but with no
avowed intention of continuing them permanently in place of the Treasury
of the Constitution. When they were afterwards from time to time
employed, it was from motives of supposed convenience. Our experience
has shown that when banking corporations have been the keepers of the
public money, and been thereby made in effect the Treasury, the
Government can have no guaranty that it can command the use of its own
money for public purposes. The late Bank of the United States proved to
be faithless. The State banks which were afterwards employed were
faithless. But a few years ago, with millions of public money in their
keeping, the Government was brought almost to bankruptcy and the public
credit seriously impaired because of their inability or indisposition to
pay on demand to the public creditors in the only currency recognized by
the Constitution. Their failure occurred in a period of peace, and great
inconvenience and loss were suffered by the public from it. Had the
country been involved in a foreign war, that inconvenience and loss
would have been much greater, and might have resulted in extreme public
calamity. The public money should not be mingled with the private funds
of banks or individuals or be used for private purposes. When it is
placed in banks for safe-keeping, it is in effect loaned to them without
interest, and is loaned by them upon interest to the borrowers from
them. The public money is converted into banking capital, and is used
and loaned out for the private profit of bank stockholders, and when
called for, as was the case in 1837, it may be in the pockets of the
borrowers from the banks instead of being in the public Treasury
contemplated by the Constitution. The framers of the Constitution could
never have intended that the money paid into the Treasury should be thus
converted to private use and placed beyond the control of the
Government.

Banks which hold the public money are often tempted by a desire of gain
to extend their loans, increase their circulation, and thus stimulate,
if not produce, a spirit of speculation and extravagance which sooner or
later must result in ruin to thousands. If the public money be not
permitted to be thus used, but be kept in the Treasury and paid out to
the public creditors in gold and silver, the temptation afforded by its
deposit with banks to an undue expansion of their business would be
checked, while the amount of the constitutional currency left