he people of the
use of it, while the government does not itself need it, and while the
money is performing no nobler office than that of rusting in iron boxes.
The natural effect of this change of policy, every one will see, is
to reduce the quantity of money in circulation. But, again, by
the subtreasury scheme the revenue is to be collected in specie. I
anticipate that this will be disputed. I expect to hear it said that
it is not the policy of the administration to collect the revenue
in specie. If it shall, I reply that Mr. Van Buren, in his message
recommending the subtreasury, expended nearly a column of that document
in an attempt to persuade Congress to provide for the collection of the
revenue in specie exclusively; and he concludes with these words:

"It may be safely assumed that no motive of convenience to the citizens
requires the reception of bank paper." In addition to this, Mr.
Silas Wright, Senator from New York, and the political, personal and
confidential friend of Mr. Van Buren, drafted and introduced into the
Senate the first subtreasury bill, and that bill provided for ultimately
collecting the revenue in specie. It is true, I know, that that clause
was stricken from the bill, but it was done by the votes of the Whigs,
aided by a portion only of the Van Buren senators. No subtreasury
bill has yet become a law, though two or three have been considered by
Congress, some with and some without the specie clause; so that I
admit there is room for quibbling upon the question of whether the
administration favor the exclusive specie doctrine or not; but I take it
that the fact that the President at first urged the specie doctrine,
and that under his recommendation the first bill introduced embraced it,
warrants us in charging it as the policy of the party until their head
as publicly recants it as he at first espoused it. I repeat, then, that
by the subtreasury the revenue is to be collected in specie. Now mark
what the effect of this must be. By all estimates ever made there are
but between sixty and eighty millions of specie in the United States.
The expenditures of the Government for the year 1838--the last for which
we have had the report--were forty millions. Thus it is seen that if the
whole revenue be collected in specie, it will take more than half of all
the specie in the nation to do it. By this means more than half of all
the specie belonging to the fifteen millions of souls who compose the
who