Thus the imagery of language finds its base in the very essence of our being. The poet is one gifted to seize upon these hidden analogies, to read these mystic symbols, and, through the force of his own imagination, to reveal them to his brethren in truth and love.

The imagination has two distinct functions. It combines, and by combination creates new forms; it penetrates, analyzes, and realizes truths discoverable by no other faculty.

An imagination of high power of combination seizes and associates at the same moment all the important ideas of its work or poem, so that while it is working with any one of them, it is at the same instant working with and modifying them all in their several relations to it. It never once loses sight of their bearings upon each other—as the volition moves through every part of the body of a snake at the same moment, uncoiling some of its involute rings at the very instant it is coiling others. This faculty is inconceivable, admirable, almost divine; yet no less an operation is necessary for the production of any great work, for by the definition of unity of membership above given, not only certain couples or groups of parts, but all the parts of a noble work must be separately imperfect; each must imply and ask for all the rest; the glory of every one of them must consist in its relation to the rest; neither while so much as one is wanting can any be right. This faculty is indeed something that looks as if its possessor were made in the Divine image!

'The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew;— The conscious stone to beauty grew.'

EMERSON.

By the power of the combining imagination various ideas are chosen from an infinite mass, ideas which are separately imperfect, but which shall together be perfect, and of whose unity therefore the idea must be formed at the very moment they are seized, as it is only in that unity that their appropriateness consists, and therefore only the conception of that unity can prompt the preference. Therefore he alone can conceive and compose who sees the whole at once before him.

Shakspeare is the great example of this marvellous power. Not only is every word which falls from the lips of his various characters true to his first conception of them, so true that we always know how they will act under any given circumstances, and we could substitute no other words than the words used by them without contradicting our first impression of them; but every character with which they come in contact is not only ever true to itself, but is precisely of the nature best fitted to develop the traits, vices, or virtues of the main figure. So perfect and complete is this lifelike unity, that we can scarcely think of one of his leading characters without recalling all those with whom it is associated. If we name Juliet, for instance, not only is her idea inseparable from that of Romeo, but the whole train of Montagues and Capulets, Mercutio, Tybalt, the garrulous nurse, the lean apothecary, the lonely friar, sweep by. What an exquisite trait of the poetic temperament, tenderness, and human sympathies of this same lonely friar is given us in his exclamation:

'Here comes the lady: O, so light a foot Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint.'

It also explains to us that it was the good friar's unconscious affection for Juliet, the pure sympathies of a lonely but loving heart, which so imprudently induced him to unite the unfortunate young lovers. The men and women of Shakspeare live and love, and we cannot think of them without at the same time thinking of those with whom they lived and whom they loved. Indeed, when we can wrest any character in a drama from those which surround it, and study it apart, the unity of the whole is but apparent, never vital. Simplicity, harmony, life, power, truth, and love, are all to be found in any high work of the associative imagination.

We now proceed to characterize the penetrative imagination, 'which analyzes and realizes truths discoverable by no other faculty.' Of this faculty Shakspeare is also master. Ruskin, from whom we continue to quote, says: It never stops at crusts or ashes, or outward images of any kind, but ploughing them all aside, plunges at once into the very central fiery heart; its function and gift are the getting at the root; its nature and dignity depend on its holding things always by the heart. Take its hand from off the beating of that, and it will prophesy no longer; it looks not into the eyes, it judges not by the voice, it describes not by outward features; all that it affirms, judges, or describes, it affirms from within. There is no reasoning in it; it works not by algebra nor by integral calculus; it is a piercing Pholas-like mind's tongue that works and tastes into the very rock-heart; no matter what be the subject submitted to it, substance or spirit, all is alike divided asunder, joint and marrow; whatever utmost truth, life, principle it has laid bare, and that which has no truth, life, nor principle, is dissipated into its original smoke at a touch. The whispers at men's ears it lifts into visible angels. Vials that have lain sealed in the sea a thousand years it unseals, and brings out of them genii.

Every great conception of Art is held and treated by this faculty. Every character touched by men like AEschylus, Homer, Dante, or Shakspeare, is by them held by the heart; and every circumstance or sentence of their being, speaking, or seeming, is seized by a process from within, and is referred to that inner secret spring of which the hold is never lost for a moment; so that every sentence, as it has been thought out from the heart, opens a way down to the heart, and leads us to the very centre of life. Hence there is in every word set down by the Imagination an awful undercurrent of meaning—an evidence and shadow upon it of the deep places out of which it has come.

In this it utterly differs from the Fancy, with which it is often confounded.

Fancy sees the outside, and is able to give a portrait of the outside, clear, brilliant, and full of detail. The Imagination sees the heart and inner nature, and makes them felt; but in the clear seeing of things beneath, is often impatient of detailed interpretation, being sometimes obscure, mysterious, and abrupt. Fancy, as she stays at the externals, never feels. She is one of the hardest hearted of the intellectual faculties; or, rather, one of the most purely and simply intellectual. She cannot be made serious; no edge tools but she will play with; while the Imagination cannot but be serious—she sees too far, too darkly, too solemnly, too earnestly, to smile often! There is something in the heart of everything, if we can reach it, at which we shall not be inclined to laugh. Those who have the deepest sympathies are those who pierce deepest, and those who have so pierced and seen the melancholy deeps of things, are filled with the most intense passion and gentleness of sympathy. The power of an imagination may almost be tested by its accompanying degree of tenderness; thus there is no tenderness like Dante's, nor any seriousness like his—such seriousness that he is quite incapable of perceiving that which is commonplace or ridiculous.

Imagination, being at the heart of things, poises herself there, and is still, calm, and brooding; but Fancy, remaining on the outside of things, cannot see them all at once, but runs hither and thither, and round about, to see more and more, bounding merrily from point to point, glittering here and there, but necessarily always settling, if she settle at all, on a point only, and never embracing the whole. From these simple points she can strike out analogies and catch resemblances, which are true so far as the point from which she looks is concerned, but would be false, could she see through to the other side. This, however, she does not care to do—the point of contact is enough for, her; and even if there be a great gap between two things, she will spring from one to the other like an electric spark, and glitter the most brightly in her leaping. Fancy loves to follow long chains of circumstance from link to link; but the Imagination grasps a link in the middle that implies all the rest, and settles there.

'Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, [Imagination.

The tufted crowtoe and pale jessamine, [Nugatory.

The white pink and the pansy streaked with jet, [Fancy.

The glowing violet, [Imagination.

