This system has been attended with complete success, and notwithstanding the increase of our debt, the premium on gold, for our Federal currency, fundable in this stock, has fallen from 73 per cent. in February last, before the adoption of Mr. Chase’s system, to 27 per cent. at present; and before the 30th of June next, it is not doubted that this premium must disappear.  No loyal American doubts the complete suppression of the rebellion before that date, in which event, our Federal currency will rise at once to the par of gold.  In the meantime, however, gold is at a premium of 27 per cent., which is the least profit (independent of future advance above par) so soon to be realized by those purchasing this currency now, and waiting its appreciation, or investing it in our United States 5—­20 six per cent. stock.

But, besides the financial benefits to the Government of Mr. Chase’s system, its other advantages are great indeed.  It will ultimately displace our whole State bank system and circulation, and give us a national currency, based on ample private capital and Federal stocks, a currency of uniform value throughout the country, and always certainly convertible on demand into coin.  Besides, by displacing the State bank circulation, the whole bank note currency of the Union will be based on the stocks of the Government, and give to every citizen who holds the bonds or the currency (which will embrace the whole community in every State), a direct interest in the maintenance of the Union.

The annual losses which our people sustain under the separate State bank system, in the rate of exchange, is enormous, whilst the constant and ever-recurring insolvency of so many of these institutions, accompanied by eight general bank suspensions of specie payment, have, from time to time, spread ruin and devastation throughout the country.  I believe that, in a period of twenty years, the saving to the people of the United States, by the substitution of the new system, would reach a sum very nearly approaching the total amount of our public debt, and in time largely exceeding it.  As a question, then, of national wealth, as well as national unity, I believe the gain to the country in time by the adoption of the new system, will far exceed the cost of the war.  It was the State bank system in the rebel States that furnished to secession mainly the sinews of war.  These banks are now generally insolvent, but, if the banking system now proposed had been in existence, and the circulating medium in all the States had been an uniform national currency based entirely on the stocks of the United States, the rebellion could never have occurred.  Every bank, and all its stockholders, and all the holders of the stock and notes of all the banks, embracing our whole paper currency, would have been united to the Government by an interest so direct and universal, that rebellion would have been impossible.  Hamilton and Madison, Story and Marshall, and the