In a word, I can not but believe that, with the full understanding of
the operations of our banking system which experience has produced,
public sentiment is not less opposed to the creation of a national bank
for purposes connected with currency and commerce than for those
connected with the fiscal operations of the Government.
Yet the commerce and currency of the country are suffering evils from
the operations of the State banks which can not and ought not to be
overlooked. By their means we have been flooded with a depreciated
paper, which it was evidently the design of the framers of the
Constitution to prevent when they required Congress to "coin money and
regulate the value of foreign coins," and when they forbade the States
"to coin money, emit bills of credit, make anything but gold and silver
a tender in payment of debts," or "pass any law impairing the obligation
of contracts." If they did not guard more explicitly against the present
state of things, it was because they could not have anticipated that the
few banks then existing were to swell to an extent which would expel to
so great a degree the gold and silver for which they had provided from
the channels of circulation, and fill them with a currency that defeats
the objects they had in view.
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