currency of the
cheap article of paper for the costly one of specie, by which the
capital that would otherwise have been used as money, may be employed
for other useful purposes. But if the Bank of the United States, and
each of its offices, were obliged, as a matter of right, to redeem the
notes of every other, it would require an increase of specie which would
deprive the country of the benefits of this substitution, as well as the
bank of its profits. The same remark applies to their demanding a small
premium for their drafts on each other. For each of the offices to be
prepared not only to redeem its own paper, but to meet the drafts which
others may draw on it, it is obliged to keep on hand an extra supply of
specie; but if the check of the premium were removed, and it was no
longer a matter of discretion, a much larger amount would be necessary,
and nothing but experience could determine whether any thing short of
the whole capital of the bank, or even that, would be sufficient for the
purpose, under extraordinary circumstances, and great fluctuations of
trade. So that upon the whole this complaint against the bank seems to
be pretty much of the same character as these--that rivers do not run
upwards as well as downwards--or that the same season which gives us ice
does not also give us melons and peaches--or that a rail-road or a
canal, which reduces the expense of carriage to one-tenth, does not
reduce it to nothing.

4. Having thus noticed all the objections which the president has made
to the bank, let us now turn our attention to the substitute that he has
proposed. This is a national bank, at the seat of government, which is
to be a branch of the treasury department, and which is, we presume, to
have subordinate offices distributed among the several states. Its
business will be to receive the public revenue from the collectors of
the customs, receivers of the land offices, and postmasters, together
with such deposits as individuals choose to make, and to give drafts,
from time to time, on distant offices, for a premium.

According to this project, the funds of the treasury, instead of being,
as now, deposited in the several banks convenient to the receiving
offices, are to be in the immediate keeping of the new corps of the
treasury to be levied for the purpose, by which means the public is to
lose one of its present checks on the malversation of its agents. It is
known that there are in most banks various