and cheaply, it is
clearly necessary to give every possible support to the public credit. To
that end a uniform currency, in which taxes, subscriptions to loans, and
all other ordinary public dues as well as all private dues may be paid,
is almost if not quite indispensable. Such a currency can be furnished
by banking associations organized under a general act of Congress, as
suggested in my message at the beginning of the present session. The
securing of this circulation by the pledge of United States bonds, as
therein suggested, would still further facilitate loans, by increasing the
present and causing a future demand for such bonds.

In view of the actual financial embarrassments of the government, and of
the greater embarrassment sure to come if the necessary means of relief
be not afforded, I feel that I should not perform my duty by a simple
announcement of my approval of the joint resolution, which proposes relief
only by increased circulation, without expressing my earnest desire that
measures such in substance as those I have just referred to may receive
the early sanction of Congress. By such measures, in my opinion, will
payment be most certainly secured, not only to the army and navy, but to
all honest creditors of the government, and satisfactory provision made
for future demands on the treasury.

A. LINCOLN.

TO THE WORKING-MEN OF MANCHESTER, ENGLAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January, 1863.

TO THE WORKING-MEN OF MANCHESTER:

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the address and resolutions
which you sent me on the eve of the new year. When I came, on the 4th of
March, 1861, through a free and constitutional election to fireside in
the Government of the United States, the country was found at the verge of
civil war. Whatever might have been the cause, or whosesoever the fault,
one duty, paramount to all others, was before me, namely, to maintain
and preserve at once the Constitution and the integrity of the Federal
Republic. A conscientious purpose to perform this duty is the key to
all the measures of administration which have been and to all which will
hereafter be pursued. Under our frame of government and my official oath,
I could not depart from this purpose if I would. It is not always in the
power of governments to enlarge or restrict the scope of moral results
which follow the policies that they may deem it necessary for the public
safety from time to time to adopt.