currency, as they have exhibited themselves in this and in other countries, from 1811 down to the present time.  I have expressed my opinions at various times in Congress, and some of the predictions which I have made have not been altogether falsified by subsequent events.  I must therefore be permitted, Gentlemen, without yielding to any flippant newspaper paragraph, or to the hasty ebullitions of debate in a public assembly, to say, that I believe the plan for an exchequer, as presented to Congress at its last session, is the best measure, the only measure for the adoption of Congress and the trial of the people.  I am ready to stake my reputation upon it, and that is all that I have to stake.  I am ready to stake my reputation, that, if this Whig Congress will take that measure and give it a fair trial, within three years it will be admitted by the whole American people to be the most beneficial measure of any sort ever adopted in this country, the Constitution only excepted.

I mean that they should take it as it was when it came from the Cabinet, not as it looked when the committees of Congress had laid their hands upon it.  For when the committees of Congress had struck out the proviso respecting exchange, it was not worth a rush; it was not worth the parchment it would be engrossed upon.  The great desire of this country is a general currency, a facility of exchange; a currency which shall be the same for you and for the people of Alabama and Louisiana, and a system of exchange which shall equalize credit between them and you, with the rapidity and facility with which steam conveys men and merchandise.  That is what the country wants, what you want; and you have not got it.  You have not got it, you cannot get it, but by some adequate provision of government.  Exchange, ready exchange, that will enable a man to turn his Orleans means into money to-day, (as we have had in better times millions a year exchanged, at only three quarters of one per cent,) is what is wanted How are we to obtain this?  A Bank of the United States founded on a private subscription is out of the question.  That is an obsolete idea.  The country and the condition of things have changed.  Suppose that a bank were chartered with a capital of fifty millions, to be raised by private subscription.  Would it not be out of all possibility to find the money?  Who would subscribe?  What would you get for shares?  And as for the local discount, do you wish it?  Do you, in State Street, wish that the nation should send millions of untaxed banking capital hither to increase your discounts?  What, then, shall we do?  People who are waiting for power to make a Bank of the United States may as well postpone all attempts to benefit the country to the incoming of the Jews.