Matters of equal interest are involved in the study of Mr. Gallatin's actions and opinions in matters of finance. Every one knows that he ranks among the distinguished financiers of the world, and problems which he had to consider are still agitating the present generation. He was opposed alike to a national debt and to paper money. Had the metallic basis of the United States been adequate, he would have accepted no other circulating medium, and would have consented to the use of paper money only for purposes of exchange and remittance. In 1830 he urged the restriction of paper money to notes of one hundred dollars each, which were to be issued by the government. Obviously these must be used chiefly for transmitting funds, and would be of little use for the daily transactions of the people. Yet even this concession was due to the fact that the United States was then a debtor country, and so late as 1839, as Mr. Gallatin said, "specie was a foreign product." For subsidiary money he favored silver coins at eighty-five per cent. of the dollar value, a sufficient alloy to hold them in the country. Silver was then the circulating medium of the world, the people's pocket money, and gold was the basis and the solvent of foreign exchanges. Great interest attaches to the application of some other of Gallatin's financial principles to more modern problems; and a careful study of his papers may fairly enable us to form a few conclusions. It may be safely said that he would not have favored a national bank currency based on government bonds. This, however, would not have been because of any objection to the currency itself, but because the scheme would insure the continuance of a national debt. He was too practical, also, not to see that the ultimate security is the faith of the government, and that no filtering of that responsibility through private banks could do otherwise than injure it. Further, it is reasonably safe to say that he would favor the withdrawal both of national bank notes and of United States notes, the greenbacks so-called; and that he would consent to the use of paper only in the form of certificates directly representing the precious metals, gold and silver; also that he would limit the use of silver to its actual handling by the people in daily transactions. He would feel safe to disregard the fluctuations of the intrinsic value of silver, when used in this limited way as a subordinate currency, on the ground that the stamp of the United States was sufficient for conferring the needed value, when the obligation was only to maintain the parity, not of the silver, but of the coin, with gold. He understood that, in the case of a currency which is merely subordinate, parity arises from the guaranty of the government, and not from the quality of the coin; and that only such excess of any subordinate currency as is not needed for use in daily affairs can be presented for redemption. This