permanent, if upon the coming in of the report they shall prove satisfactory to Congress? Cannot all the objects of graduation be accomplished in this way, and the objections which have hitherto been urged against it avoided? It would seem to me that such a step, with a restriction of the sales to limited quantities, and for actual improvement, would be free from all just exception." A permanent prospective pre-emption law was cogently recommended as a measure just in itself to the settlers, and not injurious to the public Treasury, as experience had shown that the auction system--that of selling to the highest bidder above the prescribed minimum price--had produced in its aggregate but a few cents on the acre above the minimum price. On this point he said: "A large portion of our citizens have seated themselves on the public lands, without authority, since the passage of the last pre-emption law and now ask the enactment of another, to enable them to retain the lands occupied, upon payment of the minimum government price. They ask that which has been repeatedly granted before. If the future may be judged of by the past, little harm can be done to the interests of the Treasury by yielding to their request. Upon a critical examination, it is found that the lands sold at the public sales since the introduction of cash payments in 1820, have produced, on an average, the net revenue of only six cents an acre more than the minimum government price. There is no reason to suppose that future sales will be more productive. The government, therefore, has no adequate pecuniary interest to induce it to drive these people from the lands they occupy, for the purpose of selling them to others." This wise recommendation has since been carried into effect, and pre-emptive rights are now admitted in all cases where settlements are made upon lands to which the Indian title shall have been extinguished; and the graduation of the price of the public lands, though a measure long delayed, yet prevailed in the end, and was made as originally proposed, by reductions according to the length of time the land had been offered at sale. Beginning at the minimum price of $1 25 per acre, the reduction of price went down through a descending scale, according to time, as low as 12-1/2 cents per acre. But this was long after. CHAPTER XVII. PENNSYLVANIA BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. ITS USE OF THE DEFUNCT NOTES OF THE EXPIRED INSTITUTION.