While the keeping of the public revenue in a separate and
independent treasury and of collecting it in gold and silver will have
a salutary influence on the system of paper credit with which all banks
are connected, and thus aid those that are sound and well managed, it
will at the same time sensibly check such as are otherwise by at once
withholding the means of extravagance afforded by the public funds and
restraining them from excessive issues of notes which they would be
constantly called upon to redeem.
I am aware it has been urged that this control may be best attained and
exerted by means of a national bank. The constitutional objections
which I am well known to entertain would prevent me in any event from
proposing or assenting to that remedy; but in addition to this, I can
not after past experience bring myself to think that it can any longer
be extensively regarded as effective for such a purpose. The history of
the late national bank, through all its mutations, shows that it was
not so.
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