At the present moment the receipts and disbursements
of the Government are made in legal currency in the largest portion of
the Union. No one suggests a departure from this rule, and if it can now
be successfully carried out it will be surely attended with even less
difficulty when bank notes are again redeemed in specie.
Indeed, I can not think that a serious objection would anywhere be
raised to the receipt and payment of gold and silver in all public
transactions were it not from an apprehension that a surplus in the
Treasury might withdraw a large portion of it from circulation and lock
it up unprofitably in the public vaults. It would not, in my opinion,
be difficult to prevent such an inconvenience from occurring; but the
authentic statements which I have already submitted to you in regard
to the actual amount in the public Treasury at any one time during the
period embraced in them and the little probability of a different state
of the Treasury for at least some years to come seem to render it
unnecessary to dwell upon it.
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