The manner in which it performed its financial service is admirably set forth in Mr.Gallatin's "Considerations on the Currency," already mentioned.

It acted as a regulator upon the state banks, checked excessive issues on their part, and brought the paper currency of the country down from sixty-six to less than forty millions, before the year 1820.
In April, 1816, Mr.Dallas having signified his intention to resign the Treasury, Mr.Madison wrote to Gallatin, offering him his choice between the mission to France and the Treasury Department.

Mr.Gallatin's reply was characteristic.

He declined the Treasury, but with reluctance, since he thought he would be more useful at home than abroad, and because he preferred to be in America rather than in Europe.

One of his preponderating reasons was that, although he felt himself competent to the higher duties of the office, there was, for what he conceived "a proper management of the Treasury, a necessity for a mass of mechanical labor connected with details, forms, calculating, etc., which having lost sight of the thread and routine, he could not think of again learning and going through." He was aware that there was "much confusion due to the changes of office and the state of the currency, and thought that an active young man could alone reinstate and direct properly that department." In June of the same year, while waiting for the Peacock, which was to carry him across the sea, Gallatin wrote Mr.Madison an urgent letter, impressing upon him the necessity of restoring specie payment, and his perfect conviction that nothing but the will of the government was wanted to reinstate the country in its moral character in that respect.
He dreaded the "paper taint," which he found spreading as he journeyed northward.
In January 1817, delegates from the banks of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Virginia met in Philadelphia and agreed to a general and simultaneous resumption of specie payments.