Webster’s criticism on Calhoun’s Constitutional argument was made in his loftiest manner. The currency, he said, needed no reform, for it was, by the Constitution and the law, gold and silver; nor had Congress the right to make any other medium current. The true remedy was for Congress to interdict the bills of the suspended banks.[130] Had he been content to rest his opposition on that ground alone, Webster could not have been answered, although he might have been regarded as an impracticable politician; but as the bill came toward its passage, and as several Federalists declared in its favor, he pressed his hostility so far, and with so much dogmatism, that several of his own party revolted, and Grosvenor of New York replied sharply that he did not propose to be drilled to vote on whatever any one might choose to call a principle. In spite of determined opposition from Webster, Pitkin, John Sergeant, and other Federalists, the House passed the bill, March 14, by a vote of eighty to seventy-one. The majority was small, but of the minority not less than thirty-eight were Federalists; and, omitting Randolph and Stanford, only thirty-one Republicans voted against the bill. The House contained one hundred and seventeen Republicans. In the Senate the opposition was almost wholly confined to Federalists, and the bill passed by a majority much larger than that in the House. Twenty-two senators voted in its favor; only twelve voted against it, and of the twelve only four were Republicans. The President approved it April 10; and thus, after five years of financial disorder, the Republican party reverted to the system of Washington, and resumed powers it had found indispensable to government. The Federalists of New England were in a situation too alarming to bear even the little delay required to organize the Bank. For them a general return to specie payments was the only escape from imminent ruin; and acting on this conviction, Webster moved, April 26, a joint Resolution ordering that all taxes should be collected after Feb. 1, 1817, in some medium equivalent to specie, thus allowing but nine months for the work of resumption. The same day the House passed the Resolution by the decisive majority of seventy-one to thirty-four. The Senate substituted February 20 as the day of resumption, and passed the Resolution April 29, which was approved by the President the next day.