The musk rose and the well attired woodbine, [Fancy, vulgar.

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, [Imagination.

And every flower that sad embroidery wears. [Mixed.

MILTON.

'Oh, Proserpina, For the flowers now that frighted thou lett'st fall From Dis's wagon. Daffodils That come before the swallow dare, and take The winds of March with beauty. Violets, dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady Most incident to maids.'

Here the Imagination goes into the inmost soul of every flower, after having touched them all with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of Proserpine's; and, gilding them all with celestial gathering, never stops on their spots or their bodily shape; while Milton sticks in the stains upon them, and puts us off with that unhappy streak of jet in the very flower that without this bit of paper staining would have been the most precious to us of all.

'There is pansies—that's for thoughts.'

Can the tender insight of the Imagination be more fully manifested than in the grief of Constance?

'And, father cardinal, I have heard you say That we shall see and know our friends in heaven: If that be true, I shall see my boy again; For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child, To him that did but yesterday suspire, There was not such a gracious creature born. But now will canker sorrow eat my bud, And chase the native beauty from his cheek; And he will look as hollow as a ghost, As dim and meagre as an ague's fit; And so he'll die; and, rising so again, When I shall meet him in the court of heaven I shall not know him: therefore, never—never— Shall I behold my pretty Arthur more.

* * * * *

Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me; Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

* * * * *

O lord, my boy, my Arthur, my fair son! My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! My widow-comfort and my sorrow's cure.'

This is the impassioned but simple eloquence of Nature, and Nature's child: Shakspeare.

In these examples the reader will not fail to remark that the Imagination seems to gain much of its power from its love for and sympathy with the objects described. Not only are the objects with which it presents us truthfully rendered, but always lovingly treated.

With the Greeks, the Graces were also the Charities or Loves. It is the love for living things and the sympathy felt in them that induce the poet to give life and feeling to the plant, as Shelley to the 'Sensitive Plant;' as Shakspeare, when he speaks to us through the sweet voices of Ophelia and Perdita; as Wordsworth, in his poems to the Daisy, Daffodil, and Celandine; as Burns in his Mountain Daisy. As a proof of the power of the Imagination, through its Truth, and Love, to invest the lowest of God's creatures with interest, we offer the reader one of these simple songs of the heart.

TO A MOUSE.

On turning her up in her nest with the plough, November, 1785.

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hastie, Wi' bickering brattle!

I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion Has broken nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born companion An' fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve; What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! A daimen icher in a thrave 'S a sma' request; I'll get a blessin' wi' the lave An' never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin! Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'! An' naething, now, to big anew ane, O' foppage green! An' bleak December's winds ensuin', Baith snell and keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste, An' weary winter comin' fast, An' cozie here beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell, Till crash! the cruel coulter past Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble, Has cost thee mony a weary nibble! Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble, Nor house nor hald, To thole the winter's sleety dribble An' cranreuch cold!

But, mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promised joy.

Still thou art blest, compared with me! The present only toucheth thee: But och! I backward cast my e'e, On prospects drear; An' forward, though I canna see, I guess and fear!

Poor Burns! Seventy years and more have passed since that cold November morning on which he sang this simple and tender song, yet it is as fresh in its rustic pathos, bathed in the quickening dews of the poet's heart, as if it had sprung from the soul but an hour since: and fresh it will still be long after the fragile hand now tracing this tribute to the heart of love from which it flowed shall have been cold in an unknown grave!

Such poems are worth folios of the erudite and stilted pages which are now so rapidly pouring their scoria around us. Men seem ashamed now to be simply natural. Either they have ceased to love, or to believe in the dignity of loving. The great barrier to all real greatness in this present age of ours is the fear of ridicule, and the low and shallow love of jest and jeer, so that if there be in any noble work a flaw or failing, or unclipped vulnerable part where sarcasm may stick or stay, it is caught at, pointed at, buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung into, as a recent wound is by flies, and nothing is ever taken seriously or as it was meant, but always perverted and misunderstood. While this spirit lasts, there can be no hope of the achievement of high things, for men will not open the secrets of their hearts to us, if we intend to desecrate the holy, or to broil themselves upon a fire of thorns.

As the poet is full of love for all that God has made, because his imagination enables him to seize it by the heart, he would in this love fain gift the inanimate things of creation with life, that he might find in them that happiness which pertains to the living; hence the constant personification of all that is in his pages. He personifies, he individualizes, he gifts creation with life and passion, not willingly considering any creature as subordinate to any purpose quite out of itself, for then some of the pleasure he feels in its beauty is lost, for his sense of its happiness is in that case destroyed, as its emanation of inherent life is no longer pure. Thus the bending trunk, waving to and fro in the wind above the waterfall, is beautiful because it seems happy, though it is, indeed, perfectly useless to us. The same trunk, hewn down and thrown across the stream, has lost its beauty. It serves as a bridge—it has become useful, it lives no longer for itself, and its pleasant beauty is gone, or that which it still retains is purely typical, dependent on its lines and colors, not on its functions. Saw it into planks, and though now fitted to become permanently useful, its whole beauty is lost forever, or is to be regained only in part, when decay and ruin shall have withdrawn it again from use, and left it to receive from the hand of Nature the velvet moss and varied lichen, which may again suggest ideas of inherent happiness, and tint its mouldering sides with hues of life. For the Imagination, unperverted, is essentially loving, and abhors all utility based on the pain or destruction of any creature. It takes delight in such ministering of objects to each other as is consistent with the essence and energy of both, as in the clothing of the rock by the herbage, and the feeding of the herbage by the stream.

We have seen that the soul rejects exaggeration or falsehood in Art, and indeed all high Art, that which men will not suffer to perish, has no food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is forever looking under masks and burning up mists; no fairness of form, no majesty of seeming will satisfy it; the first condition of its existence is incapability of being deceived; and though it may dwell upon and substantiate the fictions of fancy, yet its peculiar operation is to trace to their farthest limits the true laws and likelihoods even of such fictitious creations.

As to its love, that is not only seen in its wish and struggle to quicken all with the warm throb of happy life, but is also clearly manifested in the lingering over its creations with clinging fondness, 'hating nothing that it maketh,' pruning, elaborating, and laboring to gift with beauty the works of its patient hands, finishing every line in love, that it too may feel its creations to be 'good.' For Love not only gives wings, but also vital heat and life, to Genius.

