ity on
whose business the change would immediately operate are comparatively
small, nor is it believed that its effect would be in the least unjust
or injurious to them.

In the payment of duties, which constitute by far the greater portion of
the revenue, a very large proportion is derived from foreign commission
houses and agents of foreign manufacturers, who sell the goods consigned
to them generally at auction, and after paying the duties out of the
avails remit the rest abroad in specie or its equivalent. That the
amount of duties should in such cases be also retained in specie can
hardly be made a matter of complaint. Our own importing merchants,
by whom the residue of the duties is paid, are not only peculiarly
interested in maintaining a sound currency, which the measure in
question will especially promote, but are from the nature of their
dealings best able to know when specie will be needed and to procure
it with the least difficulty or sacrifice. Residing, too, almost
universally in places where the revenue is received and where the drafts
used by the Government for its disbursements must concentrate, they have
every opportunity to obtain and use them in place of specie should it be
for their interest or convenience. Of the number of these drafts and the
facilities they may afford, as well as of the rapidity with which the
public funds are drawn and disbursed, an idea may be formed from the
fact that of nearly $20,000,000 paid to collectors and receivers during
the present year the average amount in their hands at any one time has
not exceeded a million and a half, and of the fifteen millions received
by the collector of New York alone during the present year the average
amount held by him subject to draft during each week has been less than
half a million.

The ease and safety of the operations of the Treasury in keeping the
public money are promoted by the application of its own drafts to the
public dues. The objection arising from having them too long outstanding
might be obviated and they yet made to afford to merchants and banks
holding them an equivalent for specie, and in that way greatly lessen
the amount actually required. Still less inconvenience will attend the
requirement of specie in purchases of public lands. Such purchases,
except when made on speculation, are in general but single transactions,
rarely repeated by the same person; and it is a fact that for the
last year and a half, during whi