which none but government can furnish.  Government must do that for individuals which individuals cannot do for themselves.  That is the very end of government.  Why else have we a government?  Can individuals make a currency?  Can individuals regulate money?  The distinction is as broad and plain as the Pennsylvania Avenue.  No man can mistake it, or well blunder out of it.  The gentleman asks if government must furnish for the people ships, and boats, and wagons.  Certainly not.  The gentleman here only recites the President’s message of September.  These things, and all such things, the people can furnish for themselves; but they cannot make a currency; they cannot, individually, decide what shall be the money of the country.  That, everybody knows, is one of the prerogatives, and one of the duties, of government; and a duty which I think we are most unwisely and improperly neglecting.  We may as well leave the people to make war and to make peace, each man for himself, as to leave to individuals the regulation of commerce and currency.

Mr. President, there are other remarks of the gentleman of which I might take notice.  But should I do so, I could only repeat what I have already said, either now or heretofore.  I shall, therefore, not now allude to them.  My principal purpose in what I have said has been to defend myself; that was my first object; and next, as the honorable member has attempted to take to himself the character of a strict constructionist, and a State-rights man, and on that basis to show a difference, not favorable to me, between his constitutional opinions and my own, heretofore, it has been my intention to show that the power to create a bank, the power to regulate the currency by other and direct means, the power to enact a protective tariff, and the power of internal improvement, in its broadest sense, are all powers which the honorable gentleman himself has supported, has acted on, and in the exercise of which, indeed, he has taken a distinguished lead in the counsels of Congress.

If this has been done, my purpose is answered.  I do not wish to prolong the discussion, nor to spin it out into a colloquy.  If the honorable member has any thing new to bring forward; if he has any charge to make, any proof, or any specification; if he has any thing to advance against my opinions or my conduct, my honor or patriotism, I am still at home.  I am here.  If not, then, so far as I am concerned, this discussion will here terminate.

I will say a few words, before I resume my seat, on the motion now pending.  That motion is to strike out the specie-paying part of the bill.  I have a suspicion, Sir, that the motion will prevail.  If it should, it will leave a great vacuum; and how shall that vacuum be filled?