Thus we again arrive at the fact that the two Divine attributes of Truth and Love, in their finite form indeed, but still 'images,' are absolutely necessary for the creation of any true work of Art. No work can be great without their manifestation; unless they have brooded with their silvery wings over its progress to perfection; and in exact proportion to their manifestation will be its greatness. On these two attributes in God repose in holy trust the universes He hath made; and that which typifies or suggests His faithfulness and love to the soul created to enjoy Him, must be a source, not only of Beauty, but of Delight.

'For He made all things in wisdom; and Truth is perpetual and immortal.'

'For Thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things Thou hast made; for Thou didst not appoint or make anything, hating it.'

We make no attempt to give an enumeration of the attributes on which Beauty is based; we would rather induce the reader to examine his Maker's great Book of Symbols for himself. We hope we have turned his attention to the fact that every Letter in this sacred Language is full of meaning; enough to induce him to investigate the glorious mysteries of the 'Open Secret.'

Whatever may be the decisions of the men of the senses, or the men of the schools, let him fearlessly condemn any work in which he cannot find wrought into its very heart suggestions or manifestations of the Divine attributes, or an earnest effort on the part of its author, naive and unconscious as it may be, to imitate the Spirit of the Great Artist.

We have placed the Rosetta stone of Art, with its threefold inscriptions in Sculpture, Painting and Music, with their union or resume in Poetry, before him; we have given him the key to some of its wondrous hieroglyphics; let him study the remaining letters of this mystical alphabet for himself! These inscriptions are indeed trilingual, phonetic, and sacred, yet the simple and loving soul may decipher them without the genius of Champollion; their meaning is written within it. It will readily learn to connect the sign with the thing signified, and under the fleeting forms of rhythmed time and measured space, learn to detect the immutable principles which are to be its glory and joy for eternity!



CURRENCY AND THE NATIONAL FINANCES.

1. History of the Bank of England, its Times and Traditions, from 1694 to 1844. By JOHN FRANCIS. First American Edition. With Notes, Additions, and an Appendix, including Statistics of the Bank to the close of the year 1861. By J. SMITH HOMANS, Author of the 'Cyclopaedia of Commerce and Commercial Navigation.' New York. 8vo, pp.476.

2. Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury to the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, in relation to the Issue of an Additional Amount of United States Treasury Notes.

3. Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances of the United States for the Year ending June 30, 1862.

4. The Tariff Question considered in regard to the Policy of England and the Interests of the United States. With Statistical and Comparative Tables. By ERASTES B. BIGELOW. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 4to, pp. 103 and 242.

5. The Bankers' Magazine and Statistical Register. New York, monthly, 1861-2. Edited by J. SMITH HOMANS, jr.

The Bank of England was created during the urgent necessities of national finance. It was a concession of a valuable privilege to a few rich men, in consideration of their loaning the capital to the treasury. 'The estimates of Government expenditure in the year 1694 were enormous,' says Macaulay, in his fourth volume. King William asked to have the army increased to ninety-four thousand, at an annual expense of about two and a half millions sterling—a small sum compared with what it costs in the year 1862 to maintain an army of equal numbers.

At the period of the charter of the bank, the minds of men were on the rack to conceive new sources of revenue with which to meet the increased expenditures of the nation. The land tax was renewed at four shillings in the pound, and yielded a revenue of two millions. A poll tax was established. Stamp duties, which had prevailed in the time of Charles II had been allowed to expire, but were now revived, and have ever since been among the most prolific sources of income, yielding to the British Government in the year 1862 no less than L8,400,000 sterling. Hackney coaches were taxed, notwithstanding the outcries of the coachmen and the resistance of their wives, who assembled around Westminster Hall and mobbed the members. A new duty on salt was imposed, and finally resort was had to the lottery, whereby one million sterling was raised. All these resources were not sufficient for the growing wants of the Government, and the plan of the Bank of England was devised to furnish immediate relief to the finances. Montague brought the measure forward in Parliament, and 'he succeeded,' as Macaulay remarks, 'not only in supplying the wants of the state for twelve months, but in creating a great institution, which, after the lapse of more than a century and a half, continues to flourish, and which he lived to see the stronghold, through all vicissitudes, of the Whig party, and the bulwark, in dangerous times, of the Protestant succession.'

The birth of the bank and the birth of the English national debt were both in King William's time. In 1691, when England was at war with France, the national debt unfunded was L3,130,000, at an annual interest of L232,000. In 1697, at the Peace of Ryswick, this debt had swollen to L14,522,000. At the Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, it had reached L34,000,000. The war with Spain in 1718 brought it up to forty millions sterling. And here it might have rested, had the advice of Shakspeare been followed:

'Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.'

But England went to war with Spain 'on the right of search.' From 1691 to this time the debt had increased on an average about a million sterling per year. As early as 1745 the credit of the bank was so identified with that of the state, that during the invasion of the Pretender, whose forces were at Derby, only one hundred and twenty miles from London, the creditors of the bank flocked in crowds to its counter to obtain specie for its notes. The merchants intervened and signed an agreement to make the bank's notes receivable in all business transactions.

The war of the Austrian succession followed in 1742, and at the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, 'forever to be maintained,' the English were saddled with a debt of L75,000,000.

'Peace hath her victories, No less renowned than war.'

It was early in the last century that the abuse of paper money gave a lasting and unfavorable impression against such issues. The scheme of John Law and the South Sea Bubble about the same time broke and scattered their fragments over both England and France. It was in the latter scheme or folly that Pope lost a large portion of his earnings, from which we may infer that his temper was not improved. He wrote, in his Third Epistle, dedicated to Lord Bathurst:

'Statesman and patriot ply alike the stocks; Peeress and butler share alike the box; And judges job, and bishops bite the town, And mighty dukes pack cards for half a crown.'

In the same 'Moral Essay' he alludes to paper money in the following lines:

'Blest paper credit! last and best supply! That lends corruption lighter wings to fly! Gold imp'd by thee, can compass hardest things, Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings; A single leaf shall waft an army o'er, Or ship off senates to a distant shore; A leaf, like Sibyl's, scatter to and fro Our fates and fortunes, as the winds shall blow: Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen, And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.'

These are among the earliest tirades against paper money; which, like many other good things, is condemned because its power has been abused and prostituted.

England's enormous debt, which should have warned the Georges against further war, was not contracted without severe sacrifices. The legal rate of interest at the opening of the funding system was six per cent. In 1714 it was reduced to five per cent. Loans during the early wars of the eighteenth century were raised on annuities for lives on very high terms, fourteen per cent. being granted for single lives, twelve per cent. for two lives, and ten per cent. for three lives. But so far was England from being awake to the enormous debt she was creating by her expensive wars, that the seventy-five millions existing in 1748 became L132,000,000 at the close of the Seven Years' War in 1763. This volume was enlarged at the end of the American Revolution to L231,000,000. During all this time the bank was the lever with which these enormous sums were raised; but the end was not yet.

