Most men are so ready to imitate devices for acquiring wealth without industry and economy, that a single great example like the Bank of the United States would inevitably corrupt, in a short time, the moral sense of a community. Private corporations were accordingly chartered by the States. A paper medium, costing nothing, being brought into use by the public authorities, in the course of a few years filled all the ordinary channels of circulation; and the precious metals, being no longer required for currency, were exported to countries where they possessed a higher value. To suppose that a currency intrinsically and universally valuable can be retained in circulation in competition with one which costs nothing, so long as the latter can be successfully imposed upon the people, is too ridiculous to require comment.

The clamor which has been recently raised by the Philadelphia school relative to the exportation of silver, resembles that of the wiseacre who flung away the spiggot with which the fluid was confined within the cask, and then rent the neighborhood with lamentations at the loss of the liquor. Silver coin has been of late exported to a considerable extent, because it is no longer needed here for currency-and not because it is undervalued with respect to gold-the proportion fixed by law being similar to that of those nations where the two metals are most generally used as currency. The expulsion of silver is to be ascribed to the revival of the use of small notes by authority of law in all the States north of Delaware. Should this policy become permanent, those States will find themselves able to preserve little or no silver currency. Laws, which permit and encourage the circulation of shin-plasters, are entirely equivalent in their operation to enactments requiring coin to be sent where it is wanted for currency.

The introduction of the paper money policy into this country, but for the peculiar condition of our commercial relations with Europe, in consequence of the wars of the French revolution, must have soon manifested one of its most formidable consequences upon the internal prosperity of all countries where it has prevailed. This was clearly understood by the talented individuals who projected the bank. A scheme for countervailing this consequence was accordingly presented to Congress about the same time with the plan for chartering the bank, in Hamilton's famous Report on Manufactures. He fully comprehended the effect of debasing the practical measure of value, in discouraging and destroying domestic manufactures. The experience of the country previous to and during the Revolution had shown, that whenever prices are artificially raised by the inflation of fictitious currency, it becomes preposterous to attempt any competition with foreign producers whose commodities may be brought to market at less cost, unless this difference of cost can be counterbalanced by restraints on foreign commerce. A protective tariff was therefore inseparable from a National Bank. The fraud perpetrated upon the Constitution by the Charter of the Bank, rendered another fraud indis

pensable,—namely, the taxation of all the consuming classes of the community for the support of the manufacturers. Free trade is wholly at variance with the great principle of monopoly, on which paper-money banking rests. The ordinary transactions of business under this system can never be permitted to regulate themselves in their natural channels, under the control only of the fundamental laws of commerce. The whole community, throughout its vast variety of interests, are inevitably thrown into that false, constrained, and perilous condition, often resulting in the most terrible disasters to the industry of the country, such as we endeavored to describe in the Second Article upon Cotton, when explaining the progress of its manufacture in the United States, in our Number for April, 1838.

Deeply as the cotton interest has suffered from this artificial policy, the produce and manufacture of wool has been still more frequently and more deeply plunged into distress, by the complicated monopolies which the paper money system has created and sustained. Its situation in this respect has not attracted so much general sympathy throughout the Union, because its extent is greatly inferior to that of our great commercial staple Cotton. As an article of the highest importance to the health and comfort of our citizens of all classes, Wool deserves to be relieved from the suicidal experiments of protection which have placed both the producers of the raw material, and the manufacturers, wholly within the power of a small number of individuals. By commanding the currency, they are able to excite production to the highest pitch of activity at one moment, and to paralyze it the next, whenever their immediate profits may be enhanced by such sudden fluctuations. Control over currency has, in all ages, given unlimited power over the laboring and producing classes. One of the most striking and instructive illustrations of this fact, which is to be met with in modern history, may be found in the preamble of an English statute, the thirteenth chapter of 25th Henry VIII, entitled "concerning the number of sheep one should keep." So clearly is the influence of a superabundant currency upon the great staple of England shown in this authentic detail of the manifold grievances arising from the power of monopoly which a small number of individuals were able to exercise by "their great abundance of moveable substance," which the vast increase of money, within a few previous years from the discovery of America, had brought within their control, that we make no apology for giving it at large.

