paper of the banks. Their vaults are soon
exhausted to pay for foreign commodities. The next step is a stoppage
of specie payment--a total degradation of paper as a currency--unusual
depression of prices, the ruin of debtors, and the accumulation of
property in the hands of creditors and cautious capitalists.

It was in view of these evils, together with the dangerous power wielded
by the Bank of the United States and its repugnance to our Constitution,
that I was induced to exert the power conferred upon me by the American
people to prevent the continuance of that institution. But although
various dangers to our republican institutions have been obviated by
the failure of that bank to extort from the Government a renewal of
its charter, it is obvious that little has been accomplished except a
salutary change of public opinion toward restoring to the country the
sound currency provided for in the Constitution. In the acts of several
of the States prohibiting the circulation of small notes, and the
auxiliary enactments of Congress at the last session forbidding their
reception or payment on public account, the true policy of the country
has been advanced and a larger portion of the precious metals infused
into our circulating medium. These measures will probably be followed
up in due time by the enactment of State laws banishing from
circulation bank notes of still higher denominations, and the object
may be materially promoted by further acts of Congress forbidding the
employment as fiscal agents of such banks as continue to issue notes of
low denominations and throw impediments in the way of the circulation
of gold and silver.

The effects of an extension of bank credits and overissues of bank
paper have been strikingly illustrated in the sales of the public lands.
From the returns made by the various registers and receivers in the
early part of last summer it was perceived that the receipts arising
from the sales of the public lands were increasing to an unprecedented
amount. In effect, however, these receipts amounted to nothing more
than credits in bank. The banks lent out their notes to speculators.
They were paid to the receivers and immediately returned to the banks,
to be lent out again and again, being mere instruments to transfer to
speculators the most valuable public land and pay the Government by a
credit on the books of the banks. Those credits on the books of some of
the Western banks, usually called dep