There is another reason why this currency should be made a legal tender. Our two last suspensions of specie payments by the banks, viz., in 1857 and in 1860, were based upon _panics_, yet they had the same disastrous effect, for the time, as if arising from short crops, overtrading, or a currency greatly redundant. Such panic convulsions are caused mainly by the call for the redemption of bank notes in specie, based on the fear of suspension and depreciation. But if such notes, as in European government banks, were a legal tender, except by the banks, such panics would be far less frequent here, and less injurious. The present system, as compared with that of Europe, discriminates most unjustly against our country. As a general rule, the American creditor cannot demand gold from the foreign debtor, but such foreign or domestic creditor could always demand gold from the American debtor. This discrimination has produced here the most disastrous consequences, and, independent of the present condition of the country, our whole banking system requires radical reform. We have had eight _general_ bank suspensions under our present bank system, many of them continuing for years, and producing ruin and desolation. Under our present system, to talk, as a general rule, of well-regulated banks, is to talk of a well-regulated famine or pestilence, or of a well-regulated earthquake or tornado. And even the few banks that are claimed to be well managed, have no appreciable effect on the system. It is the system that knows no uniformity or security, and never can have, as now organized. That a system so perilous and explosive, should have even partially succeeded is proof only of the intelligence and integrity, generally, of the bank officers and directors, but no recommendation of the system itself. The want of uniformity as to commercial regulations, led to the adoption of our Federal Constitution; and yet we have no uniformity as to money, which represents commerce and effects its interchanges. In this respect, we are still suffering all the evils of the old confederacy, and have thereby so weakened the Government as to have invited this rebellion. Indeed, the State banks in the revolted States were the main auxiliaries of treason and secession, and supplied, to a vast extent, the sinews of war. By Census Table 34, there were in 1860, 1,642 banks, incorporated by thirty-four States, with no uniformity of organization, issues, or security. Thus is it that the States have usurped the power to regulate commerce and currency, and to emit bills of credit, in defiance of the prohibition of the Federal Constitution. The Egyptians abandoned their folly after seven plagues; but we have had eight bank convulsions, and yet we adhere to the wretched system.