482 THE IMPENDING REVOLUTION. 



Where is the money which this resolution seeks to 

 pay out in the purchase of government bonds? It is 

 not in the treasury. Fifty -nine millions of it are in 

 national banks, and they are using it without interest. 

 The secretary of the treasury has serious doubts about his 

 authority under the law of March 3, 1881, to purchase 

 bonds with the money. It is a little singular that some 

 doubts did not arise in his mind as to his power to deposit 

 this amount of money in the national banks. 



Under what law did he deposit it? You will find the 

 law on page 365 of Loans and Currency. 



u All national banking associations designated for that 

 purpose by the secretary of the treasury shall be depos- 

 itories of public money, except receipts for customs, under 

 such regulations as may be prescribed by the secretary, 

 and they may also be employed as financial agents of the 

 government. ' ' 



Now, Mr. Chairman, when was that law passed? It 

 was passed June, 1864,. during the struggle for the preser- 

 vation of the Union, when the government had to disburse 

 large sums of money in various parts of the country in 

 payment of the army and in payment for supplies. That 

 was the necessity under which the law passed, and the 

 necessity having ceased, the rule ought to have ceased 

 also. 



There was no design in the passage of that law to 

 make the national banks depositories of government funds 

 for their convenience and benefit. It was the convenience 

 of the government that was uppermost in the minds of 

 Congress, and when the necessity ceased, the deposit 

 of money in the national banks should have ceased also. 

 But, sir, it is true, that there are fifty or more national banks 

 in this country that have been literally stuffed with 

 government funds for the past quarter of a century; money 

 wrung from the people by unjust and oppressive taxation 

 has been stuffed into the banks, and by them loaned back 

 to the poor wretches* from whom it was extorted. Who 

 on this floor will deny that? Fifty-nine millions? Where 

 is it? Scattered promiscuously over the country, without 

 regard to the convenience of the government, utterly in 