"For as much as divers and sundry persons of the king's subjects of this Realm, to whom God of his goodness hath disposed great plenty and abundance of moveable substance, now of late within few years have daily studied, practised and invented, ways and means how they might accumulate and gather together into few hands, as well great multitude of farms as great plenty of cattle, and in special sheepputting such lands as they can get to pasture and not to tillage, whereby they have not only pulled down Churches and Towns, and enhanced the old rates of the rents of the possessions of this Realm, or else brought it to such excessive fines that no poor man is able to meddle with it; but have also raised and enhanced the prices of all manner of Corn, Cattle, Wood, Pigs, Geese, Hens, Chickens, Eggs and such

other, almost double above the prices which have been accustomed; by reason whereof a marvellous multitude and number of the people of this Realm be not able to provide meat, drink and clothes, necessary for themselves, their Wives and Children, but be so discouraged with Misery and Poverty, that they daily fall to Theft, Robbery and other Inconveniences, or pitifully die for Hunger or Cold; and as it is thought by the king's most humble and loving subjects that one of the greatest occasions that moveth and provoketh those greedy and covetous People so to accumulate and keep in their hands such great portions and parts of the Grounds and Lands of this Realm from the occupying of the poor Husbandmen, and so to use it in pasture and not in tillage, is only the great profit that cometh of sheep which now be come into a few Persons' hands of this Realm in respect of the whole number of the king's subjects, that some have 24,000, some 20,000, some 10,000, some 6,000, some 5,000 and some more and some less; by the which a good Sheep for victual that was accustomed to be sold for two shillings and four pence, or three shillings at the most, is now sold for six shillings or five shillings, or four shillings at the least; and a stone of clothing wool that in some shires of this Realm was accustomed to be sold for eighteen pence or twenty pence, is now sold for four shillings, or three shillings four pence at the least; and in some countries where it hath been sold for two shillings four pence or two shillings eight pence, or three shillings at the most, it is now sold for five shillings or four shillings eight pence at the least, and so are raised in every part of this Realm; which things thus used be principally to the high displeasure of Almighty God, to the Decay of the Hospitality of this Realm, to the Diminishing of the king's people and to the let of the cloth-making whereby many poor people have been accustomed to be set on work; and in conclusion, if remedy be not found it may turn to the utter destruction and desolation of this Realm, which God defend."

This statute then proceeds to enact that after Michaelmas, 1535, no individual shall keep more than 2,000 sheep; and contains a great variety of provisions in a string of sections to enforce this prohibition by the forfeiture of all above that number owned by one person. Far from proposing the imitation of this ancient example, one must regret that since the adoption of the Constitution, and in defiance of its provisions and principles, laws have been imposed upon the productive interests of this country, of which the inevitable results must be, if the system is persisted in, to involve the mass of the community in evils similar to those depicted with so much force in this preamble. A superabundant currency suddenly thrown upon a scale of prices solely arranged by the action and re-action of the great principles of demand and supply, enables those who control this currency, by selecting particular commodities for their operations, to push them up to almost any rate they may choose. In the case of a new and sudden supply of metallic money which has occurred but once in modern times, the consequences in a single country are described in this preamble; but they were not less appalling in the other producing countries of Europe at the same period; for gold and silver, possessing universal value, always tend, by flowing from the dearer to the cheaper countries, to produce equalization of prices. But the most destructive efforts of a superabundance of currency is always visited upon those countries which have tolerate da factitious and local measure of value. In countries where the currency is solely metallic, those individuals only can exercise the oppressive monopoly which the command of money gives, who are men of property-the real proprietors or bona-fide bor

