, it was not worth a rush; it was not worth the
parchment it would be engrossed upon. The great desire of this country
is a general currency, a facility of exchange; a currency which shall be
the same for you and for the people of Alabama and Louisiana, and a
system of exchange which shall equalize credit between them and you,
with the rapidity and facility with which steam conveys men and
merchandise. That is what the country wants, what you want; and you have
not got it. You have not got it, you cannot get it, but by some adequate
provision of government. Exchange, ready exchange, that will enable a
man to turn his Orleans means into money to-day, (as we have had in
better times millions a year exchanged, at only three quarters of one
per cent,) is what is wanted How are we to obtain this? A Bank of the
United States founded on a private subscription is out of the question.
That is an obsolete idea. The country and the condition of things have
changed. Suppose that a bank were chartered with a capital of fifty
millions, to be raised by private subscription. Would it not be out of
all possibility to find the money? Who would subscribe? What would you
get for shares? And as for the local discount, do you wish it? Do you,
in State Street, wish that the nation should send millions of untaxed
banking capital hither to increase your discounts? What, then, shall we
do? People who are waiting for power to make a Bank of the United States
may as well postpone all attempts to benefit the country to the incoming
of the Jews.

What, then, shall we do? Let us turn to this plan of the exchequer,
brought forward last year. It was assailed from all quarters. One
gentleman did say, I believe, that by some possibility some good might
come out of it, but in general it met with a different opposition from
every different class. Some said it would be a perfectly lifeless
machine,--that it was no system at all,--that it would do nothing, for
good or evil; others thought that it had a great deal too much vitality,
admitting that it would answer the purpose perfectly well for which it
was designed, but fearing that it would increase the executive power:
thus making it at once King Log and King Serpent. One party called it a
ridiculous imbecility; the other, a dangerous giant, that might subvert
the Constitution. These varied arguments, contradicting, if not
refuting, one another, convinced me of one thing at least,--that the
bill would not b