fallacious hopes, the States should disregard the principles of economy which ought to characterize every republican government, and should indulge in lavish expenditures exceeding their resources, they will before long find themselves oppressed with debts which they are unable to pay, and the temptation will become irresistible to support a high tariff in order to obtain a surplus for distribution.  Do not allow yourselves, my fellow-citizens, to be misled on this subject.  The Federal Government can not collect a surplus for such purposes without violating the principles of the Constitution and assuming powers which have not been granted.  It is, moreover, a system of injustice, and if persisted in will inevitably lead to corruption, and must end in ruin.  The surplus revenue will be drawn from the pockets of the people—­from the farmer, the mechanic, and the laboring classes of society; but who will receive it when distributed among the States, where it is to be disposed of by leading State politicians, who have friends to favor and political partisans to gratify?  It will certainly not be returned to those who paid it and who have most need of it and are honestly entitled to it.  There is but one safe rule, and that is to confine the General Government rigidly within the sphere of its appropriate duties.  It has no power to raise a revenue or impose taxes except for the purposes enumerated in the Constitution, and if its income is found to exceed these wants it should be forthwith reduced and the burden of the people so far lightened.

In reviewing the conflicts which have taken place between different interests in the United States and the policy pursued since the adoption of our present form of Government, we find nothing that has produced such deep-seated evil as the course of legislation in relation to the currency.  The Constitution of the United States unquestionably intended to secure to the people a circulating medium of gold and silver.  But the establishment of a national bank by Congress, with the privilege of issuing paper money receivable in the payment of the public dues, and the unfortunate course of legislation in the several States upon the same subject, drove from general circulation the constitutional currency and substituted one of paper in its place.

It was not easy for men engaged in the ordinary pursuits of business, whose attention had not been particularly drawn to the subject, to foresee all the consequences of a currency exclusively of paper, and we ought not on that account to be surprised at the facility with which laws were obtained to carry into effect the paper system.  Honest and even enlightened men are sometimes misled by the specious and plausible statements of the designing.  But experience has now proved the mischiefs and dangers of a paper currency, and it rests with you to determine whether the proper remedy shall be applied.