Mr. Woodbury continued at the head of the Treasury, under President Van Buren. It was his fate to be its director “in the times of unparalleled plenty, speculation and extravagance, and two years afterwards, to witness a pecuniary revulsion that had no precedent in financial history.” In 1837, financial ruin dismayed the Nation. Congress was convened by special proclamation, to devise ways and means to relieve the people. Specie payments were suspended, and all business involved in apparent ruin. Binding laws were passed, divorcing the Government from all banking institutions, and a new policy was created for the control of our national finances. Under Presidents Harrison and Tyler there were five Secretaries of the Treasury: Thomas Ewing, of Ohio; Walter Howard, of Pennsylvania; John C. Spencer, of New York, and George M. Beble, of Kentucky. President Polk made Robert J. Walker the head of the Treasury. He was known as “the apostle of free trade.” His administration was marked by the introduction of the present warehousing system, based upon English precedent; by his reciprocity system between Canada and the United States abolishing all customs and imports, and the establishment of an “Interior Department” upon the old overgrown Land Office, with a Cabinet officer to administer its affairs, under the title of Secretary of the Interior. The Secretary of the Treasury, under President Taylor, was William M. Meredith, of Pennsylvania; who was succeeded, under President Fillmore, by Thomas Corwin, of Ohio. Secretary Corwin established the present lighthouse department and wrote the instructions regarding light-vessels, beacons and buoys. This beneficent legislation gave over six hundred lights to protect the hitherto neglected mariner on his way. The Chief of the Treasury under President Pierce, was James Guthrie, of Kentucky. He is remembered as a strict and efficient officer, carrying out in minutiæ, the duties and laws of the department. He discovered outstanding balances against the Treasury, which, if collected, would more than pay the national debt. Of this sum he collected hundreds of millions into the Treasury, and raised the standard of efficiency in the Treasury service by demanding monthly, instead of quarterly reports, from all its _employés_. Three Secretaries of the Treasury served under James Buchanan—Howell Cobb, of Georgia; Philip F. Thomas, of Maryland; and John A. Dix, of New York. A monetary crisis, almost as severe as that of 1837, marked this administration. The throes of Secession shook the Union to its foundation, and the Secretaries of the Treasury, like all other public servants, were occupied with the “signs of the times,” the swiftly advancing portents of revolution, more than with the mere financial duties of the public Treasury.