times the amount of the real debt, and four times that of the factitious one of the United States, at the close of the war.  All this they will justly charge on their legislatures; but this will be poor satisfaction for the two or three hundred millions they will have lost.  It is time, then, for the public functionaries to look to this.  Perhaps it may not be too late.  Perhaps, by giving time to the banks, they may call in and pay off their paper by degrees.  But no remedy is ever to be expected while it rests with the State legislatures.  Personal motives can be excited through so many avenues to their will, that, in their hands, it will continue to go on from bad to worse, until the catastrophe overwhelms us.  I still believe, however, that on proper representations of the subject, a great proportion of these legislatures would cede to Congress their power of establishing banks, saving the charter rights already granted.  And this should be asked, not by way of amendment to the constitution, because until three fourths should consent, nothing could be done; but accepted from them one by one, singly, as their consent might be obtained.  Any single State, even if no other should come into the measure, would find its interest in arresting foreign bank-paper immediately, and its own by degrees.  Specie would flow in on them as paper disappeared.  Their own banks would call in and pay off their notes gradually, and their constituents would thus be saved from the general wreck.  Should the greater part of the States concede, as is expected, their power over banks to Congress, besides insuring their own safety, the paper of the non-conceding States might be so checked and circumscribed, by prohibiting its receipt in any of the conceding States, and even in the non-conceding as to duties, taxes, judgments, or other demands of the United States, or of the citizens of other States, that it would soon die of itself, and the medium of gold and silver be universally restored.  This is what ought to be done.  But it will not be done. Carthago non delebitur.  The overbearing clamor of merchants, speculators, and projectors, will drive us before them with our eyes open, until, as in France, under the Mississippi bubble, our citizens will be overtaken by the crash of this baseless fabric, without other satisfaction than that of execrations on the heads of those functionaries, who, from ignorance, pusillanimity, or corruption, have betrayed the fruits of their industry into the hands of projectors and swindlers.

When I speak comparatively of the paper emissions of the old Congress and the present banks, let it not be imagined that I cover them under the same mantle.  The object of the former was a holy one; for if ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence.  The object of the latter, is to enrich swindlers at the expense of the honest and industrious part of the nation.