Toward the close of the last session, Gentlemen, a proposition was brought forward in Congress for such an alteration of the law as should admit payment for public lands to be made in nothing but gold and silver.  The mover voted for his own proposition; but I do not recollect that any other member concurred in the vote.  The proposition was rejected at once; but, as in other cases, that which Congress refused to do, the executive power did.  Ten days after Congress adjourned, having had this matter before it, and having refused to act upon it by making any alteration in the existing laws, a treasury order was issued, commanding that very thing to be done which Congress had been requested and had refused to do.  Just as in the case of the removal of the deposits, the executive power acted in this case also against the known, well understood, and recently expressed will of the representatives of the people.  There never has been a moment when the legislative will would have sanctioned the object of that order; probably never a moment in which any twenty individual members of Congress would have concurred in it.  The act was done without the assent of Congress, and against the well-known opinion of Congress.  That act altered the law of the land, or purported to alter it, against the well-known will of the law-making power.

For one, I confess I see no authority whatever in the Constitution, or in any law, for this treasury order.  Those who have undertaken to maintain it have placed it on grounds, not only different, but inconsistent and contradictory.  The reason which one gives, another rejects; one confutes what another argues.  With one it is the joint resolution of 1816 which gave the authority; with another, it is the law of 1820; with a third, it is the general superintending power of the President; and this last argument, since it resolves itself into mere power, without stopping to point out the sources of that power, is not only the shortest, but in truth the most just.  He is the most sensible, as well as the most candid reasoner, in my opinion, who places this treasury order on the ground of the pleasure of the executive, and stops there.  I regard the joint resolution of 1816 as mandatory; as prescribing a legal rule; as putting this subject, in which all have so deep an interest, beyond the caprice, or the arbitrary pleasure, or the discretion, of the Secretary of the Treasury.  I believe there is not the slightest legal authority, either in that officer or in the President, to make a distinction, and to say that paper may be received for debts at the custom-house, but that gold and silver only shall be received at the land offices.  And now for the sequel.