The bill before the Senate dispenses with the further use of banks as depositories of the public moneys. In that it has my hearty concurrence. Four times heretofore, and on four different occasions, I have made propositions to accomplish a part of the same purpose. _First_, in proposing an amendment to the deposit bill of 1836, by which the mint, and the branch mints, were to be included in the list of depositories; _secondly_, in proposing that the public moneys here, at the seat of Government, should be kept and paid out by the Treasurer; _thirdly_, by proposing that a preference, in receiving the deposits, should be given to such banks as should cease to be banks of circulation; _fourthly_, in opposing the establishment of a bank agency in Missouri, and proposing that the moneys there should be drawn direct from the hands of the receivers. Three of these propositions are now included in the bill before the Senate; and the whole object at which they partially aimed is fully embraced. I am for the measure--fully, cordially, earnestly for it. Congress has a sacred duty to perform in reforming the finances, and the currency; for the ruin of both has resulted from federal legislation, and federal administration. The States at the formation of the constitution, delivered a solid currency--I will not say sound, for that word implies subject to unsoundness, to rottenness, and to death--but they delivered a solid currency, one not liable to disease, to this federal government. They started the new government fair upon gold and silver. The first act of Congress attested this great fact; for it made the revenues payable in gold and silver coin only. Thus the States delivered a solid currency to this government, and they reserved the same currency for themselves; and they provided constitutional sanctions to guard both. The thing to be saved, and the power to save it, was given to this government by the States; and in the hands of this government it became deteriorated. The first great error was General Hamilton's construction of the act of 1789, by which he nullified that act, and overturned the statute and the constitution together. The next great error was the establishment of a national bank of circulation, with authority to pay all the public dues in its own paper. This confirmed the overthrow of the constitution, and of the statute of 1789; and it set the fatal example to the States to make banks, and to receive their paper for public dues, as the United States had done. This was the origin of the evil--this the origin of the overthrow of the solid currency which the States had delivered to the federal government. It was the Hamiltonian policy that did the mischief; and the state of things in 1837, is the natural fruit of that policy. It is time for us to quit it--to return to the constitution and the statute of 1789, and to confine the federal Treasury to the hard money which was intended for it.