is a vote also to reduce
our exports and revenue from customs, to paralyze our industry; and
finally, in its ultimate results, it is a vote against the war, for
repudiation and disunion, and hence every disunionist will oppose the
plan of the Secretary.

To what extent this redundancy and depreciation will go, by enlarged
issues of legal tender treasury notes, we may learn from the fact that
the banks substitute them for coin for the redemption of their paper.
Now, just in proportion as the issue of treasury notes becomes redundant
and depreciated, will the bank circulation, redeemable in such notes,
augment and depreciate also. This is the law of bank circulation as now
forced upon us by Congress. It is the law of redundancy and
depreciation. If this policy is adopted by Congress, an enlarged issue
made of treasury notes, and the plan of the Secretary discarded, our
bank and treasury note circulation, with the war continued, will very
largely exceed one billion of dollars before the close of the next
fiscal year, and both will be depreciated much more than sixty per cent.
Thus, if we should enlarge our issues of legal demand treasury notes to
$500,000,000, and these be made the basis of bank issues, in the ratio
of three to one, our total paper circulation would be $2,000,000,000,
such treasury notes inflating the bank issues, and both depreciating
together. And yet this is the currency in which it is proposed to
conduct the war and the business of the country. The banks alone, by
excessive loans and issues, would grow rich apparently, on the ruin of
their country. But there would be a terrible retribution. The result
would be general insolvency and repudiation, _the debts due the banks
would become worthless_, and they be involved in the general ruin. It is
then the interest of the banks to sustain the Government and the
Secretary, and to transfer their capital to the new associations. This
is especially the case with the New York banks, which, under a provision
of their State constitution, HAVE NO LEGAL EXISTENCE. When repudiation
and bankruptcy become general, the cry, like that of a routed army in a
panic flight, would be raised, _Sauve qui peut_; we may have again an
old and a new court party, especially under our miserable system of an
elective judiciary; and the banks be crushed by wicked legal devices, as
they were in the West and Southwest in 1824 and 1838.

Referring to bank issues, the Secretary says, in hi