ed to upwards of nine millions;
making, in all, more than thirty-three millions. Now, although the
annual public revenue is about twenty-four millions, yet as the
expenditures of the nation are going on at the same time as its
receipts, the money on hand, at any one time, seldom exceeds six or
seven millions. According to the monthly statement of the bank, for the
1st of January of the present year, the amount of deposits on account of
the treasury of the United States, was, after deducting over drafts,
6,940,628 dollars. But as this sum would be distributed very unequally
over the United States, there would be in some places more money than
the government had occasion for, and in others less, so that it would be
compelled to draw on the former, to meet the public exigencies, without
regard to the state of the exchange market, by reason of which, it would
not only not be able to afford the public that general accommodation
which the Bank of the United States now does, but be sometimes obliged
to sell its drafts for a _discount_, instead of a premium. Thus, suppose
the government has a large sum lying in New-York, (it sometimes has more
than two millions there,) and it has occasion for 200,000 dollars in
Maine, as much in Missouri, &c. Although it might have found a ready
sale in these places for its drafts, for a small amount, at par, or even
at a premium, yet the amount offered exceeding the demands of the
market, the government must either sell its drafts at a discount, or be
at the expense of transmitting the specie. In the mean while, the drafts
which are thus sold at one place at a loss, might be in demand at
another, but that demand the government cannot meet, because it must
give its money another direction. We therefore think that this part of
the scheme cannot be of much utility to the public, or of profit to the
treasury.

It must be recollected, too, that the Bank of the United States is a
buyer as well as a seller of bills of exchange, to the great advantage
of the commercial community. Its purchases, during the same year, 1829,
amounted to upwards of twenty-nine millions of dollars; and that in this
business, the treasury bank, according to the president's programme,
could not engage.

But besides the want of the accommodation now afforded by the purchase
or sale of inland bills to all parts of the Union, there is a large
further arrear of utility which the treasury bank would owe to the
public. In what w