With these views I leave to Congress the measures necessary to regulate in the present emergency the safe-keeping and transfer of the public moneys.  In the performance of constitutional duty I have stated to them without reserve the result of my own reflections.  The subject is of great importance, and one on which we can scarcely expect to be as united in sentiment as we are in interest.  It deserves a full and free discussion, and can not fail to be benefited by a dispassionate comparison of opinions.  Well aware myself of the duty of reciprocal concession among the coordinate branches of the Government, I can promise a reasonable spirit of cooperation, so far as it can be indulged in without the surrender of constitutional objections which I believe to be well founded.  Any system that may be adopted should be subjected to the fullest legal provision, so as to leave nothing to the Executive but what is necessary to the discharge of the duties imposed on him; and whatever plan may be ultimately established, my own part shall be so discharged as to give to it a fair trial and the best prospect of success.

The character of the funds to be received and disbursed in the transactions of the Government likewise demands your most careful consideration.

There can be no doubt that those who framed and adopted the Constitution, having in immediate view the depreciated paper of the Confederacy—­of which $500 in paper were at times only equal to $1 in coin—­intended to prevent the recurrence of similar evils, so far at least as related to the transactions of the new Government.  They gave to Congress express powers to coin money and to regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin; they refused to give it power to establish corporations—­the agents then as now chiefly employed to create a paper currency; they prohibited the States from making anything but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts; and the First Congress directed by positive law that the revenue should be received in nothing but gold and silver.

Public exigency at the outset of the Government, without direct legislative authority, led to the use of banks as fiscal aids to the Treasury.  In admitted deviation from the law, at the same period and under the same exigency, the Secretary of the Treasury received their notes in payment of duties.  The sole ground on which the practice thus commenced was then or has since been justified is the certain, immediate, and convenient exchange of such notes for specie.  The Government did, indeed, receive the inconvertible notes of State banks during the difficulties of war, and the community submitted without a murmur to the unequal taxation and multiplied evils of which such a course was productive.  With the war this indulgence ceased, and the banks were obliged again to redeem their notes in gold and silver.  The Treasury, in accordance with previous practice, continued to dispense with the currency required by the act of 1789, and took the notes of banks in full confidence of their being paid in specie on demand; and Congress, to guard against the slightest violation of this principle, have declared by law that if notes are paid in the transactions of the Government it must be under such circumstances as to enable the holder to convert them into specie without depreciation or delay.