the arrangements
with them made by the treasury; a set of duties to be performed by them
to the treasury prescribed; and these banks were to hold the whole
proceeds of the public revenue. In all this, Congress had neither part
nor lot. No law had caused the removal of the deposits; no law had
authorized the selection of deposit State banks; no law had prescribed
the terms on which the revenues should be placed in such banks. From the
beginning of the chapter to the end, it was all executive edict. And
now, Gentlemen, I ask if it be not most remarkable, that, in a country
professing to be under a government of laws, such great and important
changes in one of its most essential and vital interests should be
brought about without any change of law, without any enactment of the
legislature whatever? Is such a power trusted to the executive of any
government in which the executive is separated, by clear and
well-defined lines, from the legislative department? The currency of the
country stands on the same general ground as the commerce of the
country. Both are intimately connected, and both are subjects of legal,
not of executive, regulation.

It is worthy of notice, that the writers of the Federalist, in
discussing the powers which the Constitution conferred on the President,
made it matter of commendation, that it withdraws this subject
altogether from his grasp. "He can prescribe no rules," say they,
"concerning the commerce or _currency_ of the country." And so we have
been all taught to think, under all former administrations. But we have
now seen that the President, and the President alone, does prescribe the
rule concerning the currency. He makes it, and he alters it. He makes
one rule for one branch of the revenue, and another rule for another. He
makes one rule for the citizen of one State, and another for the citizen
of another State. This, it is certain, is one part of the treasury order
of July last.

But at last Congress interfered, and undertook to regulate the deposits
of the public moneys. It passed the law of July, 1836, placing the
subject under legal control, restraining the power of the executive,
subjecting the banks to liabilities and duties, on the one hand, and
securing them against executive favoritism, on the other. But this law
contained another important provision; which was, that all the money in
the treasury, beyond what was necessary for the current expenditures of
the government, should be d