The French war with Napoleon became more exhaustive, and within twenty years from the peace with America to the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, the debt went up from L231,000,000 to L537,000,000 sterling. From this period to 1815 the debt accumulated annually, until it reached its maximum, or eight hundred and sixty-one millions sterling.

During these severe changes, reverses, extravagance, and extraordinary governmental expenditure, the bank was considered the prop of national finance. The French Revolution and its consequent war with England led to many heavy outlays by the British Government. In 1795 the bank desired the chancellor of the exchequer to make his arrangements for the year without 'any further assistance' from the bank. This was again urged in 1796, and the bank appealed again to Mr. Pitt.

'The only reply from Mr. Pitt was a request for a further accommodation, on the credit of the consolidated fund, which the court refused to sanction, until they had received satisfaction on the topic of the treasury bills, and requested Mr. Pitt to enter into a full explanation on this subject, which was not even touched upon in his letter. This resolution being communicated, Mr. Pitt wrote to the governor and deputy-governor on the 12th August, that 'they might depend upon measures being immediately taken for the payment of one million, and a further payment, to the amount of one million, being made in September, October, and November, in such proportions as might be found convenient. But, as fresh bills might arrive, he was under the necessity of requesting a latitude to an amount not exceeding one million.' About the same period the court 'desired the governor and deputy-governor would express their earnest desire that some other means might be adopted for the future payment of bills of exchange drawn on the treasury.' (Vide 'History Bank of England,' pp. 114, 115.)

The circumstances of the nation and of the bank were known to the capitalists and to the people. Hence various causes of uneasiness and distress. The bank loaned the public treasury seven and a half millions in the years 1794, 1795, 1796, and the more they loaned to the exchequer, the less they could loan to the people. Thus followed a diminution of gold in the bank, and hoarding by the people. Gold was exported more freely to the Continent, and reduced accommodation was given to the merchants. Finally, on the 26th February, 1797, the king's council passed an order for the suspension of cash payments.

The bank was on the eve of suspension in the year 1847. On the 25th of October the cabinet authorized a violation of the charter, thereby acknowledging the inability of the bank to maintain specie payments. This order of Lord John Russell inspired fresh confidence, and the bank immediately recovered strength, and reduced the rate of interest from 8 per cent. in October to 7 per cent. in November, to 6 and 5 per cent. in December, to 4 per cent. in January, and to 3-1/2 in June following. The distress and revulsion of 1847 were consequent upon the over-trading and railway mania of 1844, 1845, and 1846, and the failure of crops in Ireland and England in 1847.

The distress of England in 1847 was scarcely over when France was more severely affected than at any period since the Continental War. Louis Philippe abdicated in February, 1848, when consols closed at 88-7/8. By the close of the week they fell to 83, upon the formation of a provisional government. The political dissensions and commercial revulsion led to a large withdrawal of gold from the Bank of France, and finally the Government authorized, in March, the suspension of the bank, which was followed by the suspension of the Bank of Belgium and by the Societe Generale.

Again, in 1857, the Bank of England was on the verge of suspension. Lord Palmerston and the then cabinet issued an order, November 12, authorizing the bank, if they thought it advisable, again to violate the charter; but it was found at the last moment unnecessary.

November was the critical period of the year 1857. The Times of November 12, 1857, contained these announcements:

1. Bank charter suspended.

2. Interest in London, 10 per cent.

3. " in Hamburg, 10 per cent.

4. " in Paris, 8-1/2 per cent.

5. " in New York, 25 per cent.

6. Suspension of cash payments generally by all banks in the United States.

7. Two banks stopped in Glasgow, and one in Liverpool, and a great bill panic in London.

8. Commercial credit and transactions almost suspended in the country.

9. Bullion in the bank, L7,170,000.

10. Reserve notes in the bank, L975,000.

11. Bank liabilities, L40,875,000.

'One gentleman, during the heat of the excitement at Glasgow, went into the Union Bank and presented a check for L500. The teller asked him if he wished gold. 'Gold!' replied he, 'no; give me notes, and let the fools who are frightened get the gold,' Another gentleman rushed into the same bank in a great state of excitement, with a check for L1,400. On being asked if he wished gold he replied, 'Yes.' 'Well,' said the teller, 'there is L1,000 in that bag and L400 in this one.' The gentleman was so flurried by the readiness with which the demand was granted that he lifted up the bag with the L400 only, and walked off, leaving the L1,000 on the counter. The teller, on discovering the bag, laid it aside for the time. Late in the day the gentleman returned to the bank in great distress, stating he had lost the bag with the L1,000, and could not tell whether he dropped it in the crowd or left it behind him on leaving the bank. 'Oh, you left it on the counter,' said the teller, quietly, 'and if you call to-morrow you will get your L1,000.' (Vide 'History Bank of England,' p. 429.)

The facts and statistics from the year 1844 to 1860 relating to the bank are superadded to the English work by the American editor. Of the important phases of this period the editor gives a slight sketch in the following paragraphs. The prominent financial movements in England, France, and the United States are given in the subsequent pages of the volume.

'The sixteen years which followed the last charter of the bank have been pregnant with important events of a financial character; the most important, perhaps, during the whole history of the institution. The bank has twice, during this short period, been on the brink of suspension, and was relieved only by the interference of Government. The second instance occurred after new gold, to the extent of one hundred millions sterling, or more, had been poured into Western Europe from California and Australia. The Bank of France had, during the same period, suspended specie payment. Two financial revulsions have occurred in the United States, when, with few exceptions, the banks of the whole country suspended specie payments. The production of gold and silver throughout the world, which, up to 1844, was annually about ten or twelve millions sterling, had recently advanced from twenty-five to thirty millions sterling per annum, thus stimulating industry and production largely throughout Europe and America. Sir Robert Peel, the author of the new charter of the bank, has left the world's stage, after witnessing the failure of the charter to fully accomplish the end promised; Europe and America, Asia and Europe, have been knit together by a wire cord, and capital is now subscribed to

'Put a girdle round about the earth,'

whereby London may speak to San Francisco (the prospective commercial centre of the world) in less than 'forty minutes.' During the same short space of sixteen years the suspended States of this Union (five at least) have resumed payment of their obligations; two violent wars, with sundry revolutions, have occurred in Europe; the ancient city of the Cortez has been conquered by the 'hordes of the North,' and magnanimously given up by the captors to the possession of their weaker enemy, and millions were paid to the latter for portions of their territory; the northwest passage of the American continent has been discovered; steam has accomplished wonders between Europe and America, and between Europe and their distant colonies of Asia, Africa, and Australia; Ireland has been on the verge of starvation,[6] when 600,000 of her people died from hunger alone and its effects, and her population was reduced two millions by emigration and privation; England's minister has been expelled from the capital of the United States; speculation has been rife in Europe and America, and its inevitable effects, revulsion and bankruptcy, have followed in its train; the railway and the telegraph have brought remote regions together; China, with her four hundred millions of people, has been conquered by the united forces of the English and the French.

