ever enrich the laborious? Did violent
fluctuations ever do good to him who depends on his daily labor for his
daily bread? Certainly never. All these things may gratify greediness
for sudden gain, or the rashness of daring speculation; but they can
bring nothing but injury and distress to the homes of patient industry
and honest labor. Who are they that profit by the present state of
things? They are not the many, but the few. They are speculators,
brokers, dealers in money, and lenders of money at exorbitant interest.
Small capitalists are crushed, and, their means being dispersed, as
usual, in various parts of the country, and this miserable policy having
destroyed exchanges, they have no longer either money or credit. And all
classes of labor partake, and must partake, in the same calamity. And
what consolation for all this is it, that the public lands are paid for
in specie? that, whatever embarrassment and distress pervade the
country, the Western wilderness is thickly sprinkled over with eagles
and dollars? that gold goes weekly from Milwaukie and Chicago to
Detroit, and back again from Detroit to Milwaukie and Chicago, and
performs similar feats of egress and regress, in many other instances,
in the Western States? It is remarkable enough, that, with all this
sacrifice of general convenience, with all this sky-rending clamor for
government payments in specie, government, after all, never gets a
dollar. So far as I know, the United States have not now a single specie
dollar in the world. If they have, where is it? The gold and silver
collected at the land offices is sent to the deposit banks; it is there
placed to the credit of the government, and thereby becomes the property
of the bank. The whole revenue of the government, therefore, after all,
consists in mere bank credits; that very sort of security which the
friends of the administration have so much denounced.

Remember, Gentlemen, in the midst of this deafening din against all
banks, that, if it shall create such a panic as shall shut up the banks,
it will shut up the treasury of the United States also.

Gentlemen, I would not willingly be a prophet of ill. I most devoutly
wish to see a better state of things; and I believe the repeal of the
treasury order would tend very much to bring about that better state of
things. And I am of opinion, that, sooner or later, the order will be
repealed. I think it must be repealed. I think the East, West, North,
and