into circulation in different places. It is
possible that the national bank, being conducted with greater skill and
knowledge of banking, would have seen that they could not safely
accommodate the government with any large loan, and that when they were
reduced to the dilemma of either suspending cash payments and having a
depreciated currency, or of maintaining the currency sound, by
withholding assistance to the government, they would have preferred the
latter; and that the government would have been thereby induced to
resort sooner than they did to a system of taxation to support the war.
It is indeed impossible to say, at this time, what would have been the
precise result if we had possessed a national bank, but we think that
this much may be affirmed with confidence, that the depreciation of its
notes would have been far less, would have been uniform, and would have
taken the place of much paper which had no solid foundation for the
short-lived credit it obtained.

It remains for us now to see what will be the extent of the immediate
pecuniary cost to the nation for pulling down the Bank of the United
States, and building up the Treasury Bank on its ruins. This view is
intelligible to all, and there are minds who will give more weight to
this objection than that of increasing executive influence.

We know that it is an important function of every government to regulate
its money, weights, and measures, not from any mystical notions of
sovereignty, but because uniformity in these several standards is of the
greatest utility in saving time and trouble, and in preventing frauds
and disputes, and there is no effectual way of attaining uniformity
except by the legislative power. It is, therefore, that these subjects
were placed under the control of the general government, by the
constitution, and it is in the exercise of the powers thus granted that
it coins money of gold and silver, and determines their relative value.

But as among the inventions of commerce, it is found that such metallic
money can be, to a considerable extent, substituted by paper, and thus a
measure of value which costs nothing, can be made and is made to answer
the same, and even a better purpose, than that which would cost a great
deal, the same reasons which made the regulation of the coin by the
government, necessary and proper, apply to the regulation of its
substitute. The government thus having control over the subject, is
furnished with th