o participated in the passage of the act
to distrust.

The facts that the value of the stock was greatly enhanced by the
creation of the bank, that it was well understood that such would be
the case, and that some of the advocates of the measure were largely
benefited by it belong to the history of the times, and are well
calculated to diminish the respect which might otherwise have been
due to the action of the Congress which created the institution.

On the establishment of a national bank it became the interest of its
creditors that gold should be superseded by the paper of the bank as a
general currency. A value was soon attached to the gold coins which made
their exportation to foreign countries as a mercantile commodity more
profitable than their retention and use at home as money. It followed
as a matter of course, if not designed by those who established the
bank, that the bank became in effect a substitute for the Mint of the
United States.

Such was the origin of a national-bank currency, and such the beginning
of those difficulties which now appear in the excessive issues of the
banks incorporated by the various States.

Although it may not be possible by any legislative means within our
power to change at once the system which has thus been introduced, and
has received the acquiescence of all portions of the country, it is
certainly our duty to do all that is consistent with our constitutional
obligations in preventing the mischiefs which are threatened by its
undue extension. That the efforts of the fathers of our Government to
guard against it by a constitutional provision were founded on an
intimate knowledge of the subject has been frequently attested by the
bitter experience of the country. The same causes which led them to
refuse their sanction to a power authorizing the establishment of
incorporations for banking purposes now exist in a much stronger degree
to urge us to exert the utmost vigilance in calling into action the
means necessary to correct the evils resulting from the unfortunate
exercise of the power, and it is to be hoped that the opportunity for
effecting this great good will be improved before the country witnesses
new scenes of embarrassment and distress.

Variableness must ever be the characteristic of a currency of which the
precious metals are not the chief ingredient, or which can be expanded
or contracted without regard to the principles that regulate the value
of those meta