But at last Congress interfered, and undertook to regulate the deposits of the public moneys.  It passed the law of July, 1836, placing the subject under legal control, restraining the power of the executive, subjecting the banks to liabilities and duties, on the one hand, and securing them against executive favoritism, on the other.  But this law contained another important provision; which was, that all the money in the treasury, beyond what was necessary for the current expenditures of the government, should be deposited with the States.  This measure passed both houses by very unusual majorities, yet it hardly escaped a veto.  It obtained only a cold assent, a slow, reluctant, and hesitating approval; and an early moment was seized to array against it a long list of objections.  But the law passed.  The money in the treasury beyond the sum of five millions was to go to the States.  It has so gone, and the treasury for the present is relieved from the burden of a surplus.  But now observe other coincidences.  In the annual message of December, 1835, the President quoted the fact of the rapidly increasing sale of the public lands as proof of high national prosperity.  He alluded to that subject, certainly with much satisfaction, and apparently in something of the tone of exultation.  There was nothing said about monopoly, not a word about speculation, not a word about over-issues of paper, to pay for the lands.  All was prosperous, all was full of evidence of a wise administration of government, all was joy and triumph.

But the idea of a deposit or distribution of the surplus money with the people suddenly damped this effervescing happiness.  The color of the rose was gone, and every thing now looked gloomy and black.  Now no more felicitation or congratulation, on account of the rapid sales of the public lands; no more of this most decisive proof of national prosperity and happiness.  The executive Muse takes up a melancholy strain.  She sings of monopolies, of speculation, of worthless paper, of loss both of land and money, of the multiplication of banks, and the danger of paper issues; and the end of the canto, the catastrophe, is, that lands shall no longer be sold but for gold and silver alone.  The object of all this is clear enough.  It was to diminish the income from the public lands.  No desire for such a diminution had been manifested, so long as the money was supposed to be likely to remain in the treasury.  But a growing conviction that some other disposition must be made of the surplus, awakened attention to the means of preventing that surplus.