compelled again to issue small bills for the use of the people. It was a day of rejoicing, as we have lately seen, among the people of New York, when the Legislature of that State suspended the small-bill restraining law, and furnished the people with some medium for small payments, better than the miserable trash which now annoys the community.

The Government, therefore, I insist, is evidently breaking down its own declared policy; it is defeating, openly and manifestly defeating, its own professed objects.

And yet, theory, imagination, presumptuous generalization, the application of military movements to questions of commerce and finance, and the abstractions of metaphysics, offer us, in such a state of things, their panacea. And what is it? What is it? What is to cure or mitigate these evils, or what is to ward off future calamities? Why, sir, the most agreeable remedy imaginable; the kindest, tenderest, most soothing, and solacing application in the whole world! Nothing, sir, nothing upon earth, but a smart, delightful, perpetual, and irreconcilable warfare, between the Government of the United States and the State banks! All will be well, we are assured, when the Government and the banks become antagonistical! Yes, sir," antagonistical!" that is the word. What a stroke of policy, sir, is this! It is as delicate a stratagem as poor old King Lear's, and a good deal like it. It proposes that we should tread lightly along, in felt or on velvet, till we get the banks within our power, and then, "kill, kill, kill!"

Sir, we may talk as much as we please about the resumption of specie payments; but I tell you that, with Government thus warring upon the banks, if resumption should take place, another suspension, I fear, would follow. It is not war, successful or unsuccessful, between Government and the banks; it is only peace, trust, confidence, that can restore the prosperity of the country. This system of perpetual annoyance to the banks, this hoarding up of money which the country demands for its own necessary uses, this bringing of the whole revenue to act, not in aid and furtherance, but in direct hinderance and embarrassment of commerce and business, is utterly irreconcilable with the public interest. We shall see no return of former times till it be abandoned-altogether abandoned. The passage of this bill will only create new alarm and new distress.

People begin already to fear their own Government. They have an actual dread of those who should be their protectors and guardians. There are hundreds of thousands of honest and industrious men, sir, at this very moment, who would feel relieved in their circumstances, who would see a better prospect of an honest livelihood, and feel more sure of the means of food and clothing for their wives and children, if they should hear that this measure had received its death. Let us, then, sir, away with it. Do we not see the world prosperous around us? Do we not see other governments and other nations, enlightened by experience, and rejecting arrogant innovations and theoretic dreams, accomplishing the great ends of society?

Why, sir, why are we-why are we alone among the great commercial States? Why are we to be kept on the rack and torture of these experiments? We have powers, adequate, complete powers. We need only to exercise them; we need only to perform our constitutional duty, and we shall spread content, cheerfulness, and joy, over the whole land,

This brings me, sir, to the second inquiry.

Is this measure, Mr. President, a just exercise of the powers of Congress, and does it fulfil all our duties?

Sir, I have so often discussed this point, I have so constantly insisted, for several years past, on the constitutional obligation of Congress to take care of the currency, that the Senate must be already tired of the speaker, if not weary of the topic; and yet, after all, this is the great and paramount question. Until this is settled, the agitation can never be quieted. If we have not the power, we must leave the whole subject in the hands of those who have it, or in no hands; but if we have the power, we are bound to exercise it, and every day's neglect is a violation of duty. I, therefore, again insist, that we have the power, and I again press its exercise on the two Houses of Congress. I again assert, that the regulation of the general currency of the money of the country, whatever actually constitutes that money is one of our solemn duties.

The constitution confers on us, sir, the exclusive power of coinage. This must have been done for the purpose of enabling Congress to establish one uniform basis for the whole money system. Congress, therefore, and Congress alone, has power over the foundation, the ground-work, of the currency; and it would be strange and anomalous, having this, if it had nothing to do with the structure, the edifice, to be raised on this foundation! Convertible paper was already in circulation when the constitution was framed, and must have been expected to continue and to increase. But the circulation of paper tends to displace coin; it may banish it altogether at this very moment it has banished it. If, therefore, the power over the coin does not enable Congress to protect the coin, and to restrain any thing which would supersede it, and abolish its use, the whole power becomes nugatory. If others may drive out the coin, and fill the country with paper which does not represent coin, of what use, I beg to know, is that exclusive power over coins and coinage which is given to Congress by the constitution?

