Alexandria Gazette

Correspondence of the N. Y. Express.
Washington, Dec. 16th,

The Senate have followed the suit of the House of Representatives and called upon the Secretary of the Treasury to furnish his project in detail for improving the Currency. The call of both Houses will be responded to as early as Wednesday next. The plan in detail will give much more satisfaction to the country than the brief outline of it afforded in the President's Message. The impracticable features there alluded to, will be stricken from the Bill, and instead of them will be presented a plan feasible in itself and useful both to the Government and the People in its operations. There will be no power given to buy and sell bills of Exchange,—but instead of this a plan of deposits and issues will be presented which will in part take the place of this and aid in the work of giving the People a Currency. The Government will issue fifteen or twenty millions of dollars on its own account which will make a currency of itself by being issued in notes of small denominations every where receivable for public duties, and by other provisions of the Bill probably be made every where current. Thus much for the Government. For the benefit of the people, a plan of Exchequer Bills will be issued of all denominations down to five dollars, and all based upon the deposits of the people in Agencies of the Government, which it will probably be proposed to establish in all important parts of the country. These Agencies will do business both for the Government and the people, and aid materially in improving the Exchanges of the country by acting in concert, and by the direct business relations which they will have. For example, a planter will deposit in the New Orleans Agency 10,000 dollars. For this he will receive Exchequer Bills or Certificates of Deposit which will be everywhere current at par in the region of country where they are issued, and which will be redeemed at the New York Agency if required, at an expenditure not exceeding one or one and a half per cent. The New York Agency will issue its bills upon deposits which will be everywhere current, and for which the Agencies in other sections of the country will give them par value. This plan will give the country a currency equal to the Government issues and the individual deposits, and must therefore add materially in giving us a uniform currency and improving the Exchanges. All therefore, in the message of the President relating to Bills of Exchange, and to the limited distance of one hundred miles in which Bills may be drawn, will find no place in the plan to be presented by the Secretary of the Treasury or in the Bill which the Currency Committee will bring forward for the consideration of Congress. As the object of the President, his Cabinet, the Currency Committee, and Congress, seems to be the praiseworthy one of doing good service to the People and the Government, I cannot doubt that the plan will be successful.

Correspondence of the N. Y. Cour. & Enq.
Washington, December 16th, 1841.

The call of the Select Committee of the House of Representatives yesterday for the plan of the Secretary of the Treasury for a Fiscal Agent, has been followed to-day by a similar motion in the Senate. This course is in accordance with what I had previously supposed, and what good sense would dictate. Congress are willing to see in its fullest extent what the President and his Cabinet have to propose. Whatever fate the plan may finally meet with, that body will not allow themselves to labor under the reproach of haste and hot-headedness. From the Select Committee in the House, three reports may be reasonably expected.—One from the majority, in favor of the plan—another from the two Whig members, in opposition; and a third from the two Loco Focos, probably partially approving the scheme if the section of allowing the purchase of Bills of Exchange is omitted. From the account of the proceedings of Congress which you will receive by this mail from your excellent Reporter, you will perceive that the House of Representatives have spent a great deal of unnecessary fire this morning on the Tariff question:—the subject having come before that body on the motion for the reference of the several questions of the President's Message to the appropriate committees. At this stage of proceedings any legislation on this question is clearly useless. But it appears that certain members of the House, who have as many readings of the Constitution, as Peter, Martin, and Jack, in Swift's "Tale of a Tub," had of their father's last will and testament, are of opinion that the existence of a "Committee on Manufactures," for any purpose, is against the spirit of that venerable document. This is the last whin of Abstractionism—and as such deserves as much notice as the "last case of absence of mind," in a village newspaper. An extraordinary meeting of the Cabinet was held to-day. What was the subject of deliberation I have not fully ascertained; but I have reason to believe that the plan of the Secretary of the Treasury for a Fiscal Agent was at least one of the topics under discussion. For the first time since the opening of the Session, I have had an interview with Mr. Clay this evening. In appearance he is in better health than when he attended at the commencement of the extra Session. His face is fuller, and his form more robust. In manner he is cheerful and vivacious. He presents anything but the aspect of disappointed ambition, which his enemies would ascribe to him. For any one to cast on Henry Clay the odium of wounded pride and crushed ambition, is but to show his badness of heart or his utter ignorance of the man. And it is a singular fact that those who are foremost in making such imputations, bring forward a charge, which if true, would hurl contradiction in their teeth. They say that he is the Dictator of Congress and the Nation. As if any ambition, however vaulting, would ask more to satisfy its most earnest cravings, than, without power arising from station, or official influence, by the mere energy of mind and the controlling power of intellect, to dictate to mighty nation like that of the free people of this U. S.!