ry citizen. It may
be left to those who have the management of their own transactions to
make their own terms, but no such discretion should be given to him who
acts merely as an agent of the people--who is to collect what the law
requires and to pay the appropriations it makes. When bank notes are
redeemed on demand, there is then no discrimination in reality, for the
individual who receives them may at his option substitute the specie for
them; he takes them from convenience or choice. When they are not so
redeemed, it will scarcely be contended that their receipt and payment
by a public officer should be permitted, though none deny that right
to an individual; if it were, the effect would be most injurious to
the public, since their officer could make none of those arrangements
to meet or guard against the depreciation which an individual is at
liberty to do. Nor can inconvenience to the community be alleged as
an objection to such a regulation. Its object and motive are their
convenience and welfare.

If at a moment of simultaneous and unexpected suspension by the banks
it adds something to the many embarrassments of that proceeding, yet
these are far overbalanced by its direct tendency to produce a wider
circulation of gold and silver, to increase the safety of bank paper,
to improve the general currency, and thus to prevent altogether such
occurrences and the other and far greater evils that attend them.

It may indeed be questioned whether it is not for the interest of the
banks themselves that the Government should not receive their paper.
They would be conducted with more caution and on sounder principles.
By using specie only in its transactions the Government would create a
demand for it, which would to a great extent prevent its exportation,
and by keeping it in circulation maintain a broader and safer basis for
the paper currency. That the banks would thus be rendered more sound
and the community more safe can not admit of a doubt.

The foregoing views, it seems to me, do but fairly carry out the
provisions of the Federal Constitution in relation to the currency, as
far as relates to the public revenue. At the time that instrument was
framed there were but three or four banks in the United States, and had
the extension of the banking system and the evils growing out of it
been foreseen they would probably have been specially guarded against.
The same policy which led to the prohibition of bills of credit