whole subject to the consideration of Congress with a single additional remark.  Certainty and permanency in any system of governmental policy are in all respects eminently desirable, but more particularly is this true in all that affects trade and commerce, the operations of which depend much more on the certainty of their returns and calculations which embrace distant periods of time than on high bounties or duties, which are liable to constant fluctuations.

At your late session I invited your attention to the condition of the currency and exchanges and urged the necessity of adopting such measures as were consistent with the constitutional competency of the Government in order to correct the unsoundness of the one and, as far as practicable, the inequalities of the other.  No country can be in the enjoyment of its full measure of prosperity without the presence of a medium of exchange approximating to uniformity of value.  What is necessary as between the different nations of the earth is also important as between the inhabitants of different parts of the same country.  With the first the precious metals constitute the chief medium of circulation, and such also would be the case as to the last but for inventions comparatively modern, which have furnished in place of gold and silver a paper circulation.  I do not propose to enter into a comparative analysis of the merits of the two systems.  Such belonged more properly to the period of the introduction of the paper system.  The speculative philosopher might find inducements to prosecute the inquiry, but his researches could only lead him to conclude that the paper system had probably better never have been introduced and that society might have been much happier without it.  The practical statesman has a very different task to perform.  He has to look at things as they are, to take them as he finds them, to supply deficiencies and to prune excesses as far as in him lies.  The task of furnishing a corrective for derangements of the paper medium with us is almost inexpressibly great.  The power exerted by the States to charter banking corporations, and which, having been carried to a great excess, has filled the country with, in most of the States, an irredeemable paper medium, is an evil which in some way or other requires a corrective.  The rates at which bills of exchange are negotiated between different parts of the country furnish an index of the value of the local substitute for gold and silver, which is in many parts so far depreciated as not to be received except at a large discount in payment of debts or in the purchase of produce.  It could earnestly be desired that every bank not possessing the means of resumption should follow the example of the late United States Bank of Pennsylvania and go into liquidation rather than by refusing to do so to continue embarrassments in the way of solvent institutions, thereby augmenting the difficulties incident to the present condition of things.  Whether this Government,