mmerce? Must it
furnish weights and scales and steelyards? Most undoubtedly, Sir, it
must regulate weights and measures, and it does so. But the answer to
the general question is very obvious. Government must furnish all that
which none but government can furnish. Government must do that for
individuals which individuals cannot do for themselves. That is the very
end of government. Why else have we a government? Can individuals make a
currency? Can individuals regulate money? The distinction is as broad
and plain as the Pennsylvania Avenue. No man can mistake it, or well
blunder out of it. The gentleman asks if government must furnish for the
people ships, and boats, and wagons. Certainly not. The gentleman here
only recites the President's message of September. These things, and all
such things, the people can furnish for themselves; but they cannot make
a currency; they cannot, individually, decide what shall be the money of
the country. That, everybody knows, is one of the prerogatives, and one
of the duties, of government; and a duty which I think we are most
unwisely and improperly neglecting. We may as well leave the people to
make war and to make peace, each man for himself, as to leave to
individuals the regulation of commerce and currency.

Mr. President, there are other remarks of the gentleman of which I might
take notice. But should I do so, I could only repeat what I have already
said, either now or heretofore. I shall, therefore, not now allude to
them. My principal purpose in what I have said has been to defend
myself; that was my first object; and next, as the honorable member has
attempted to take to himself the character of a strict constructionist,
and a State-rights man, and on that basis to show a difference, not
favorable to me, between his constitutional opinions and my own,
heretofore, it has been my intention to show that the power to create a
bank, the power to regulate the currency by other and direct means, the
power to enact a protective tariff, and the power of internal
improvement, in its broadest sense, are all powers which the honorable
gentleman himself has supported, has acted on, and in the exercise of
which, indeed, he has taken a distinguished lead in the counsels of
Congress.

If this has been done, my purpose is answered. I do not wish to prolong
the discussion, nor to spin it out into a colloquy. If the honorable
member has any thing new to bring forward; if he has any charge to