rowers of the actual results of accumulated labor, which alone constitutes capital. Where paper currency is permitted to circulate as money, this monopoly may be exercised with equal power by any adventurer like Dr. Dyott, who, by newspaper puffing and other artifices practised upon a credulous community, may be able to swindle the industrious out of their hard earnings to an immense amount-and who, in his turn, generally becomes the prey to some overgrown capitalist or institution, by whose countenance and support he was enabled to carry on his highhanded impositions. These evils are aggravated in a tenfold degree when a few individuals are permitted, by law, to manufacture such paper currency to any amount they may please, wholly freed from personal liability or responsibility. In this case, should the monopolies which the command of currency enables them to impose, turn out profitably, they quietly pocket the gains--should they prove disastrous, the community must bear the loss-for no individual is bound to redeem such currency. This system affords, therefore, not only a high premium, but perfect indemnity for gambling of the most profligate kind. The gains become the property of the individual managers of paper currency-the losses fall upon the industrious and unprotected. The calamities imposed upon any people by paper currency may be readily understood by the simple enunciation of these principles, had this country been so fortunate as to be exempted from their sad experience. A few individuals are enabled to realize great fortunes, while the rest of the community are empoverished in a corresponding degree. The rich are made richer, and the poor reduced to misery and degradation. A nation—which, to gratify the short-sighted cupidity of the few, authorizes them to create a false and fraudulent measure of value, for their own profit, and which profit is enhanced by its depreciation, they not being made liable for its redemption-must be regarded as strangely blind to its highest and most permanent interests. In the article on the "Causes of Poverty," in our last May Number, we endeavored to show that the all-absorbing evil which now threatens to overthrow the existing state of things in Englandpauperism-owes its origin to the superabundance of currency, and not to the cause to which it has generally been ascribed the dissolution of the monasteries. The statute, of which we have given the preamble, passed several years before this dissolution, and affords conclusive evidence of the correctness of the view we had there taken of this subject. Spain, which attempted to command the exclusive monopoly of the precious metals, brought by her subjects from the New World, first felt the influence of the superabundance of currency. Her extensive cotton manufactures, carried on in Catalonia, and along the coast of the Mediterranean-Barcelona having been the original seat of that manufacture in Europe-were soon destroyed by the greater cheapness with which the similar products of other countries could be afforded. The great woollen manufactures of Segovia and of Seville were overthrown in the It was found impossible to sustain them in competition

same manner.

with the cheaper products of England and the Netherlands. That a selfgoverning nation, in an enlightened age, should impose laws upon itself for the express purpose of reducing the bulk of its people to the condition of those of Spain, must seem marvellous to reflecting men. No human passion is so short-sighted as avarice. From the wretched needle-grinder, who, for a few additional shillings a week, seeks an employment which destroys him in three or four years, to the lordly speculator who embarks in gambling enterprises, which jeopardize his own comfort and the permanent welfare of his family-the votaries of this grovelling passion are equally blind to the future. Whether their children are reduced to pauperism and the lowest condition of degradation, seems a matter of pure indifference, while in the eager pursuit of immediate gratification.

Our views of the principles upon which the necessity for the protection of American industry, as the tariff laws have been plausibly called, is based, are stated in connection with the Philadelphia System of Banking, somewhat in advance of the period of time when the protective policy will become the great and absorbing topic of political discussion throughout the country, because this policy, and the currency which renders it essential, had the same origin, and are in fact inseparable portions of the same scheme of Government, through which it was intended to pervert the doctrines of the Constitution, by making the soil, the labor, and the enterprise of the whole people tributary to the aggrandizement of a privileged few. Those who may be disposed to trace and consider the various devices concerted to consummate this grand design, will be able to determine whether it was not intended to cheat the people of the United States out of the equality of rights guaranteed by the Constitution, under the pretexts of encouraging commerce and domestic industry, and to make them hewers of wood and drawers of water to the paper aristocracy, like that of England, whose Government was held up as the most perfect system the world ever saw. They have recently adopted the very phraseology of the English aristocracy-calling themselves Conservatives, and stigmatizing the friends of popular rights as Destructives.

While the various means and devices for bringing about this result were in most active operation, public attention was mainly directed towards the lawless measures of the belligerant powers of Europe, as a ready explanation for the fluctuations of property and the disastrous failures which continually occurred in all parts of the Union. During the whole of that period, the manœuvres of the paper-money managers were concealed in impenetrable secrecy. No returns or data of any kind, showing the movement of currency, excepting such as are afforded by the effects upon public and private security, were, during these times of bank domination, afforded to the scrutiny of vulgar impertinence. Every revulsion which occurred could be easily ascribed to Jefferson and to the Jacobins. While an enormous tax, in the shape of interest upon fictitious capital, was levied upon the productive interests of the country, the slightest shock of adverse fortune toppled the most extensive transactions. The system