What then is the remedy for our depreciated and depreciating national currency? The Secretary of the Treasury anticipated the disaster, and proposed a remedy in 1861. I gave his bank plan then my earnest and immediate support. Well would it have been for our country if it had then been adopted, and gold would not now command a premium of thirty-two per cent. After a year's experience and deliberation, the Secretary reiterates his former recommendation, with words of solemn import, and arguments of great force. His is the chief responsibility. To him is mainly intrusted the custody of the public credit. His is now the duty of saving us from national bankruptcy. At such a time, I would differ from him on such a question, only on the clearest convictions, and then only upon the condition that I had a better plan as a substitute, and that mine could become a law now, and be carried now into practical execution. If all this could not be done, I would support the plan of the Secretary, as all admit that delay or inaction is death. If my words be too bold or earnest, let them be attributed to my profound conviction that the American Union is in extreme peril, and that its downfall involves the final catastrophe of our country and of our race. Let no man talk of a separation of the Union in any contingency. Let none speak now of peace or compromise with armed treason. Let none think of constructing separate nationalities out of the broken and bleeding fragments of a dismembered Union. No; far better that our wrecked and blasted earth should swing from its orbit, disintegrate into its original atoms, and its place remain forever vacant in the universe, than that we should survive, with such memories of departed glory, and such a burning sense of unutterable infamy and degradation. Fallen--fallen--fallen! from the highest pinnacle to the lowest depth, to rise no more forever! What American would wish to live, and encounter such a destiny? And why fallen? From a cause more damning than our fate. Fallen, let the truth be told, as history would record, because faction was stronger than patriotism, and the degenerate sons of noble sires extinguished the world's last hope, by basely surrendering the American Union to the foul coalition of slavery and treason. This rebellion is the most stupendous crime in the annals of our race, and its projectors and coadjutors, at home or abroad, individual or dynastic, are doomed to immortal infamy. With its demoniac passions, its satanic ambition, desecrating the remains of the slain, making goblets of their skulls, and trinkets of their bones, this revolt is a heliograph of Dahomey, and Devildom daguerreotyped more vividly than by Dante or Milton.