Do we not know that there must always be bank paper? Is there a man here who expects that he, or his children, or his children's children, shall see the day when only gold coin, glittering through silk purses, will be the currency of the country, to the entire exclusion of bank notes? Not one. But we are told that the value of these notes is questionable. It is the neglect of government to perform its duties that makes them so. You here, in New York, have sound bank paper, redeemable in coin; and if you were surrounded by a Chinese wall, it might be indifferent to you whether government looked after the currency elsewhere or not. But you have daily business relations with Pennsylvania, and with the West, and East, and South, and you have a direct interest that their currency too shall be sound; for otherwise the very superiority of yours is, to a certain degree, an injury and loss to you, since you pay in the equivalent of specie for what you buy, and you sell for such money as may circulate in the States with which you deal. But New York cannot affect the general restoration of the currency, nor any one State, nor any number of States short of the whole, and hence the duty of the general government to superintend this interest. But what does the sub-treasury propose? [6] Its basis is a separation of the concerns of the treasury from those of the people. It directs that there shall be certain vaults, and safes, and rooms for deposit of the money of the government. But it has not been for want of adequate vaults and rooms that we have lost our money, but owing to the hands to which we have intrusted the keys. It is in the character of the officers, and not in the strength of bars and vaults, that we must look for the security of the public treasure. There are no securities under this new system of keeping the public moneys that we had not before; while many that did exist, in the personal character, high trusts, and diversified duties of the officers and directors of banks are removed. Moreover, the number of receiving and disbursing officers is increased, and the danger to the public treasure is increased in proportion. The next provision is, that money once received into the treasury is not to be lent out. Yet the practice of this government hitherto has always been opposed to this policy of locking up the money of the people, when and while it is not required for the public service. Until this time the public deposits, like private deposits, were used by the banks in which they were placed, as some compensation for the trouble of safe-keeping, and in furtherance of the general convenience. The next provision is that requiring, after 1843, all dues to the government to be paid in gold and silver. But what are we promised as the equivalent for all this inconvenience and oppression? Why, that the government in its turn will pay its debts in specie, and that thus what it receives with one hand it will pay out with the other, and a metallic