The plan of the Secretary is clear, simple, comprehensive, practical, and effective. It is the plan of an uniform circulation, furnished by the Federal Government to banking associations organized by Congress, securing prompt redemption by the deposit of the same amount of U.S. six per cent stock in the Federal custody, the principal and interest of this stock being payable in gold. This plan, with me, is a necessity, and not a choice. It is the plan of the Secretary, and not mine, and is therefore supported by me from no vanity of authorship. Nay, more, it required me to overcome strong prejudices against any bank circulation, and especially any connected in any way with the Government. It is, however, a strong recommendation of the plan of the Secretary, that the proposed connection of the banks with the Government is not political, and attended with none of the formidable objections to the late Bank of the United States. Ever since the bank suspension of 1837, I have been a bullionist, and sustained that doctrine in the Senate of the United States, and as Secretary of the Treasury. The act establishing the independent treasury in 1846, was drawn by me, avowedly as a 'specie receiving and _specie circulating_' institution, and to restrain excessive issues by the banks; but it is impossible now to carry that system into practical execution. The suspension of specie payment by the banks and the Government, has been forced by the enormous expenditures of the war, and the sub-treasury, which never was designed for the custody or disbursement of paper, has been so far virtually superseded. In acceding now, as in December, 1861, to the Secretary's plan of a bank circulation, I must be understood as having changed my views in no respect as to banks, but that I yield to the great emergency, which renders the support of the war and of the Union paramount to any question of coin or currency.