el for the two Houses of Congress, I
am constrained by a deep and solemn conviction that the bill ought not
to become a law to return it to the Senate, in which it originated, with
my objections to the same.

Waiving the question of the constitutional authority of the Legislature
to establish an incorporated bank as being precluded in my judgment by
repeated recognitions under varied circumstances of the validity of such
an institution in acts of the legislative, executive, and judicial
branches of the Government, accompanied by indications, in different
modes, of a concurrence of the general will of the nation, the proposed
bank does not appear to be calculated to answer the purposes of reviving
the public credit, of providing a national medium of circulation, and of
aiding the Treasury by facilitating the indispensable anticipations of
the revenue and by affording to the public more durable loans.

1. The capital of the bank is to be compounded of specie, of public
stock, and of Treasury notes convertible into stock, with a certain
proportion of each of which every subscriber is to furnish himself.

The amount of the stock to be subscribed will not, it is believed, be
sufficient to produce in favor of the public credit any considerable or
lasting elevation of the market price, whilst this may be occasionally
depressed by the bank itself if it should carry into the market the
allowed proportion of its capital consisting of public stock in order to
procure specie, which it may find its account in procuring with some
sacrifice on that part of its capital.

Nor will any adequate advantage arise to the public credit from the
subscription of Treasury notes. The actual issue of these notes nearly
equals at present, and will soon exceed, the amount to be subscribed
to the bank. The direct effect of this operation is simply to convert
fifteen millions of Treasury notes into fifteen millions of 6 per cent
stock, with the collateral effect of promoting an additional demand for
Treasury notes beyond what might otherwise be negotiable.

Public credit might indeed be expected to derive advantage from the
establishment of a national bank, without regard to the formation of its
capital, if the full aid and cooperation of the institution were secured
to the Government during the war and during the period of its fiscal
embarrassments. But the bank proposed will be free from all legal
obligation to cooperate with the public measures