'The Bank of England, instead of pursuing one even course, with a view to permanent commercial interests, has unfortunately, and, we fear, from selfish and individual views, fostered speculation by reducing her rate of discount to 2 per cent., and soon after, but too late, discovered the error, and forced her borrowers to pay from 6 to 10 per cent.

'We propose to give the leading events of each year, from 1844 to 1861, referring the reader to authorities where more copious information can be gained by those who wish to study the invariable connection between commerce and money.

'The bank shares in the depressed period of 1847-8 fell to 180, after having reached, in the flattering times of 1844-'5, 215 per share, or 115 per cent. advance. Consols, at the same depressed period, fell to 78-3/4, when starvation stared Ireland in its face, and the bank simultaneously sought protection from the Cabinet.'

Attention has been recently directed in this country to the premium on gold, or to the alleged fall in the value of bank paper and Government notes. Although the premium on gold as an article of merchandise has reached a high rate during the present year, it will be seen, on reference to the reliable tables in the History of the Bank of England, that a great difference occurred during the suspension of the bank in 1797 to 1819. Gold at one time (1812) reached L5 8s., a difference of 30 per cent. The annexed table shows the changes from 1809 to 1821.

YEARS Price of Difference Nominal Amount in Gold. from Mint Taxes. Gold prices. Currency. L s. d. per cent. L L 1809, 4 9 10 16-1/3 71,887,000 60,145,000 1810, 4 5 0 9-1/10 74,815,000 68,106,000 1811, 4 17 1 24-1/2 73,621,000 55,583,000 1812, 5 1 4 30 73,707,000 51,595,000 Sept. to Dec. 1812, 5 8 0 38-1/2 ... ... 1813, 5 6 2 36-1/10 81,745,000 52,236,000 Nov. 1812, to Mch. 1813 5 10 0 41 ... ... 1814, 5 1 8 30-1/3 83,726,000 58,333,000 1815, 4 12 9 18-8/9 88,394,000 66,698,000 1816, 4 0 0 2-1/2 78,909,000 72,062,000 Oct. to Dec. 1816 3 18 6 under 1 ... ... 1817, 4 0 0 2-1/2 58,757,000 57,259,000 1818, 4 1 5 5 59,391,000 56,025,000 1819, 4th Feb. 4 3 0 6-1/3 58,288,000 54,597,000 1820, 3 17 10-1/2 par. 59,812,000 59,812,000 1821, 3 17 10-1/2 par. 61,000,000 61,000,000

The increased volume of Government and bank paper afloat in the United States since the 1st January, 1862, is conceded to be only temporary. The Government is engaged in crushing the greatest rebellion known to history; in doing this, the national expenditures are six or seven fold what they ever were before, in a time of peace. During the four years 1813 to 1816, when war raged with England, the whole expenses of the Government were $108,537,000. During the Mexican war, when the disbursements of the treasury were much heavier, the average annual expenses of the Government were about 35 to 48 millions. It will be well to recur to these tabular details for future history. They are presented as follows, for the whole period of the General Government.

EXPENDITURES of the United States, exclusive of Payments on account of the Public Debt.

Years 1789-1792, Washington, $3,797,000 " 1793-1796, " 12,083,000 " 1797-1800, John Adams, 21,338,000 " 1800-1804, Jefferson, 17,174,000 " 1805-1808, " 23,927,000 " 1809-1812, Madison, 36,147,000 " 1813-1816, " 108,537,000 " 1817-1821, Monroe, 58,698,000 " 1821-1824, " 45,665,000 " 1825-1828, John Quincy Adams, 49,313,000 " 1829-1832, Jackson, 56,249,000 " 1833-1836, " 87,130,000 " 1837-1840, Van Buren, 112,188,000 " 1841-1844, Harrison and Tyler, 81,216,000 " 1846-1848, Polk, 146,924,000 " 1849-1852, Taylor and Fillmore, 194,647,000 " 1853-1856, Pierce, 211,099,000 " 1857-1860, Buchanan, 262,974,000

During the past fiscal year, 1862-3 and the year 1863-4, the Government expenditures are estimated at ten hundred millions of dollars. These heavy disbursements cannot be carried on merely by the ordinary bank paper and the gold and silver of the country. Instead of sixty-five millions of dollars, the average annual expenditures of the Government during the last administration, these now involve the sum of five hundred millions annually. Hence the obvious obligation on the part of the Government of putting in circulation the most reliable currency, and of avoiding those of local banks, which do not possess the confidence of the people at a distance. This can be done only by maintaining a currency of Government paper which every holder will have full confidence in, and in which no loss can be sustained.

There is here no conflict or competition between the Government and the State banks. The latter have the benefit of their legitimate circulation in their own respective localities; while the national treasury furnishes to the troops and to the creditors of the nation a circulation of treasury notes which must possess confidence as long as the Government lasts.

The policy of the English Government in this respect was a wise one. At the adoption of the last charter of the bank (1844) the Government allowed the country banks to maintain from that time forward the circulation then outstanding, which was not to be increased; and as fast as the banks failed or were wound up voluntarily, their circulation was retired and the vacuum became filled by the notes of the Bank of England. The latter was forbidden by its new charter to exceed certain prescribed limits in its issues. They could issue to the amount of their capital, L14,000,000, and beyond that to the extent of gold in the vaults. Thus the bank circulation of England, Scotland, and Ireland is less now than in 1844, when the new principle was established, viz.:

BANK CIRCULATION.

Bank of England. Country Banks. Ireland. Scotland. TOTAL.

