gland in Parliament.
At that time, during the suspension of specie payments by the bank, when
paper was fifteen per cent below par, Mr. Vansittart had presented his
celebrated resolution, declaring that a bank-note was still worth the
value expressed on its face; that the bank note had not depreciated, but
that the price of bullion had risen. Lord Liverpool and Lord Castlereagh
espoused this view, as we know, and it was opposed by the close
reasoning of Huskisson, the powerful logic of Horner, and the practical
sagacity and common sense of Alexander Baring, now Lord Ashburton. The
study of those debates made me a bullionist. They convinced me that
paper could not circulate safely in any country, any longer than it was
immediately redeemable at the place of its issue. Coming into Congress
the very next year, or the next but one after, and finding the finances
of the country in a most deplorable condition, I then and ever after
devoted myself, in preference to all other public topics, to the
consideration of the questions relating to them. I believe I have read
every thing of value that has been published since on those questions,
on either side of the Atlantic. I have studied by close observation the
laws of paper currency, as they have exhibited themselves in this and in
other countries, from 1811 down to the present time. I have expressed my
opinions at various times in Congress, and some of the predictions which
I have made have not been altogether falsified by subsequent events. I
must therefore be permitted, Gentlemen, without yielding to any flippant
newspaper paragraph, or to the hasty ebullitions of debate in a public
assembly, to say, that I believe the plan for an exchequer, as presented
to Congress at its last session, is the _best_ measure, the _only_
measure for the adoption of Congress and the trial of the people. I am
ready to stake my reputation upon it, and that is all that I have to
stake. I am ready to stake my reputation, that, if this Whig Congress
will take that measure and give it a fair trial, within three years it
will be admitted by the whole American people to be the most beneficial
measure of any sort ever adopted in this country, the Constitution only
excepted.

I mean that they should take it as it was when it came from the Cabinet,
not as it looked when the committees of Congress had laid their hands
upon it. For when the committees of Congress had struck out the proviso
respecting exchange