gold is at a
premium of 27 per cent., which is the least profit (independent of
future advance above par) so soon to be realized by those purchasing
this currency now, and waiting its appreciation, or investing it in our
United States 5--20 six per cent. stock.

But, besides the financial benefits to the Government of Mr. Chase's
system, its other advantages are great indeed. It will ultimately
displace our whole State bank system and circulation, and give us a
_national currency_, based on ample private capital and Federal stocks,
a currency of _uniform_ value throughout the country, and always
certainly convertible on demand into coin. Besides, by displacing the
State bank circulation, the whole bank note currency of the Union will
be based on the stocks of the Government, and give to every citizen who
holds the bonds or the currency (which will embrace the whole community
in every State), a direct interest in the maintenance of the Union.

The annual losses which our people sustain under the separate State bank
system, in the rate of exchange, is enormous, whilst the constant and
ever-recurring insolvency of so many of these institutions, accompanied
by eight general bank suspensions of specie payment, have, from time to
time, spread ruin and devastation throughout the country. I believe
that, in a period of twenty years, the saving to the people of the
United States, by the substitution of the new system, would reach a sum
very nearly approaching the total amount of our public debt, and in time
largely exceeding it. As a question, then, of national wealth, as well
as national unity, I believe the gain to the country in time by the
adoption of the new system, will far exceed the cost of the war. It was
the State bank system in the rebel States that furnished to secession
mainly the sinews of war. These banks are now generally insolvent, but,
if the banking system now proposed had been in existence, and the
circulating medium in all the States had been an uniform national
currency based entirely on the stocks of the United States, the
rebellion could never have occurred. Every bank, and all its
stockholders, and all the holders of the stock and notes of all the
banks, embracing our whole paper currency, would have been united to the
Government by an interest so direct and universal, that rebellion would
have been impossible. Hamilton and Madison, Story and Marshall, and the
Supreme Court of the United States, have de