the combined stoppage of the banks again suppressed it. That was the currency--gold and silver, with the regulation of which Congress was not only intrusted, but charged: and this regulation included preservation. It must be saved before it can be regulated; and to save it, it must be brought into the country--and kept in it. The demand of the federal treasury could alone accomplish these objects. The quantity of specie required for the use of that treasury--its large daily receipts and disbursements--all inexorably confined to hard money--would create the demand for the precious metals which would command their presence, and that in sufficient quantity for the wants of the people as well as of the government. For the government does not consume what it collects--does not melt up or hoard its revenue, or export it to foreign countries, but pays it out to the people; and thus becomes the distributor of gold and silver among them. It is the greatest paymaster in the country; and, while it pays in hard money, the people will be sure of a supply. We are taunted with the demand: "_Where is the better currency?_" We answer: "_Suppressed by the conspiracy of the banks!_" And this is the third time in the last twenty years in which paper money has suppressed specie, and now suppresses it: for this is a game--(the war between gold and paper)--in which the meanest and weakest is always the conqueror. The baser currency always displaces the better. Hard money needs support against paper, and that support can be given by us, by excluding paper money from all federal receipts and payments; and confining paper money to its own local and inferior orbit: and its regulation can be well accomplished by subjecting delinquent banks to the process of bankruptcy, and their small notes to suppression under a federal stamp duty.