"In the latter end of the year 1814," says Mr. Gallatin, "Mr. Jefferson suggested the propriety of a gradual issue by government of two hundred millions of dollars in paper;" commenting upon which Mr. Gallatin remarks that Mr. Jefferson, from the imperfect data in his possession, "greatly overrated the amount of paper currency which could be sustained at par; and he had, on the other hand, underrated the great expenses of the war;" but at "all events," he adds, "the issue of government paper ought to be kept in reserve for extraordinary circumstances." But here it may be remarked that the evolution of the systems of American finance seems to lead slowly but surely to an entire divorce of banking from currency, and the day is not far distant when the circulating medium of the United States will consist of gold and silver, and of government issues restricted, according to the English principle, to the minimum of circulation, and kept equivalent to coin by a specie reserve in the treasury; while the banks, their circulation withdrawn and the institutions freed from any tax, will be confined to their legitimate business of receiving deposits and making loans and discounts. On October 14, 1814, Alexander J. Dallas, Mr. Gallatin's old friend, who had been appointed secretary of the treasury on the 6th of the same month, in a report of a plan to support the public credit, proposed the incorporation of a national bank. A bill was passed by Congress, but returned to it by Madison with his veto on January 15, 1815. In this peculiar document Madison "waived the question of the constitutional authority of the legislature to establish an incorporated bank, as being precluded, in his judgment, by repeated recognitions, under varied circumstances, of the validity of such an institution in acts of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government." But he objected for reasons of detail. Mr. Dallas again, as a last resort, insisted on a bank as the only means by which the currency of the country could be restored to a sound condition. In December, 1815, Dallas reported to the committee of the House of Representatives on the national currency, of which John C. Calhoun was chairman, a plan for a national bank, and on March 3, 1816, the second Bank of the United States was chartered by Congress. The capital was thirty-five millions, of which the government held seven millions in seventy thousand shares of one hundred dollars each. Mr. Madison approved the bill. This completed the abandonment of every shred of principle claimed by the Republican party as their rule of action. They struggled through the rest of their existence without a political conviction. The national bank, and the system of internal taxation which had been scorned by Jefferson and Madison as unconstitutional, were accepted actually under Madison's administration. Gallatin's success, owing to the development