s to the
Treasury. In admitted deviation from the law, at the same period and
under the same exigency, the Secretary of the Treasury received their
notes in payment of duties. The sole ground on which the practice
thus commenced was then or has since been justified is the certain,
immediate, and convenient exchange of such notes for specie. The
Government did, indeed, receive the inconvertible notes of State banks
during the difficulties of war, and the community submitted without a
murmur to the unequal taxation and multiplied evils of which such a
course was productive. With the war this indulgence ceased, and the
banks were obliged again to redeem their notes in gold and silver. The
Treasury, in accordance with previous practice, continued to dispense
with the currency required by the act of 1789, and took the notes of
banks in full confidence of their being paid in specie on demand; and
Congress, to guard against the slightest violation of this principle,
have declared by law that if notes are paid in the transactions of the
Government it must be under such circumstances as to enable the holder
to convert them into specie without depreciation or delay.

Of my own duties under the existing laws, when the banks suspended
specie payments, I could not doubt. Directions were immediately given
to prevent the reception into the Treasury of anything but gold and
silver, or its equivalent, and every practicable arrangement was made
to preserve the public faith by similar or equivalent payments to
the public creditors. The revenue from lands had been for some time
substantially so collected under the order issued by directions of my
predecessor. The effects of that order had been so salutary and its
forecast in regard to the increasing insecurity of bank paper had become
so apparent that even before the catastrophe I had resolved not to
interfere with its operation. Congress is now to decide whether the
revenue shall continue to be so collected or not.

The receipt into the Treasury of bank notes not redeemed in specie on
demand will not, I presume, be sanctioned. It would destroy without the
excuse of war or public distress that equality of imposts and identity
of commercial regulation which lie at the foundation of our Confederacy,
and would offer to each State a direct temptation to increase its
foreign trade by depreciating the currency received for duties in its
ports. Such a proceeding would also in a great degree frus