, and whatever might be
the patriotic disposition of its directors to contribute to the removal
of those embarrassments, and to invigorate the prosecution of the war,
fidelity to the pecuniary and general interest of the institution
according to their estimate of it might oblige them to decline a
connection of their operations with those of the National Treasury
during the continuance of the war and the difficulties incident to it.
Temporary sacrifices of interest, though overbalanced by the future
and permanent profits of the charter, not being requirable of right in
behalf of the public, might not be gratuitously made, and the bank would
reap the full benefit of the grant, whilst the public would lose the
equivalent expected from it; for it must be kept in view that the sole
inducement to such a grant on the part of the public would be the
prospect of substantial aids to its pecuniary means at the present
crisis and during the sequel of the war. It is evident that the stock of
the bank will on the return of peace, if not sooner, rise in the market
to a value which, if the bank were established in a period of peace,
would authorize and obtain for the public a bonus to a very large
amount. In lieu of such a bonus the Government is fairly entitled to and
ought not to relinquish or risk the needful services of the bank under
the pressing circumstances of war.

2. The bank as proposed to be constituted can not be relied on during
the war to provide a circulating medium nor to furnish loans or
anticipations of the public revenue.

Without a medium the taxes can not be collected, and in the absence of
specie the medium understood to be the best substitute is that of notes
issued by a national bank. The proposed bank will commence and conduct
its operations under an obligation to pay its notes in specie, or be
subject to the loss of its charter. Without such an obligation the notes
of the bank, though not exchangeable for specie, yet resting on good
pledges and performing the uses of specie in the payment of taxes and in
other public transactions, would, as experience has ascertained, qualify
the bank to supply at once a circulating medium and pecuniary aids to
the Government. Under the fetters imposed by the bill it is manifest
that during the actual state of things, and probably during the war, the
period particularly requiring such a medium and such a resource for
loans and advances to the Government, notes for which the