e other, secession,
with the inevitable attendant of a circulation, not depreciated, but
utterly worthless, and that, too, with no other to fill its place, since
the operation of the law must soon drive out of existence every dollar
of the present local bank circulation: patriotism and prosperity arrayed
against rebellion and ruin. The business men all see this, and in the
event of any threatened disruption, they, the most influential part of
community, because controlling that which is the representative of all
value, will be found firm and unwavering on the side of the duly
constituted authority. Thus we shall have all the benefits of a funded
national debt, with none of its attendant evils. And what a bond of
union is this!--a bond which involves our very meat and drink, a bond
which there can be no possible motive to sever so powerful as the
incentive to union and mutual cooperation.

Again, the financial crises with which our country has been afflicted at
regular periods of her existence, lowering thousands at one moment from
a condition of ease and comfort to one of the most pinching want,
changing merchant princes to beggars, and spreading ruin far and wide,
have owed their origin, not to a wild spirit of speculation, but to the
over inflation of bank issues, which is itself the cause of that
reckless speculation. This evil, too, will be done away with in the
future, for the issue must and will be regulated by the demands of the
community. The Government, in whose hands are the securities, and who
furnish the circulation based thereon, will control this matter and
restrain the issue to its proper bounds. And even if it should run
beyond that point, there will be less danger, since there can be no
spurious basis, every dollar being secured by a tangible deposit in the
Government vaults. The only escape from this view is in open and
barefaced fraud, which will be easy of conviction, and no more to be
feared than the ordinary operations of counterfeiters, and which will be
effectually provided against. So carefully drawn are the provisions of
the bill that no loophole is left for speculation; and he who shall
hereafter succeed in flooding the country with a 'wildcat' currency,
will be a shrewder financier and a more accomplished villain than the
world has yet seen. The people, too, will repose such a confidence in
the banks as they have never done before. We shall hear little hereafter
of 'runs upon the banks;' for