oneys
once paid, and whilst nominally in the treasury, absolutely
impossible. The next, and not less important, benefit is to be
found in the perfect facility with which all the public payments
are made by checks or treasury drafts, payable at any place where
the bank has an office; all those who have demands against
government are paid in the place most convenient to them; and the
public moneys are transferred through our extensive territory at a
moment's warning without any risk or expense, to the places most
remote from those of collection, and wherever public exigencies may
require."

Late in life, in a letter to John M. Botts, June 14, 1841, Mr. Gallatin
expressed the same opinions with regard to the usefulness of a
government bank as an aid to the Treasury Department, but limited his
approval to that use. "Except in its character of fiscal agent to the
general government I attach much less importance to a national bank than
several of those who are in favor of it." "Did I believe," he adds in
the same letter, "that a bank of the United States would effectually
secure us a sound currency, I would think it a duty at all hazards to
promote the object."

The reason for his doubts in 1841 is easily seen in the impossibility of
annihilating or controlling the three hundred distinct currencies of as
many banks, each nominally convertible into specie at its point of
issue; a financial puzzle which Mr. Chase solved in the device and
organization of the present national banking system, which, without
involving the government in banking operations, affords to the people a
homogeneous currency of uniform value, and secures its convertibility by
reasonable but absolute restrictions, upon conformity to which the
existence of the banks depends. The exigencies of war compelled an
acquiescence in the plans of Mr. Chase, which, at the time when Mr.
Gallatin expressed his doubts, could not have been had in any system
whatever which involved the subordination of the banks.

The wide spread of the state bank system, with its irresponsible and
unlimited issues, occurring subsequent to Mr. Gallatin's withdrawal from
the Treasury, was a consequence of the failure to renew the charter of
the Bank of the United States; and if ever there were a system by which
the inhabitants of States whose floating capital was small were placed
at the mercy of moneyed corporations of the States where it