ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour, lemon s Signed by order and in behalf of the Congress.

ALL general principles are liable to exceptions. In a country where the monopoly of banking is carried to a great extent, it may often become necessary to check one monopoly by another, and oppose the interest of those who have nothing to restrain their cupidity, by the interest of another party, who have controlling motives of integrity to regulate their conduct. Upon a just theory framed for the equitable distribution of property, no paper money should prevail; but where institutions exist for its manufacture to an unlimited extent, another question presents itself, whether the over-issues of the local banks, may not be beneficially controlled by the higher obligations imposed on the bank of the United States, to preserve a metallic currency, and by the combined influence of the funds of government, with those of its stockholders-hold a salutary restraint over the temptation which always exists to bankruptcy, when the currency of a country is placed at the discretion of private cupidity, and chartered companies. In this view, the question arises, whether the bank of the United States is not to be preferred to any unknown or odious system, which might take its place, were the people to suffer it to be destroyed.

It may safely be asserted, that in the existing state of commerce and capital, and in all commercial communities of equally extended faculties, a pure metallic currency is impracticable. The most obvious and suf

ficient reason is to be found in the fact, that gold and silver do not exist in quantities equal to the circulation of labour; in other words, that values in products, which pass from hand to hand, exceed the values in gold and silver. A pure metallic currency, therefore, is impossible in itself, and if it were possible, from the relations of things, it would be ineligible from its extreme inconvenience-for the immense amounts of money which hourly change hands between men of business, if paid and received in the precious metals, would require a train of wagons, carts, and porters, and consume so large a period of time, as to impede 'business beyond all the limits of profit, and tend to obstruct and retard our prosperity at least one hundred per cent. on the most reasonable scale of computation. Such a state of exchange of labour, however, is utterly impracticable in a country distinguished for activity of commerce. It does not prevail even in China, and in no country remarkable for its ingenuity and opulence, or in any advanced from the first crude efforts of society towards refinement and art. A pure metallic currency is generally confined to countries yet in their infancy, or whose civilization has been retarded by that cause; a superabundance of gold and silver over the amount of industry.

Every one is now familiar with the fact, that it is not gold and silver which render a country rich and independent, but industry, skill, manufactures, population, and the virtues of social life. Strip us of all our gold and silver to-morrow, and we shall have remaining all that is necessary to our wants, or conducive to our refinement. Property would continue as secure in its tenure, and as undiminished in its value, and exchange of products would be accomplished through

some other medium; and this would be the sole difference between two countries, one of which was destitute of the precious metals, and the other abounding in them.

A pure metallic currency then being impracticable, it remains to be considered what species of currency is most convenient, most safe, least variable, and most favourable to private and public credit.

Experience has shown the danger of paper credits, unrestricted by the check of specie equivalents. The natural rapacity of man leading him to all expedients to acquire property, must be restrained by the intervention of laws and principles founded in justice and equity. The intrinsic preciousness of gold and silver, the labour necessary to their acquisition, and the skill, ingenuity, and power, comprised in their coinage, involving a sovereign and absolute authority, render them real equivalents to the products of industry; whereas paper credits are, in themselves, worth nothing; and hence the necessity of correcting their nominal character of money by what is of standard value-gold and silver. The latter being too unwieldy for a currency in large amounts, but necessary as a standard of value, and paper being most convenient for a currency, but having no real value, it becomes self-evident that, by a proper mixture of the two, a medium of exchange is compounded, which, while it secures property from danger, at the same time extends the utmost facility to the circulation of wealth, and the operations of commerce.

Different nations have resorted to various expedients to attain this object; but it has been attained by none in such perfection as by England and the United States; the former by her national bank, the latter by

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a private institution, under federal authority, the bank of the United States. In the bills of this corporation, we possess the double property of gold and silver in respect to value, and all the facility of paper credits, without any of their disadvantages. We can transmit them thousands of miles without incurring a cent of cost, or suffering a cent of depreciation. They are gold and silver embodied in a form so portable, so aerial, as to almost realize the idea of magic; and pre. sent, in a new aspect, those wonderful inventions of science and philosophy which distinguish the era of steam power, and the application of mathematical science, to the annihilation of distance.

In a country whose local governments are prone to an excessive issue of paper credits, such an institution becomes invaluable; for it operates to secure the solvency of the whole nation, and interposes its benignant power to arrest ruin and bankruptcy throughout the

states.

Contrasted with any other ostensive method of a profitable medium of exchange, combining the standard and invariable property of gold and silver, no institution can vie with that under consideration. It is, in a peculiar manner, in its relation to the currency of the Union, preserving it sound, wholesome, and solventthat we now desire to consider the utility of the bank of the United States.

Can any other method compare with it? Can the meager expedient of Treasury bills, issued by a Treasury bank, compare with it? The experience of the last war fully answers this question, to say nothing of that agony of ruin which attended upon our Continental money.

The bills of the bank of the United States are con

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