Objection is also made on the ground that a mint is necessarily an expensive structure. But this is a mistake, arising partly from the general mystification on the subject, and partly because the Philadelphia mint, which we have all seen, is an expensive structure. A mint, in plain terms, is nothing but a foundry provided with good locks and keys. If finished elaborately and expensively, it may attract the eye, but does not become more useful. The whole system of coinage has been twice changed during the present generation: first, by the change in assays of Gay-Lussac in 1830; and, secondly, by the introduction of the Munich press worked by steam, instead of the old hand-press with two ponderous balls as flies. And the Munich press itself has been much improved in France by Thonnelier. Now a mint should not be so costly as not to receive easily all improvements. The science of metallurgy is still in progress of development, and it cannot be doubted that the coming generation will witness improvements as important as any during our day. The eminent French authority to whom I have already referred, Dumas, was in the habit of ridiculing the expensive mints constructed in France. He desired that the present mint at Paris should be surrendered to some public office, and the business removed to an open space in the suburbs. In his Report he has furnished estimates showing the small expense of a mint, according to his ideas, adequate to all the coinage of France. If you would see how the cost of a mint in our country may swell, at least in calculations on paper, if not in reality, I refer you to the memorial of the Board of Trade of Philadelphia in relation to the establishment of a branch mint at New York in 1852. But the mint pictured here is anything but the simple foundry which I have described, or the workshop which the Senator from Oregon asks you to authorize.