To the general and important nature of its financial service Mr.Gallatin gave his testimony in 1830; after his own direct participation in public affairs had ended.
"Experience, however, has since confirmed the great utility and importance of a bank of the United States in its connection with the Treasury.

The first great advantage derived from it consists in the safekeeping of the public moneys, securing in the first instance the immediate payment of those received by the principal collectors, and affording a constant check on all their transactions; and afterwards rendering a defalcation in the moneys once paid, and whilst nominally in the treasury, absolutely impossible.

The next, and not less important, benefit is to be found in the perfect facility with which all the public payments are made by checks or treasury drafts, payable at any place where the bank has an office; all those who have demands against government are paid in the place most convenient to them; and the public moneys are transferred through our extensive territory at a moment's warning without any risk or expense, to the places most remote from those of collection, and wherever public exigencies may require." Late in life, in a letter to John M.Botts, June 14, 1841, Mr.Gallatin expressed the same opinions with regard to the usefulness of a government bank as an aid to the Treasury Department, but limited his approval to that use.

"Except in its character of fiscal agent to the general government I attach much less importance to a national bank than several of those who are in favor of it." "Did I believe," he adds in the same letter, "that a bank of the United States would effectually secure us a sound currency, I would think it a duty at all hazards to promote the object." The reason for his doubts in 1841 is easily seen in the impossibility of annihilating or controlling the three hundred distinct currencies of as many banks, each nominally convertible into specie at its point of issue; a financial puzzle which Mr.Chase solved in the device and organization of the present national banking system, which, without involving the government in banking operations, affords to the people a homogeneous currency of uniform value, and secures its convertibility by reasonable but absolute restrictions, upon conformity to which the existence of the banks depends.

The exigencies of war compelled an acquiescence in the plans of Mr.Chase, which, at the time when Mr.
Gallatin expressed his doubts, could not have been had in any system whatever which involved the subordination of the banks.
The wide spread of the state bank system, with its irresponsible and unlimited issues, occurring subsequent to Mr.Gallatin's withdrawal from the Treasury, was a consequence of the failure to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States; and if ever there were a system by which the inhabitants of States whose floating capital was small were placed at the mercy of moneyed corporations of the States where it was abundant, it was the state bank system.