politicians. What the community at large is likely to regret or to
wish after the change, it is not difficult to conjecture.

One of the complaints against the Bank of the United States has been,
that the notes issued by any one of its offices were not payable at
every other indiscriminately; and to this the president must have
referred, when, in his first message, he said that the bank "had failed
in the great end of establishing a uniform and sound currency." As the
same objection is not repeated in the last message, we are left at a
loss to decide whether he has been convinced, by the very lucid and
satisfactory views of Mr. Lowndes and Mr. M'Duffie, that the complaint
was unfounded, or whether he means to comprehend this among the causes
of discontent on the part of the states and the people.

As this subject has received so thorough an investigation in the report
of the committee, and in our last number, it cannot be necessary to say
more on it. It is there shown, as we think conclusively, that the Bank
of the United States has done in this matter all that a bank can
do--more, indeed, than could have been reasonably expected of
it--towards furnishing the community with a sound and uniform currency:
that its notes, at the places where they are issued, are, for all
purposes, worth as much as gold and silver, and for distant payments
something more: that if its notes are sometimes worth, in one place, a
trifle less than specie, it is because they have been worth, at another
place, more than specie, since no one would transfer them to a great
distance from the place of emission, unless he found them more
convenient than specie: that as every bank has a direct interest in
giving its notes as great a credit and as wide a circulation as it can,
this institution will, for its own sake, redeem its notes at par,
wherever issued, when it can safely do so; and that in most cases, it
has actually done this; but that to make this obligatory would not only
be unjust to the bank, but would be highly impolitic, by counteracting
the natural and most efficient corrective of the over issues of banks,
and the overtrading of individuals; and would be moreover impracticable.

To these irrefragable positions we may add, that the public has quite as
much interest as the bank in keeping this matter on its present footing.
One of the greatest benefits which a community derives from banking
institutions, is the substitution for a part of its