1844, L22,015,000 L7,797,000 L7,716,000 L3,804,000 L41,325,000 1862, 20,190,000 5,680,000 5,519,000 4,053,000 35,442,000

Had this principle been adopted in the United States at the same period, the excesses and extravagance of 1856-'7 might have been obviated, as well as the revulsion of the latter year, and the distress which followed.

Let us recur to the eventful history of the bank. Although a private institution, owned and controlled by private capital, its large profits accruing for the benefit of its own shareholders, yet it became so closely interwoven with the commerce, manufactures, trade, and the public finances of the nation, that it may be considered as in reality a national institution. At its inception its whole capital was swallowed by the treasury. This was a part of the contract of charter. Its subsequent accumulations of capital, from L1,200,000, have likewise been absorbed by the Government, until now the bank reports the Government debt to them to be L11,015,100, and the Government securities held, to be L11,064,000. Without the aid of the bank, the national treasury could not, probably, have made the enormous disbursements which were actually made between the commencement of the American Revolution in 1776, and the termination of the continental war of 1815. The bank here furnished, almost alone, 'the sinews of war.'

During this eventful period there were large numbers of provincial banks of issue created in England and Ireland. These were managed mainly with a view to private profit, while the public interests have suffered severely from the frequent expansions and contractions of the volume of the currency through such private management, and from the numerous failures of these concerns. The evils of this system were for many years the subject of discussion in Parliament and among prominent journals. In 1826 the Edinburgh Review expressed the opinion that

'So long, therefore, as any individual, or association of individuals, may issue notes of a low value, to be used in the common transactions of life, without lodging any security for their ultimate payment, so long is it certain that those panics which must necessarily occur every now and then, and against which no effectual precaution can be devised, must occasion the destruction of a greater or smaller number of banking establishments, and by consequence a ruinous fluctuation in the supply and value of money.' (Edinburgh Review, February, 1826.)

This was a period of great speculation in England. In the year 1823 no less than 532 companies were chartered, with a nominal capital of 441 millions sterling. These speculations were fostered by the increasing volume of bank paper. The evil increased, and was allowed to exist until the year 1844, when a stop was put to the further increase of the volume of bank circulation, and to the further incorporation of joint stock banks.

We learn one lesson here, which may have a good effect upon us if we will bear it in mind in our future legislation, and take warning from the experiences of our contemporaries. We allude to the obvious necessity in a country like ours, and, indeed, in any country, of maintaining a national moneyed institution as a check upon the vacillation, expansions, and contractions which mark the policy of small banks of issue. This national institution, while free from individual profit, and without power to grant individual favors, should create and perform the functions of a national currency, and execute all the details required by or for the national treasury. Its chief utility would be as a check upon the excess to which all joint stock banks are liable—a sort of controlling and conservative power to prevent that mischief which our past experience shows has been the result of paper money when issued merely for private gain.

The advantage, the convenience, we may say the necessity, of a national circulation of paper money, are fully demonstrated by our own past history, and by the history of European nations. This circulation should be dictated by the wants of the National Government, and convertible, at the will of the holder, into specie. With these obvious restraints it would accomplish its ends and aims.

The Bank of England, in its early stages, was endangered by various and extraordinary circumstances. Within three years of its establishment it was compelled to suspend payment to its depositors in cash, and issued certificates therefor payable ten per cent. every fortnight. In 1709 the Sacheverell riots occurred in London, and fears were felt that the bank would be sacked; but this violence was obviated by well-trained troops. In 1718 John Law's bank was established in France, and for two years kept the people in a ferment. This was followed by the South Sea scheme in England, in 1720, 'a year (the historian Anderson says) remarkable beyond any other which can be pitched upon for extraordinary and romantic projects.' The bank, of course, suffered by these speculative measures, and was repeatedly exposed to a run upon its specie resources.

In 1722 the rest (or reserve fund) was established by the bank, as a measure to cover extraordinary losses in the future, and to inspire more confidence among the public as to the ability of the bank to meet reverses. This fund, in July, 1862, had accumulated to L3,132,500 sterling, or about twenty-one and a half per cent. of the capital.

The first forged note of the Bank of England was presented in the year 1758, or sixty-four years after the bank was established. In 1780 these forgeries became more numerous, and were so well executed as to deceive the officers of the bank.

Let us now recur to some of the incidents connected with the bank in early ages. Of these, the author, Mr. Francis, furnishes numerous instances.

Among other frauds upon the bank was that of clipping the guineas, by one of the clerks employed in the bullion office. This occurred in 1767.

The forgery of its notes having been made a capital offence, the waste of life in consequence was severe. During the eight years, 1795 to 1803, there were one hundred and forty executions for this crime; and two hundred and nine between 1795 and 1809; and from 1797 to 1811 the executions were 469. 'The visible connection between the issue of small notes and the effusion of blood, is one of the most frightful parts of this case.'

In 1803 a fraud on the bank to the extent of L320,000 was perpetrated by Mr. Robert Astlett, a cashier of the bank. This was in the re-issue of exchequer bills that had been previously redeemed, but which were not cancelled. This fraud amounted to about 2-1/2 per cent. of the capital, and although it did not prevent a dividend, it prevented the distribution of a bonus which would otherwise have been paid to the shareholders.

In the year 1822 another fraud on the bank came to light. This was perpetrated by a bookkeeper, and amounted to L10,000. In 1824 the fraud of Mr. Fauntleroy on the bank was discovered, amounting to L360,000. This was done by forged powers of attorney for the transfer of Government consols.

The bank was brought near suspension again in 1825 by the imprudent expansion of its notes. After the resumption of specie payments in 1820-'21, the true policy of the bank would have been to maintain an even tenor of its way; instead of which it increased its circulation twenty-five per cent. in the year 1825 (or from L18,292,000 to L25,709,000), while the issues of the country banks were equally enlarged, giving encouragement to violent speculation among the people. The specie reserve of the Bank of England fell from L14,200,000 in January 1824 to L1,024,000 in December, 1825. This difficulty of the bank was relieved by the issue of a few thousand bills of L1 and L2.

Speculation had been rife in 1824; no less than 624 companies were started with a nominal capital of L372,000,000, including mining, gas, insurance, railroad, steam, building, trading, provision, and other companies. At the same time foreign loans were contracted in England to the extent of L32,000,000, of which over three fourths were advanced in cash.

The country banks of England had increased their circulation from L9,920,000 in 1823 to L14,980,000 in 1825, or over fifty per cent., thus stimulating prices, and promoting speculation widely throughout the country.

