in every way which
experience and caution could suggest. Personal security was required for
the safe-keeping and prompt payment of the moneys to be received, and
full returns of their condition were from time to time to be made by the
depositories. In the first stages the measure was eminently successful,
notwithstanding the violent opposition of the Bank of the United States
and the unceasing efforts made to overthrow it. The selected banks
performed with fidelity and without any embarrassment to themselves or
to the community their engagements to the Government, and the system
promised to be permanently useful; but when it became necessary, under
the act of June, 1836, to withdraw from them the public money for the
purpose of placing it in additional institutions or of transferring it
to the States, they found it in many cases inconvenient to comply with
the demands of the Treasury, and numerous and pressing applications were
made for indulgence or relief. As the installments under the deposit law
became payable their own embarrassments and the necessity under which
they lay of curtailing their discounts and calling in their debts
increased the general distress and contributed, with other causes, to
hasten the revulsion in which at length they, in common with the other
banks, were fatally involved.

Under these circumstances it becomes our solemn duty to inquire whether
there are not in any connection between the Government and banks of
issue evils of great magnitude, inherent in its very nature and against
which no precautions can effectually guard.

Unforeseen in the organization of the Government and forced on the
Treasury by early necessities, the practice of employing banks was in
truth from the beginning more a measure of emergency than of sound
policy. When we started into existence as a nation, in addition to the
burdens of the new Government we assumed all the large but honorable
load of debt which was the price of our liberty; but we hesitated to
weigh down the infant industry of the country by resorting to adequate
taxation for the necessary revenue. The facilities of banks, in return
for the privileges they acquired, were promptly offered, and perhaps too
readily received by an embarrassed Treasury. During the long continuance
of a national debt and the intervening difficulties of a foreign war the
connection was continued from motives of convenience; but these causes
have long since passed away. We have