stitution. As already
intimated, my views have undergone a change so far as to be convinced
that no alteration of the Constitution in this respect is wise or
expedient. The influence of an accumulating surplus upon the legislation
of the General Government and the States, its effect upon the credit
system of the country, producing dangerous extensions and ruinous
contractions, fluctuations in the price of property, rash speculation,
idleness, extravagance, and a deterioration of morals, have taught us
the important lesson that any transient mischief which may attend the
reduction of our revenue to the wants of our Government is to be borne
in preference to an overflowing treasury.

I beg leave to call your attention to another subject intimately
associated with the preceding one--the currency of the country.

It is apparent from the whole context of the Constitution, as well as
the history of the times which gave birth to it, that it was the purpose
of the Convention to establish a currency consisting of the precious
metals. These, from their peculiar properties which rendered them the
standard of value in all other countries, were adopted in this as well
to establish its commercial standard in reference to foreign countries
by a permanent rule as to exclude the use of a mutable medium of
exchange, such as of certain agricultural commodities recognized by
the statutes of some States as a tender for debts, or the still more
pernicious expedient of a paper currency. The last, from the experience
of the evils of the issues of paper during the Revolution, had become so
justly obnoxious as not only to suggest the clause in the Constitution
forbidding the emission of bills of credit by the States, but also to
produce that vote in the Convention which negatived the proposition to
grant power to Congress to charter corporations--a proposition well
understood at the time as intended to authorize the establishment of a
national bank, which was to issue a currency of bank notes on a capital
to be created to some extent out of Government stocks. Although this
proposition was refused by a direct vote of the Convention, the object
was afterwards in effect obtained by its ingenious advocates through a
strained construction of the Constitution. The debts of the Revolution
were funded at prices which formed no equivalent compared with the
nominal amount of the stock, and under circumstances which exposed the
motives of some of those wh