Sir, it is vain to think that you can keep both systems at the same time. One must yield to the other. But if you sincerely desire the national system to prevail, then must you so endow and protect it that it will be commended to the public, and that investments will naturally seek it. Therefore every privilege you confer, every immunity you give, every exemption you establish in its favor, must naturally contribute to its strength, and make it more effective for its transcendent purposes. This is the day of sacrifice. Families are offering sons and brothers. States are giving their citizens, and every citizen is contributing according to his means to the safety of the Republic. But there is one other sacrifice now required: it is the sacrifice of the State banks as agents of currency; and this sacrifice requires that the local taxation should be suspended with regard to the national currency, and that all the proceeds of such local taxation should be passed to the credit of the whole country. You must do for the national currency precisely what you do for the national securities. Here are the words of the statute:-- “And all stock, bonds, and other securities of the United States, held by individuals, corporations, or associations, within the United States, _shall be exempt from taxation by or under State authority_.”[334] The reason which sustains the exemption in this case is equally applicable in the other. But we have other exemptions from local taxation. There are the imports of the country, which no State or municipality can tax. There are the army and navy, and all the material of war,--ships, arms, munitions, commissariat supplies,--all exempt from local taxation. There are the public lands of the United States, which no local authority can touch. There is the Mint, which is untaxed. There are the public buildings in Washington, the National Capitol, the Executive Mansion, the offices of the heads of Departments, covering large spaces of ground, all secured from local taxation. But no reason can be assigned for exemption in these cases that does not prevail with regard to the currency. Nay, at this juncture, when our object is, above all things, to secure a national currency, the reason for exemption is of special and unanswerable force. We have more than once been warned not to slay the goose that lays the golden egg,--meaning by this goose the State banks. But all who use this illustration forget that there is another bird, which lays such eggs as no State banks can hatch,--eggs not merely of gold, but of victory. It is the _national credit_, which Senators seem willing to abandon, if not to slay; and it is the national credit which I now insist shall be preserved at all hazards.