With only such a national currency as is now proposed, issued by the Government to these banks, organized by Congress, and based on the deposit in the Federal treasury of United States stock, the rebellion would have been impossible. Our Government was so mild and benignant, that we deemed it exempt from the assault of traitors; but this revolt has dissipated this delusion, and warned us to provide all the safeguards indicated by experience as necessary to maintain the Union. Among the most important is the resumption by the Government of the great sovereign function of regulating the currency and giving to it uniformity and nationality. Such was clearly the intention of the Constitution. The Government has, by the Constitution, the _exclusive_ power 'to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States.' But commerce is _regulated_ mainly by money, and by it all interstate and international exchanges of products are made. If the currency is redundant, prices rise, exports are diminished; and the reverse follows with a contracted circulation. But banks inflate or restrict the currency at their pleasure, and thus control prices, commerce, exports, imports, and revenue. But they also destroy or depreciate the money of the Government, and deprive it of a vital power. Thus, the nation issues treasury notes, and makes them a legal tender: the banks immediately make such notes the basis of bank issues, in the ratio of three to one, and the whole currency necessarily becomes redundant and depreciated; and thus this essential power of the Government is controlled by the States, and, for all practical purposes, annihilated. Chief Justice Marshall, in delivering the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States (4 Wheaton 193), said: 'Wherever the terms in which a power is granted to Congress, or the nature of the power require that it should be exercised exclusively by Congress, the subject is as completely taken from the State Legislatures as if they had been forbidden to act on it.' Now, it has been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States (9 Wheaton 1) that, this power to _regulate commerce_ extends to the _land_, as well as to the _water_, that it includes _intercourse and navigation_, and vessels, as vehicles of commerce, that it includes an _embargo_ which is prohibitory, that this power is 'EXCLUSIVELY vested in Congress,' and '_no part of it can be exercised by a State_.' Now, the question, whether the notes of a State bank, issued on the authority of a State, and designed to circulate as money, conflicts with _this clause_ of the Constitution, has _never been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States_. This is a new and momentous question, never yet adjudicated by the Supreme Court; but how they would now decide that point, with the light thrown upon it by this rebellion, I cannot doubt.