conferred upon Congress the exclusive right "to coin money and regulate the value thereof," and that it has prohibited the States from "issuing bills of credit,"—which phrase, if it mean anything, means making paper-money; and the inference would seem to be inevitable that Congress has a sovereign authority and power over the whole matter. It may, moreover, touch the circulation of bills, by means of its indisputable right to lay a stamp-tax upon paper; and Mr. Gallatin long ago recommended the exercise of this power, as an effectual method of restraining the emission of small notes. Upon what principle, then, can the President assert so dictatorially as he does, that the Federal Government is concluded from action? If the excesses of the State Banks are so enormous as he represents, and so perpetually and so widely disastrous, why should it not interpose to avert the fearful evil? Why refer us for relief to the proceedings of thirty-one different legislative bodies, no three of which, probably, would agree upon any coherent system? We do not ourselves say that Congress ought to interfere and undertake by main force to regulate the currency, because we hold to other and, as we think, better methods of arriving at a sound and stable currency; but from the stand-point of the President, and with his views of the efficiency of legislative restrictions upon banks, we do not see how he could consistently avoid recommending the instant action of Congress. On the heel of his grandiloquent description of the evils of redundant paper money,—evils which are felt all over the country,—it is a lamentably impotent conclusion to say, "After all, we can't do much to help it! Yes, let us confide piously in 'the wisdom and patriotism of the State legislatures,'"—which are almost the last places in the world, as things go, where we should look for either quality.
Not being able to do anything himself, however, what does he urge upon the wise and patriotic State legislatures? Why, a series of flimsy restrictions, which would have about as much effect in preventing the tremendous abuses of banking which he himself depicts, as a bit of filigree iron-work would have in restraining the expansion of steam. Restrictions! restrictions! toujours restrictions!—as if that method of correcting the evil had not been utterly exploded by nearly two centuries of experience! Mr. Buchanan calls himself a Democrat he is loud in his protestations of respect for the sagacity, the good-sense, and the virtue of the people; his political school takes for its motto the well-known adage, "That government is best which governs least"; his party, if he does not, purports to be a great advocate of the emancipation of trade from all the old-fashioned restraints which take the names of protections, tariff, bounties, etc. etc.; and we wonder how it is, that, in his presumed excursions over the entire domain of freetrade, he should have got no inkling of a thought as to the benefits of free-trade in banking. We wonder that so great a subject could be dismissed with the suggestion of a few petty restraints.
"If the State legislatures," remarks the President, summing up his entire thought, "afford us a real specie basis for our circulation, by increasing the denomination of bank-notes, first to twenty, and afterwards to fifty dollars; if they will require that the banks shall at all times keep on hand at least one dollar of gold and silver for every three dollars of their circulation and deposits; and if they will provide, by a self-executing enactment, which nothing can arrest, that the moment they suspend they shall go into liquidation; I believe that such provisions, with a weekly publication by each bank of a statement of its condition, would go far to secure us against future suspensions of specie payments."
Singular blindness! Mr. Buchanan lived for several years, as American ambassador, in England. It is to be presumed that while there he used his eyes, and possibly his brains. He must have noticed occasionally, at least, in his walks
