modified by the laws of the State and the Constitution of the United States, has lately presented the Union with the singular spectacle of two state governments both claiming to represent the state.

A portion of the people of this state had applied to the Legislature for a convention, and not having obtained their request in the form desired, thought they might follow the precedents of our revolutionary fathers and by public meetings start a new republican government ab initio in primary assemblies of the people. In this mode delegates to a convention were deputed, being elected in a mode agreed on. The convention adopted a State Constitution and submitted it to the people of the State in a mode prescribed by it. It was voted for as its friends allege by a majority of the electors of the State. Under this alleged Constitution a governor and legislature was elected. The State Legislature declared these proceedings in contempt of its authority null and void, and made the attempt by any person to enforce such new government by force treason against the State. A rising with arms by the new authorities against the old was suppressed by the old State government without any serious bloodshed. The President of the United States was called upon by both parties, and he decided that the old government which had continued for more than fifty years

was the republican government of the State, and that, if necessary, he should sustain it. This was a correct decision for this reason. At the revolution the proceedings of our forefathers arose from the necessity of the occasion. The colonial governments were suddenly put down by force in Rhode Island as well as in her sister colonies. All of them except Rhode Island adopted constitutions much after the mode lately attempted there.

Rhode Island was satisfied to remodel her char. ter by acts of her Legislature elected by the people, and in that form she entered the Union as a republican state. That then was her settled republican form of government, and she has lived under it about half a century. It followed of necessity that the provision of the Constitution of the United States enjoining it on the President to sus tain the republican government of the States applied to the existing modified Charter Government.

The friends of the new Constitution mistook the mode of altering an established government of a The law organizing a convention of the people to change or alter a state government must be passed by the Legislature of a state. And such

state.

has been the uniform practice.

Inequality of representation or denial of the right of suffrage, where it ought to be granted, is

no ground for a revolutionary movement in a republic where the public voice may speak through the ballot box. The same difficulty exists in Virginia as to inequality of representation that is complained of in Rhode Island. These are proper subjects to present to the legislatures of the states and the people with a view to a legal reform by legislative action. Representative republican government rests on the popular voice expressed through the ballot boxes. The sword, the weapon of despots, finds no place in our republic.

As the decision of President Tyler is sustained by public opinion, the power and duty of the Executive of the Union to maintain the existing republican state governments against all attempts to change them by force, may be considered as established.

The next duty of the government of the Union, founded upon the entire resources of the country, is that of maintaining the pecuniary credit of the republic and of the states.

SECTION FOURTH.

CURRENCY AND CREDIT.

All will concede that a sound and well regulated system of finance, that shall promptly supply the nation with money to pay its debts when due, and not oppress or burden the industry of the country, is a great desideratum in this and in every other country. The President of the United States, in a late annual Message to Congress, has expressed the universal sentiment of the republic on this subject in these words: "The credit of the government may be regarded as the very soul of the government itself, a principle of vitality without which all its movements are languid, and all its operations embarrassed." In this spirit General Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, proposed at the organization of the present government of the Union, a system of funding the debts of the states incurred in the revolution and the establishment of a bank of the United States. The people of the United States, when the Constitution was adopted, were poor and prostrate from the effects of an eight years war with Great Britain, and their government was without credit. The financial plans of Hamilton were adopted by President Washington and Congress, and they speedily established the credit of the United States, and gave a great impulse and success to the busi.

ness of the country. The principle of preserving a firm national credit has been steadily maintained by all succeeding administrations. At different times there have been differences of opinion as to the constitutionality and expediency of a corporate Bank of the United States, but none as to the necessity of preserving unimpaired the national credit and financial honor.

A Bank of the United States has repeatedly received the legal sanction of Congress, of several Presidents, and of the Supreme Court of the United States. (See 4 Wheaton's R. 316, 432; 9 H. 860.) If the question was not settled by long practice, by judicial and legislative authority, we should doubt whether the United States possessed power to grant a charter for a bank to private stockholders, though it were declared the Fiscal Agent of the Treasury of the Union. The legal construction of the Constitution must be considered as settled by executive, congressional and supreme judicial decision running through half a century, but the question of expediency is open to Congress. In the course of that period the population and wealth of the country have rapidly advanced and the national debts arising from two defensive wars with Great Britain have been paid off by a wise system of economy, by a high regard to the credit of the Union. Our country was sparsely popula