no emergencies that make banks
necessary to aid the wants of the Treasury; we have no load of national
debt to provide for, and we have on actual deposit a large surplus. No
public interest, therefore, now requires the renewal of a connection
that circumstances have dissolved. The complete organization of our
Government, the abundance of our resources, the general harmony which
prevails between the different States and with foreign powers, all
enable us now to select the system most consistent with the Constitution
and most conducive to the public welfare. Should we, then, connect the
Treasury for a fourth time with the local banks, it can only be under a
conviction that past failures have arisen from accidental, not inherent,
defects.

A danger difficult, if not impossible, to be avoided in such an
arrangement is made strikingly evident in the very event by which it has
now been defeated. A sudden act of the banks intrusted with the funds
of the people deprives the Treasury, without fault or agency of the
Government, of the ability to pay its creditors in the currency they
have by law a right to demand. This circumstance no fluctuation of
commerce could have produced if the public revenue had been collected
in the legal currency and kept in that form by the officers of the
Treasury. The citizen whose money was in bank receives it back since
the suspension at a sacrifice in its amount, whilst he who kept it in
the legal currency of the country and in his own possession pursues
without loss the current of his business. The Government, placed in the
situation of the former, is involved in embarrassments it could not have
suffered had it pursued the course of the latter. These embarrassments
are, moreover, augmented by those salutary and just laws which forbid it
to use a depreciated currency, and by so doing take from the Government
the ability which individuals have of accommodating their transactions
to such a catastrophe.

A system which can in a time of profound peace, when there is a large
revenue laid by, thus suddenly prevent the application and the use of
the money of the people in the manner and for the objects they have
directed can not be wise; but who can think without painful reflection
that under it the same unforeseen events might have befallen us in the
midst of a war and taken from us at the moment when most wanted the use
of those very means which were treasured up to promote the national
welfare and