se who
paid it and who have most need of it and are honestly entitled to
it. There is but one safe rule, and that is to confine the General
Government rigidly within the sphere of its appropriate duties. It
has no power to raise a revenue or impose taxes except for the purposes
enumerated in the Constitution, and if its income is found to exceed
these wants it should be forthwith reduced and the burden of the people
so far lightened.

In reviewing the conflicts which have taken place between different
interests in the United States and the policy pursued since the adoption
of our present form of Government, we find nothing that has produced
such deep-seated evil as the course of legislation in relation to the
currency. The Constitution of the United States unquestionably intended
to secure to the people a circulating medium of gold and silver. But the
establishment of a national bank by Congress, with the privilege of
issuing paper money receivable in the payment of the public dues, and
the unfortunate course of legislation in the several States upon the
same subject, drove from general circulation the constitutional currency
and substituted one of paper in its place.

It was not easy for men engaged in the ordinary pursuits of business,
whose attention had not been particularly drawn to the subject, to
foresee all the consequences of a currency exclusively of paper, and we
ought not on that account to be surprised at the facility with which
laws were obtained to carry into effect the paper system. Honest and
even enlightened men are sometimes misled by the specious and plausible
statements of the designing. But experience has now proved the mischiefs
and dangers of a paper currency, and it rests with you to determine
whether the proper remedy shall be applied.

The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself
no intrinsic value, it is liable to great and sudden fluctuations,
thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and
uncertain. The corporations which create the paper money can not be
relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount. In times
of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect
of gain or by the influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend
their issues of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable
demands of business; and when these issues have been pushed on from day
to day, until public confi