Its vast amount of notes are then to be
redeemed and withdrawn-from circulation and its immense debt collected.
These operations must be gradual, otherwise much suffering and distress
will be brought upon the community.
It ought to be not a work of months only, but of years, and the
President thinks it can not, with due attention to the interests of the
people, be longer postponed. It is safer to begin it too soon than to
delay it too long.
It is for the wisdom of Congress to decide upon the best substitute
to be adopted in the place of the Bank of the United States, and the
President would have felt himself relieved from a heavy and painful
responsibility if in the charter to the bank Congress had reserved to
itself the power of directing at its pleasure the public money to be
elsewhere deposited, and had not devolved that power exclusively on one
of the Executive Departments. It is useless now to inquire why this high
and important power was surrendered by those who are peculiarly and
appropriately the guardians of the public money. Perhaps it was an
oversight. But as the President presumes that the charter to the bank is
to be considered as a contract on the part of the Government, it is not
now in the power of Congress to disregard its stipulations; and by the
terms of that contract the public money is to be deposited in the bank
during the continuance of its charter unless the Secretary of the
Treasury shall otherwise direct.
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