The experience of France is similar. I do not now refer to the old _assignats_, but to a modern instance. Beyond question, the Bank of France is conducted with caution and skill; but no caution and skill are adequate to counteract the influence of a sudden revolution, especially like that of 1848, when the Republic was declared. The Bank made large advances to the Provisional Government. This obligation, combined with distrust universally prevalent, occasioned so severe a drain of gold, that, to prevent the total exhaustion of its vaults, the Bank was authorized by Government decree of 16th March, 1848,--just three weeks after the Revolution,--to suspend specie payments, while its notes were at the same time made a legal tender. To prevent abuse, possible in such a condition of things, a maximum of issues was fixed at three hundred and fifty million francs. Such precautions were proper; but the fact of the authorized suspension remains an example of history. The prompt return to the true system is not without encouragement. * * * * * If these instances are entitled to consideration, they seem to show, that, according to the experience of other countries, Government may be compelled at times to relax the rigor of its requirements with regard to convertible paper. But they do not fix the limitation to the exercise of this extraordinary discretion. That the discretion exists is important in the present debate. It is a discretion kindred to that under which the _Habeas Corpus_ is suspended, so that citizens are arrested without the forms of law,--kindred to that under which an extensive territory is declared to be in a condition of insurrection, so that all business with its inhabitants is suspended,--kindred to that which unquestionably exists, to obtain soldiers, if necessary, by draft or conscription instead of the free offering of volunteers,--kindred to that under which private property is taken for public uses,--and kindred, also, to that undoubted discretion which sanctions the completest exercise of the transcendent right of self-defence.