Gentlemen on the other side admit that it is the tendency of paper circulation to expel the coin; but then they say, that, for that very reason, they will withdraw from all connection with the general currency, and limit themselves to the single and narrow object of protecting the coin, and providing for payments to Government. This seems to me to be a very strange way of reasoning, and a very strange course of political conduct. The coinage-power was given to be used for the benefit of the whole country, and not merely to furnish a medium for the collection of revenue. The object was to secure, for the general use of the people, a sound and safe circulating medium. There can be no doubt of this intent. If any evil arises, threatening to destroy or endanger this medium or

this currency, our duty is to meet it, not to retreat from it; to remedy it, not to let it alone; we are to control and correct the mischief, not to submit to it. Wherever paper is to circulate, as subsidiary to coin, or as performing, in a greater or less degree, the function of coin, its regulation naturally belongs to the hands which hold the power over the coinage. This is an admitted maxim by all writers; it has been admitted and acted upon, on all necessary occasions, by our own Government, throughout its whole history. Why will we now think ourselves wiser than all who have gone before us?

This conviction of what was the duty of Government led to the establishment of the bank in the administration of General Washington. Mr. Madison, again, acted upon the same conviction in 1816, and Congress entirely agreed with him. On former occasions, I have referred the Senate, more than once, to the clear and emphatic opinions and language of Mr. Madison, in his messages in 1815 and 1816, and they ought to be repeated, again and again, and pressed upon the public attention.

And now let me say, sir, that no man in our history has carried the doctrine farther, defended it with more ability, or acted upon it with more decision and effect, than the honorable member from South Carolina. His speech upon the Bank bill, on the 26th of February, 1816, is strong, full, and conclusive. He has heretofore said that some part of what he said on that occasion does not appear in the printed speech; but, whatever may have been left out by accident, that which is in the speech could not have got in by accident. Such accidents do not happen. A close, well-conducted, and conclusive constitutional argument, is not the result of an accident or of chance; and his argument on that occasion, as it seems to me, was perfectly conclusive. Nor could the gentleman who reported the speech, a gentleman of talent though he is, have framed such an argument, during the time occupied in preparing the report for the press. As to what is actually in the speech, therefore, there can be no mistake. The honorable gentleman, in that speech, founds the right of regulating the paper currency directly on the coinage power. "The only object," he says, "the framers of the constitution could have in view, in giving to Congress the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, must have been to give a steadiness and fixed value to the currency of the United States." The state of things, he insisted, existing at the time of the adoption of the constitution, afforded an argument in support of the construction. There then existed, he said, a depreciated paper currency, which could only be regulated and made uniform by giving a power, for that purpose, to the General Government.

He proceeded to say, that, by a sort of under-current, the power of Congress to regulate the money of the country had caved in, and

upon its ruin had sprung up those institutions which now exercised the right of making money for and in the United States. "For gold and silver (he insisted) are not the only money; but whatever is the medium of purchase and sale; in which bank paper alone was now employed, and had, therefore, become the money of the country." The right of making money," he added, "an attribute of sovereign power, a sacred and important right, was exercised by two hundred and sixty banks, scattered over every part of the United States."

Certainly, sir, nothing can be clearer than this language; and, acting vigorously upon principles thus plainly laid down, he conducted the Bank bill through the House of Representatives. On that occasion, he was the champion of the power of Congress over the currency; and others were willing to follow his lead.

But the Bank bill was not all. The honorable gentleman went much farther. The bank, it was hoped and expected, would furnish a good paper currency to the extent of its own issues; but there was a vast quantity of bad paper in circulation, and it was possible that the mere influence of the bank, and the refusal to receive this bad money at the Treasury, might not, both, be able to banish it entirely from the country. The honorable member meant to make clean work. He meant that neither Government nor people should suffer the evils of irredeemable paper. Therefore, he brought in another bill, entitled "A bill for the more effectual collection of the public revenue." By the provisions of this bill, he proposed to lay a direct stamp tax on the bills of State banks; and all notes of non-specie-paying banks were, by this stamp, to be branded with the following words, in distinct and legible characters, at length "NOT A SPECIE NOTE." For the tax laid on such notes, there was to be no composition, no commutation; but it was to be specifically collected, on every single bill issued, until those who issued such bills should announce to the Secretary of the Treasury, and prove to his satisfaction, that, after a day named in the bill, all their notes would be paid in specie on demand.

And now, how is it possible, sir, for the author of such a measure as this, to stand up and declare, that the power of Congress over the currency is limited to the mere regulation of the coin? So much for our authority, as it has heretofore been admitted and acknowledged, under the coinage power.

Nor, sir, is the other source of power, in my opinion, at all more questionable.

Congress has the supreme regulation of commerce. This gives it, necessarily, a superintendence over all the interests, agencies, and instruments of commerce. The words are general, and they confer the whole power. When the end is given, all the usual means are given. Money is the chief instrument or agent of commerce; there can, indeed, be no commerce without it, which