have been idle a great portion of the time, was kept almost constantly in circulation.  Any person who will reflect that money is only valuable while in circulation will readily perceive that any device which will keep the government revenues in constant circulation, instead of being locked up in idleness, is no inconsiderable advantage.  By the subtreasury the revenue is to be collected and kept in iron boxes until the government wants it for disbursement; thus robbing the people of the use of it, while the government does not itself need it, and while the money is performing no nobler office than that of rusting in iron boxes.  The natural effect of this change of policy, every one will see, is to reduce the quantity of money in circulation.  But, again, by the subtreasury scheme the revenue is to be collected in specie.  I anticipate that this will be disputed.  I expect to hear it said that it is not the policy of the administration to collect the revenue in specie.  If it shall, I reply that Mr. Van Buren, in his message recommending the subtreasury, expended nearly a column of that document in an attempt to persuade Congress to provide for the collection of the revenue in specie exclusively; and he concludes with these words: 

“It may be safely assumed that no motive of convenience to the citizens requires the reception of bank paper.”  In addition to this, Mr. Silas Wright, Senator from New York, and the political, personal and confidential friend of Mr. Van Buren, drafted and introduced into the Senate the first subtreasury bill, and that bill provided for ultimately collecting the revenue in specie.  It is true, I know, that that clause was stricken from the bill, but it was done by the votes of the Whigs, aided by a portion only of the Van Buren senators.  No subtreasury bill has yet become a law, though two or three have been considered by Congress, some with and some without the specie clause; so that I admit there is room for quibbling upon the question of whether the administration favor the exclusive specie doctrine or not; but I take it that the fact that the President at first urged the specie doctrine, and that under his recommendation the first bill introduced embraced it, warrants us in charging it as the policy of the party until their head as publicly recants it as he at first espoused it.  I repeat, then, that by the subtreasury the revenue is to be collected in specie.  Now mark what the effect of this must be.  By all estimates ever made there are but between sixty and eighty millions of specie in the United States.  The expenditures of the Government for the year 1838—­the last for which we have had the report—­were forty millions.  Thus it is seen that if the whole revenue be collected in specie, it will take more than half of all the specie in the nation to do it.  By this means more than half of all the specie belonging to the fifteen millions of souls who compose the whole population of the country is thrown into the hands