Immediately following the revulsion at the close of the year 1825, Mr. Huskisson's free trade policy was advocated in the House of Commons by a vote of 223 to 40. In the same year lotteries were suppressed in England. In 1828 branches of the Bank of England were established—a measure, of course, unpopular among the provincial joint stock banks.

In the year 1832-'3 were brought forward three important measures in Parliament. One was the abolishment of the death penalty for forgery; another was the modification of the usury laws; the third was the re-charter of the bank.

The last criminal executed for forgery was a man by the name of Maynard, in December, 1829. Public sentiment had long been opposed to the infliction of this punishment for the offence of forgery, and transportation was now substituted in the prominent cases. England, at the same time, opened the way for a gradual abolishment of the usury laws. At first the relief was extended to short commercial paper, afterward to all paper having not over twelve months to run, 1837; and finally, in 1854, the usury laws were removed from all negotiable paper, as well as from bonds and mortgages.

By the new charter of 1833, Bank of England notes were, for the first time, made a legal tender, except at the bank itself. Joint stock banks were authorized in the metropolis, but were prohibited from issuing notes.

The English work of Mr. Francis is anecdotical in its character. The American edition conveys to the reader, for the first time, a resume of the leading movements in Parliament on the subject of the bank, and its close connection with the Government finances. The part which Mr. Pitt, Mr. Canning, Sir Robert Peel, and other distinguished statesmen took in the relations between the bank and the exchequer, is in the supplementary portion of the new edition shown, as well as the views of Lord Althorpe, Lord Ashburton, Lord Geo. Bentinck, Mr. Thomas Baring, Lord Brougham, Mr. Gilbart, Sir James Graham, Lord King, Earl of Liverpool, Jones Loyd, Lord Lyndhurst, Mr. Rothschild, and others who exercised a large influence over the monetary interests of their day.

In the consideration of the banking and currency questions of the day and of the last and present century, it is desirable to have thus brought together in a single work, a continuous history of the institution which has had so large an influence upon the public interests of Europe, and a review of the important circumstances which marked the progress of the bank in its successful efforts to sustain England against foreign enemies and domestic revulsions, an index to the speculative movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when commerce, trade, and the vast monetary interests of Europe and America have been unnecessarily and cruelly involved.

The letter addressed by Secretary Chase, of the Treasury Department, to the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, and to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, under date June 7th, 1862, suggested the power by Congress to the treasury to issue $150,000,000 in treasury notes, in addition to this sum, authorized by the act of February 25th, 1862; also, authority to receive fifty millions of dollars on deposit, in addition to fifty millions previously authorized by Congress. These suggestions were favorably considered in both Houses, and the recommendations of the Secretary were adopted fully, leading to the adoption of a national system of finance, which will eventually reestablish and preserve national credit. Fears have been expressed in some quarters that this increased volume of paper money would be a public evil, and serve to disturb the value of property and the price of labor. This might be reasonably anticipated if the country were at peace, and the Government expenditures were upon a peace footing.

But a state of things exists now in this country hitherto unknown. The contracts of the Government involve the expenditure of larger sums than were ever paid before in the same space of time by this or any other Government. In the disbursements of these large sums it is an obvious duty of Congress to provide a national circulation of uniform value throughout the whole country—a circulation of a perfectly reliable character, not subject in the least to the ordinary vicissitudes of trade or to the revulsions which have frequently marked our history. These revulsions have been witnessed, and their results seen by the leading public men of the century. Mr. Madison saw at an early day the importance of creating and sustaining a government circulation. His language was: 'It is essential to every modification of the finances that the benefits of an uniform national currency should be restored to the community.'

Mr. Calhoun, in 1816, said: 'By a sort of undercurrent, the power of Congress to regulate the money of the country has caved in, and upon its ruin have sprung up those institutions which now exercise the right of making money in and for the United States.'

'It is the duty of government,' says a well known writer, 'to interfere to regulate every business or pursuit that might otherwise become publicly injurious. On this principle it interferes to prevent the circulation of spurious coin.' Counterfeit coin is more readily detected than a fictitious paper currency, yet no sane man would advocate the repeal of the laws which prohibit it. Why, then, permit the unlimited manufacture of paper money of an unreliable character?

In the consideration of this subject we should divest ourselves of all selfish views of private profit and advantage. We should look only to the public good, to stability in trade and commerce, and to the general interests of the people at large as distinguished from those of a few individuals. It is clearly then the province of government to establish and to regulate the paper money of the nation, so that it shall possess the following attributes:

I. To be uniform in value throughout all portions of the country.

II. To be perfectly reliable at all times as a medium for the payment of debts.

III. To be issued in limited amounts, and under the control of the Government only.

IV. To be convertible, at the pleasure of the holder, into gold or silver.

It must be conceded that these requisites do not belong, and never can belong, to paper issued by joint stock banks, which are governed with a view to the largest profit, and which are but little known beyond their own immediate localities.

Recent history assures us that abuses have been practised in reference to the bank circulation of the country, which have led to violent revulsions and severe loss. England experienced the same results between the years 1790 and 1840, and to such an extent that in the year 1844 her statesmen devised a system whereby no further expansion of paper money should occur. The amount then existing was assumed to be a minimum of the amount required for commercial transactions, and it was ordered that all bank issues beyond that sum shall be represented by a deposit of gold.

If the Bank of England had been governed by considerations of public welfare, and not by those of private interest, it would not have reduced the rate of interest to 2-1/2 per cent. in 1844-'5, thus producing violent speculation, and leading to the revulsion of 1849. Nor would the bank have established low rates of interest only in the year 1857, thus leading this powerful institution to the verge of bankruptcy, and to the clemency of the British Cabinet in November of that year.

England has checked the paper circulation of the country, but has not withdrawn from the bank the power to promote speculation by extravagant loans at a low rate of discount.

The Governments of France and England have both assumed control of the paper currency of their respective countries. This is sound policy, and it is one of the prerogatives that must be exercised, in its full force, by the Government of the United States and by all other governments, if stability, permanency, consistency are to be observed or maintained for the people. This is obviously necessary in a time of peace and prosperity; it is perhaps more so in a time of rebellion or war, like the present. Circumstances may arise where it will be the course of wisdom and safety to suspend specie payment; and, in some extreme exigencies, to forbid the export of specie.

