currency in which there shall be no specie at all.  We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no, Sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors, and a ruined people.  This, I fear, Sir, may be the consequence, already alarmingly near, of this attempt, unwise if it be real, and grossly fraudulent if it be only pretended, of establishing an exclusively hard-money currency.

But, Sir, if this shock could be avoided, and if we could reach the object of an exclusive metallic circulation, we should find in that very success serious and insurmountable inconveniences.  We require neither irredeemable paper, nor yet exclusively hard money.  We require a mixed system.  We require specie, and we require, too, good bank paper, founded on specie, representing specie, and convertible into specie on demand.  We require, in short, just such a currency as we have long enjoyed, and the advantages of which we seem now, with unaccountable rashness, about to throw away.

I avow myself, therefore, decidedly against the object of a return to an exclusive specie currency.  I find great difficulty, I confess, in believing any man serious in avowing such an object.  It seems to me rather a subject for ridicule, at this age of the world, than for sober argument.  But if it be true that any are serious for the return of the gold and silver age, I am seriously against it.

Let us, Sir, anticipate, in imagination, the accomplishment of this grand experiment.  Let us suppose that, at this moment, all bank paper were out of existence, and the country full of specie.  Where, Sir, should we put it, and what should we do with it?  Should we ship it, by cargoes, every day, from New York to New Orleans, and from New Orleans back to New York?  Should we encumber the turnpikes, the railroads, and the steamboats with it, whenever purchases and sales were to be made in one place of articles to be transported to another?  The carriage of the money would, in some cases, cost half as much as the carriage of the goods.  Sir, the very first day, under such a state of things, we should set ourselves about the creation of banks.  This would immediately become necessary and unavoidable.  We may assure ourselves, therefore, without danger of mistake, that the idea of an exclusively metallic currency is totally incompatible, in the existing state of the world, with an active and extensive commerce.  It is inconsistent, too, with the greatest good of the greatest number; and therefore I oppose it.