t an accumulation of
surpluses, and limited in amount to a specific sum, be reenacted. Such
provision, which would authorize the Government to go into the market
for a purchase of its own stock on fair terms, would serve to maintain
its credit at the highest point and prevent to a great extent those
fluctuations in the price of its securities which might under other
circumstances affect its credit. No apprehension of this sort is at this
moment entertained, since the stocks of the Government, which but two
years ago were offered for sale to capitalists at home and abroad at a
depreciation, and could find no purchasers, are now greatly above par in
the hands of the holders; but a wise and prudent forecast admonishes us
to place beyond the reach of contingency the public credit.

It must also be a matter of unmingled gratification that under the
existing financial system (resting upon the act of 1789 and the
resolution of 1816) the currency of the country has attained a state of
perfect soundness; and the rates of exchange between different parts
of the Union, which in 1841 denoted by their enormous amount the great
depreciation and, in fact, worthlessness of the currency in most of
the States, are now reduced to little more than the mere expense of
transporting specie from place to place and the risk incident to the
operation. In a new country like that of the United States, where so
many inducements are held out for speculation, the depositories of the
surplus revenue, consisting of banks of any description, when it reaches
any considerable amount, require the closest vigilance on the part of
the Government. All banking institutions, under whatever denomination
they may pass, are governed by an almost exclusive regard to the
interest of the stockholders. That interest consists in the augmentation
of profits in the form of dividends, and a large surplus revenue
intrusted to their custody is but too apt to lead to excessive loans
and to extravagantly large issues of paper. As a necessary consequence
prices are nominally increased and the speculative mania very soon
seizes upon the public mind. A fictitious state of prosperity for a
season exists, and, in the language of the day, money becomes plenty.
Contracts are entered into by individuals resting on this unsubstantial
state of things, but the delusion speedily passes away and the country
is overrun with an indebtedness so weighty as to overwhelm many and to
visit every