bank issues, then, as are furnished and countersigned by State officers, acting under State laws, and are secured by the deposit with the State of its own stock, are most clearly unconstitutional.

In No. 44 (by Hamilton) of the Federalist, the great contemporaneous exposition of the Constitution (prepared by Hamilton, Madison, and Chief Justice Jay of the Supreme Court of the United States), it is said: 'The same reasons which show the necessity of denying to the States the power of regulating coin, prove with equal force that they ought not to be at liberty to substitute a paper medium instead of coin.' Such was the opinion of the two great founders of the Constitution (Hamilton and Madison), and its first judicial expositor, the eminent Chief Justice Jay. Justice Story quotes and approves this remarkable passage, and says 'that the prohibition was aimed at a paper medium which was intended to circulate as money, and to that alone.'

In his message of December 3, 1816, President Madison, referring expressly to a bank and paper medium, said: 'It is essential that the nation should possess a currency of equal value, credit, and use, wherever it may circulate. The Constitution has entrusted Congress exclusively with the power of creating and regulating a currency of that description.'

This rebellion proves the awful danger of State violations of the Federal Constitution. The rebellion is the child of State usurpation, State supremacy, State allegiance, and State secession. And now the Government is paralyzed financially, in its efforts to suppress the rebellion, by a question as to State banks, depreciating the currency, and State banks based on State stocks. The Government wishes a currency, not redundant, and to borrow money to save the Union. But one State says, we have placed all our surplus money in State banks, and another State (as in the case of New York) says, we have based the circulation of these banks, mainly on our own State bonds, and you must do nothing which will injuriously affect their value. It is true the Union is in danger, but are not the credit of State banks and State bonds of higher value than the Union? The State first, the Union afterwards. Our paramount duty is to our State, and that to the Union is subordinate. Why, this is the very language of rebellion—the echo of South Carolina treason. But it is not the language of the Constitution, which declares that "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land: and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."

The supremacy then, is with the Federal Constitution and laws; otherwise there could be no uniformity or nationality. And does New York suppose that she can tear down the temple of the Union, and that the principal pillar which supported the arch will stand firm and erect? No! if the Union falls, New York will only be the most conspicuous among the broken columns.

But New York knows that the path of interest is that of honor and of duty. It is the Union only that has made her great. It is the concentration by the Union of interstate and international commerce in her great city, that was consummating its imperial destiny. Before the Union of 1778 and 1787, New York city was the village of Manhattan: destroy the Union, and she will again become little more than the village of Manhattan. The trident of the ocean, the sceptre of the world's commerce would fall from her grasp, and London be left without a rival. Deprive the Government of the power to regulate commerce, and the fall of New York will be as rapid as her rise. Each State then, as before the Constitution, would control its own commerce, and the railroads and canals of New York would cease to be the vehicles of the trade of the nation and of the world. Each State, as under the old Confederacy, would force commerce into her own ports by prohibitory or discriminating statutes. No, when New York takes from the Union the exclusive control of commerce, she commits suicide. One uniform regulation of commerce, and one uniform currency, are more essential to the prosperity of New York than to that of any other State. New York represents interstate and international commerce. There are concentrated our imports and exports, and there three fourths of our revenue is collected. There, if the Union endures, must be the centre of the commerce of the nation and of the world. If the rebellion succeeds, the separation of the East and West is just as certain as that of the North and South. Discord would reign supreme, and States and parts of States become petty sovereignties, mere pawns, to be moved on the political chess board by the kings and queens of Europe.

As New York has derived the greatest benefits from the Union, so would she suffer most from its fall. It is New York to whom the Union transferred the command of her own commerce, and ultimately that of the world. It is New York to which England looks as the future successful rival of London, and it is New York at whom England chiefly aims the blow in desiring to overthrow the Union. The interest of New York in the price of bank or State stock is insignificant compared with her still greater stake in the success of the Union. Indeed, if the Union should fall, State and bank stock and all property will be of little value, and bank debts will generally become worthless.

But if the war continues, we have seen that a redundant and depreciated currency would increase our expenditures $408,800,000 per annum. This would require a like addition to our annual tax, of which the share of New York would be over $50,000,000, and the share of every other State in like proportion to its population.

By Treasury Table 35, the stocks, State and Federal, held by the New York banks in 1860, was $29,605,318, the circulation $28,239,950, and the capital $111,821,957. Thus it appears that the increased tax to be paid annually by New York, as the consequence of a redundant and depreciated currency, would be nearly double her whole bank circulation, and that thirteen months of this increased tax to be paid by the nation, would largely exceed the whole capital of all the banks of the United States in 1860. (Census Table 35.) These are the frightful results of an irredeemable, redundant, and depreciated currency.

Such a course, on the part of a Government, which must make large purchases, resembles that of an individual who wishes to buy largely on his own credit and paper, but depreciates it so much as to compel him to pay quadruple prices, the result being bankruptcy and repudiation.

There is great hope in the fact that New York takes no contracted view of this great question. She knows that her imperial destiny is identified with the fate of the Union. Realizing this great truth, she has more troops in the field than any other State, she has expended more money and more blood than any other State to suppress this rebellion, and she will never array State stocks or State banks in hostility to the safety of the Union.

And what of Pennsylvania, that glorious old Commonwealth, so many of whose noble sons, cut off mostly in the morning of life, now fill graves prepared by treason? Is she to become a border State, and her southern boundary the line of blood, marked by frowning forts, by bristling bayonets, by the tramp of contending armies, engaged in the carnival of slaughter, and revelry of death? Is New England to be re-colonized, and the British flag again to float over the chosen domain of freedom? What of the small States, deprived of the secured equality and protective guarantees of the Constitution, to be surely crushed by more powerful communities? What of the