ch the notes of sound banks have been
received, more than a moiety of these payments has been voluntarily made
in specie, being a larger proportion than would have been required in
three years under the graduation proposed.

It is, moreover, a principle than which none is better settled by
experience that the supply of the precious metals will always be found
adequate to the uses for which they are required. They abound in
countries where no other currency is allowed. In our own States, where
small notes are excluded, gold and silver supply their place. When
driven to their hiding places by bank suspensions, a little firmness in
the community soon restores them in a sufficient quantity for ordinary
purposes. Postage and other public dues have been collected in coin
without serious inconvenience even in States where a depreciated paper
currency has existed for years, and this, with the aid of Treasury
notes for a part of the time, was done without interruption during the
suspension of 1837. At the present moment the receipts and disbursements
of the Government are made in legal currency in the largest portion of
the Union. No one suggests a departure from this rule, and if it can now
be successfully carried out it will be surely attended with even less
difficulty when bank notes are again redeemed in specie.

Indeed, I can not think that a serious objection would anywhere be
raised to the receipt and payment of gold and silver in all public
transactions were it not from an apprehension that a surplus in the
Treasury might withdraw a large portion of it from circulation and lock
it up unprofitably in the public vaults. It would not, in my opinion,
be difficult to prevent such an inconvenience from occurring; but the
authentic statements which I have already submitted to you in regard
to the actual amount in the public Treasury at any one time during the
period embraced in them and the little probability of a different state
of the Treasury for at least some years to come seem to render it
unnecessary to dwell upon it. Congress, moreover, as I have before
observed, will in every year have an opportunity to guard against it
should the occurrence of any circumstances lead us to apprehend injury
from this source. Viewing the subject in all its aspects, I can not
believe that any period will be more auspicious than the present for the
adoption of all measures necessary to maintain the sanctity of our own
engagements and to ai