endurance we must rely for success. We have pledged to our brave troops, who are wounded or dying by thousands that the Union may live, such pay as to enable them while fighting our battles to make allotments of portions of their money for the support of their families during their absence. We have promised pensions also. These are all solemn pledges on the part of our Government, and our faith is violated if this pay or these pensions are reduced. But there is no difference between a law directly reducing this pay and these pensions, and the adoption by Congress of the policy of a redundant and depreciated currency which will produce the same result. Every vote then in Congress for such a policy, is a vote to reduce the pay and pensions for our troops, and to annihilate the allotments made by them for the support of their families. What effect such a policy must have on our troops and the maintenance of the Union is but too palpable. It is disbandment and dissolution. Every such vote is given also to reduce the value of the wages of labor, and for increased taxation, to the extent, as we have seen, of $408,800,000 per annum. It is a vote also to reduce our exports and revenue from customs, to paralyze our industry; and finally, in its ultimate results, it is a vote against the war, for repudiation and disunion, and hence every disunionist will oppose the plan of the Secretary.

To what extent this redundancy and depreciation will go, by enlarged issues of legal tender treasury notes, we may learn from the fact that the banks substitute them for coin for the redemption of their paper. Now, just in proportion as the issue of treasury notes becomes redundant and depreciated, will the bank circulation, redeemable in such notes, augment and depreciate also. This is the law of bank circulation as now forced upon us by Congress. It is the law of redundancy and depreciation. If this policy is adopted by Congress, an enlarged issue made of treasury notes, and the plan of the Secretary discarded, our bank and treasury note circulation, with the war continued, will very largely exceed one billion of dollars before the close of the next fiscal year, and both will be depreciated much more than sixty per cent. Thus, if we should enlarge our issues of legal demand treasury notes to $500,000,000, and these be made the basis of bank issues, in the ratio of three to one, our total paper circulation would be $2,000,000,000, such treasury notes inflating the bank issues, and both depreciating together. And yet this is the currency in which it is proposed to conduct the war and the business of the country. The banks alone, by excessive loans and issues, would grow rich apparently, on the ruin of their country. But there would be a terrible retribution. The result would be general insolvency and repudiation, the debts due the banks would become worthless, and they be involved in the general ruin. It is then the interest of the banks to sustain the Government and the Secretary, and to transfer their capital to the new associations. This is especially the case with the New York banks, which, under a provision of their State constitution, HAVE NO LEGAL EXISTENCE. When repudiation and bankruptcy become general, the cry, like that of a routed army in a panic flight, would be raised, Sauve qui peut; we may have again an old and a new court party, especially under our miserable system of an elective judiciary; and the banks be crushed by wicked legal devices, as they were in the West and Southwest in 1824 and 1838.

Referring to bank issues, the Secretary says, in his last report: 'It was only when the United States notes, having been made a legal tender, were diverted from their legitimate use as a currency, and made the basis of bank circulation, that the great increase of the latter began.' At the present depreciation of these treasury notes, it is better for the banks, by one third, to redeem their circulation in these notes, rather than in specie; and they need keep only one dollar of treasury notes for three of bank circulation. This is the policy forced upon the banks by Congress. But the more redundant and depreciated this currency becomes, the easier will it be for the banks to provide the basis of redemption, and expand their circulation in the ratio, like that of specie, of three dollars of bank currency for each dollar of treasury notes held by them. Thus it is that the enlarged issue of treasury notes necessarily increases the bank circulation, in the ratio of three to one, and thus also, that the circulation of bank and treasury notes becomes redundant and depreciated. Under such a policy, every bank then, however loyal its stockholders or officers, becomes a citadel, whose artillery bears with more fearful effect upon the Government than all the armies of the rebellion. This will soon become obvious, and the odium will rest upon the banks, their officers and stockholders. But the real responsibility will be with Congress, who, by such a system will have arrayed the banks in necessary and inevitable hostility to the Government. Such, we all know, is not the intention of Congress; but as this result will necessarily flow from their measures, upon them, in the end, will fall the terrible responsibility of the disaster. It is this appalling condition of our finances that gives the rebellion its only hope of success, and invites foreign intervention. But if Congress will adopt the policy of the Secretary, they will render certain the triumph of the Union, and the rebels, from despair and exhaustion, must soon abandon the contest.

We have seen how dreadful is the disaster which the banks would bring on the country by pursuing the present system, and how terrible the odium to which they would be subjected. But now let us look at the result, if the plan of the Secretary is adopted. The new banks would become fiscal agents of the Government. Their circulation would be uniform, furnished by the Government, and based on U. S. stocks, the principal and interest of which would be payable in gold. The interest of labor and capital, of the banks, the Government, and the people, would for the first time become inseparably united and consolidated. This is a grand result, and fraught with momentous consequences to the country. Every citizen, whether a stockholder of the banks or not, would have a direct and incalculable interest in their success and prosperity. They, the people, would have this interest, not merely as holding the notes of the banks, which would become our currency, but because the banks would hold the stock of the Government, would have loaned it in this way the money to suppress the rebellion, and thus have saved us from a redundant and depreciated currency, from inevitable bankruptcy and repudiation, and have prevented the overthrow of the Union. Each bank would then become a citadel over which should float the flag of the Union, for each bank would then become a powerful auxiliary for the support of the Government and the overthrow of the rebellion.

The bill divorcing the banks and the Government was drawn by me, as Secretary of the Treasury, in 1846, to enlarge the circulation of specie, and restrain excessive issues of bank paper. I go for the reunion now, as proposed by the Secretary, to enable the Government to effect loans upon their stock, to prevent a redundant and depreciated paper currency, with a correspondent increase of expenditures, and to provide the means, when the war is over, to resume specie payment at the earliest practicable period. I was for restraining excessive paper issues then, and so am I now, as far as possible. I carried into full effect then the divorce of the Government and the banks, against a terrible opposition from them and the great Whig party. I made the divorce complete, a vinculo matrimonii: so now I would make the union complete, so far as proposed by the Secretary, for the interest of the banks and the