Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The ease and safety of the operations of the Treasury in keeping the public
money are promoted by the application of its own drafts to the public dues.
The objection arising from having them too long outstanding might be
obviated and they yet made to afford to merchants and banks holding them an
equivalent for specie, and in that way greatly lessen the amount actually
required. Still less inconvenience will attend the requirement of specie in
purchases of public lands. Such purchases, except when made on speculation,
are in general but single transactions, rarely repeated by the same person;
and it is a fact that for the last year and a half, during which the notes
of sound banks have been received, more than a moiety of these payments has
been voluntarily made in specie, being a larger proportion than would have
been required in three years under the graduation proposed.
It is, moreover, a principle than which none is better settled by
experience that the supply of the precious metals will always be found
adequate to the uses for which they are required. They abound in countries
where no other currency is allowed. In our own States, where small notes
are excluded, gold and silver supply their place. When driven to their
hiding places by bank suspensions, a little firmness in the community soon
restores them in a sufficient quantity for ordinary purposes. Postage and
other public dues have been collected in coin without serious inconvenience
even in States where a depreciated paper currency has existed for years,
and this, with the aid of Treasury notes for a part of the time, was done
without interruption during the suspension of 1837. At the present moment
the receipts and disbursements of the Government are made in legal currency
in the largest portion of the Union. No one suggests a departure from this
rule, and if it can now be successfully carried out it will be surely
attended with even less difficulty when bank notes are again redeemed in
specie.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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