to the
business of the country, and will doubtless continue to exist in the
States so long as they conform to their laws and are found to be safe
and beneficial. How they should be created, what privileges they should
enjoy, under what responsibilities they should act, and to what
restrictions they should be subject are questions which, as I observed
on a previous occasion, belong to the States to decide. Upon their
rights or the exercise of them the General Government can have no motive
to encroach. Its duty toward them is well performed when it refrains
from legislating for their special benefit, because such legislation
would violate the spirit of the Constitution and be unjust to other
interests; when it takes no steps to impair their usefulness, but so
manages its own affairs as to make it the interest of those institutions
to strengthen and improve their condition for the security and welfare
of the community at large. They have no right to insist on a connection
with the Federal Government, nor on the use of the public money for
their own benefit. The object of the measure under consideration is to
avoid for the future a compulsory connection of this kind. It proposes
to place the General Government, in regard to the essential points of
the collection, safe-keeping, and transfer of the public money, in a
situation which shall relieve it from all dependence on the will of
irresponsible individuals or corporations; to withdraw those moneys from
the uses of private trade and confide them to agents constitutionally
selected and controlled by law; to abstain from improper interference
with the industry of the people and withhold inducements to improvident
dealings on the part of individuals; to give stability to the concerns
of the Treasury; to preserve the measures of the Government from the
unavoidable reproaches that flow from such a connection, and the banks
themselves from the injurious effects of a supposed participation in the
political conflicts of the day, from which they will otherwise find it
difficult to escape.

These are my views upon this important subject, formed after careful
reflection and with no desire but to arrive at what is most likely
to promote the public interest. They are now, as they were before,
submitted with unfeigned deference for the opinions of others. It was
hardly to be hoped that changes so important on a subject so interesting
could be made without producing a serious diversity of