Without a tender-law the Virginia scheme would hardly answer the purposes required, since the government must restrain the issue of paper within a limit too narrow for usefulness. Dallas did not press this point, but developed his own scheme, which required, like that of Eppes, a duplication of taxes to produce twenty-one million dollars, and the creation of a national Bank with a capital of fifty million dollars. Either Eppes’s or Dallas’s plan might answer the immediate object of providing a currency, and both required the exercise of implied powers by Congress. Apparently Congress had only to choose, but in truth choice was most difficult. The House readily adopted Dallas’s recommendation in principle, and voted, October 24, by sixty-six to forty, that it was expedient to establish a national Bank; but the problem of establishing a specie-paying bank without specie passed its powers. Dallas abandoned the attempt at the outset. He proposed a bank of fifty millions capital, of which forty-four millions might be subscribed in government bonds and Treasury notes, and six millions in coin. The bank was at once to lend to government thirty millions,--of course in bank-notes,--and no one denied that an immediate suspension of specie payments must follow such an issue. To any bank, strong or weak, the old Virginia influence represented by Eppes was hostile; and to a bank insolvent from the start the Federalists also were opposed. When the bill, reported November 7, was printed, it was found to contain a provision authorizing the suspension of specie payments at the President’s discretion. The discussion began November 14, and every successive day revealed objections and increased the opposition. Calhoun complicated the subject still further by bringing forward, November 16, a plan of his own, requiring the capital to consist “one tenth in specie, and the remainder in specie or in Treasury notes to be hereafter issued,” and taking away all government control. Ingham of Pennsylvania, representing Dallas, combated Calhoun with force, but could not make his own measure agreeable to the House. His phrase in regard to the suspension of specie payments was significant. Congress, he said, would be to blame for “frantic enthusiasm” if it did not provide for the case. “It may happen, and probably will happen, that their specie payments cannot be continued, and what will then be the situation of the bank? Failing to fulfil the purposes designed, its credit is blighted, its operations are stopped, and its charter violated; and if this should take place before your Treasury notes are sold, the government will scarce obtain a moment’s relief.” That the new bank could not pay specie was obvious. The Bank of England itself could not pay specie, and had not attempted to do so for nearly twenty years.