This position was well explained by Mr. J.W. Gilbart, manager of the London and Westminster Bank, who, in his testimony before Sir Robert Peel, in 1843, said, 'If I were prime minister, I would immediately, on the commencement of war, issue an order in council for the bank to stop payment. I stated also that I spoke as a politician, not as a banker. * * * I came to the conclusion that, under the circumstances of the war of 1797, a suspension of cash payments was not a matter of choice, but of necessity.' (Vide 'History of the Bank of England,' New York edition, p. 130.)

We come now to consider what is necessary, in order to restore the currency of the United States to a specie footing. This restoration is demanded alike by motives of justice and sound policy. No contracts can be well entered into, unless the currency of the country is upon a substantial and permanent footing of redemption. It is a matter which concerns every individual in the community; it is especially so to the General Government in view of its extraordinary expenditures: and no commercial prosperity can be maintained without it.

A restoration of public and private credit can be accomplished only by an observance of those sound principles of finance that have been announced by the wise men of our own and other countries. Mr. Alexander Hamilton, Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, each in his turn advocated a national institution, by which the currency of the country could be placed upon a reliable and permanent footing. Such an institution should control the currency and receive surplus capital on deposit; but need not interfere with the legitimate operations of the State banks as borrowers and lenders of money, nor encourage in the slightest degree, through loans, any speculative movements among the people.

In the next place our people must resort to and maintain more economy in their individual expenditure, and thus preserve a balance of foreign trade in our own favor. It is shown that, during the fiscal year ending 30 June, 1860, there were imported into the United States goods, wholly manufactured, of the value of ... $166,073,000, partially manufactured, 62,720,000.

We can dispense with two thirds of such articles during our present national reverses, and rely upon our own domestic labor for similar products, viz.:

Manufactures of Wool, $37,937,000 " of Silk, 32,948,000 " of Cotton, 32,558,000 " of Flax, 10,736,000 Laces and Embroideries, 4,017,000 Gunny Cloths, Mattings, 2,386,000 Clothing, 2,101,000 Iron, and Manufactures of Iron and Steel, 18,694,000 China and Earthenware, 4,387,000 Clocks, Chronometers, Watches, 2,890,000 Boots, Shoes, and Gloves, 2,230,000 Miscellaneous, 15,189,000 —————- 166,073,000

besides other articles exceeding one hundred millions in value.

Rather than send abroad thirty or forty millions in gold annually, as we have done of late years, let us dispense with foreign woollen goods, silk and cotton goods, laces, &c., and encourage our own mills, at least until the war and its debt are over.

Mr. Madison said much in a few words, when he said:

'The theory of 'let us alone' supposes that all nations concur in a perfect freedom of commercial intercourse. Were this the case, they would, in a commercial view, be but one nation, as much as the several districts composing a particular nation; and the theory would be as applicable to the former as the latter. But this golden age of free trade has not yet arrived, nor is there a single nation that has set the example. No nation can, indeed, safely do so, until a reciprocity, at least, be insured to it. * * A nation, leaving its foreign trade, in all cases, to regulate itself, might soon find it regulated by other nations into subserviency to a foreign interest.'

There is much good sense, too, in the views promulgated by another president, who said, in relation to our independence of other nations:

'The tariff bill before us, embraces the design of fostering, protecting, and preserving within ourselves the means of national defence and independence, particularly in a state of war. * * *The experience of the late war (1812) taught us a lesson, and one never to be forgotten. If our liberty and republican form of government, procured for us by our Revolutionary fathers, are worth the blood and treasure at which they were obtained, it surely is our duty to protect and defend them. * * * What is the real situation of the agriculturist? Where has the American farmer a market for his surplus product? Except for cotton, he has neither a foreign nor home market. Does not this clearly prove, when there is no market either at home or abroad, that there is too much labor employed in agriculture, and that the channels of labor should be multiplied? Common sense points out the remedy. Draw from agriculture the superabundant labor; employ it in mechanism and manufactures; thereby creating a home-market for your bread-stuffs, and distributing labor to the most profitable account and benefits to the country. Take from agriculture in the United States six hundred thousand men, women and children, and you will at once give a home-market for more bread-stuffs than all Europe now furnishes us. In short, sir, we have been too long subject to the policy of British merchants. It is time that we should become a little more Americanized; and, instead of feeding the paupers and laborers of England, feed our own; or else, in a short time, by continuing our present policy, we shall be rendered paupers ourselves.'

Mr. Bigelow, in his late and highly valuable work on the tariff, says truly (p. 103):

'Can any one question that our home production far outweighs in importance all other material interests of the nation? * * * It is the nation of great internal resources, of vigorous productive power and self-dependent strength, which is always best prepared and most able, not only to defend itself, but to lend others a helping hand.'

If our people would maintain their own national integrity, their own individual independence, and their true status in the great family of nations of the earth, they will [at least until the present rebellion is crushed, and until the public debt thereby created shall be extinguished] pursue a strict course of public and private economy. Let us encourage and support our own manufactures, and thereby contribute to the subsistence and wealth of our own laborers instead of contributing millions annually to the pauper labor of European nations; especially of those nations that have failed to give us countenance in the present struggle and that have, on the contrary, given both direct and indirect aid to the rebels of the South.

The United States have within themselves, in great abundance, contributed by a bountiful Providence, the leading products of the earth. In metals and in agricultural products, we exceed any and all other countries of the earth. If we encourage the labor of our own people in the development of the great resources of the country, we shall not only preserve our own commercial independence, but we shall soon be, as we ought to be in view of such advantages, the creditor nation of the world, and compel other countries to resort to us for the raw materials for their own manufacturing districts.

With the aid of the vast iron and coal mines of our own country, we can construct and keep in force an adequate navy for peace or for war. Our skilled industry can produce firearms equal to any in the world. The vast agricultural resources of the West yield abundance for ourselves and a large surplus for other countries. The breadstuffs of the West and Northwest; the tobacco of the Middle States, and the cotton of the South are in demand, throughout nearly all Europe. Let us then be independent ourselves of foreign manufacturers, and endeavor to place the rest of the world under obligations to our own country for the necessaries of life. This will do more to preserve peace than all the arguments of cabinets or the combined navies and armies of the world.

Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell said,[7] in parliament, in 1842, five years before the famine in Ireland: 'We are not, we cannot be, independent of foreign nations, any more than they can of us: * * * two millions of our people have been dependent on foreign countries for their daily food. At least five millions of our people are dependent on the supplies of cotton from America, of foreign wool or foreign silk. * * * The true independence of a great commercial nation is to be found, not in raising all the produce it requires within its own bound, but in attaining such a preeminence in commerce that the time can never arise when other nations will not be compelled, for their own sales, to minister to its wants.'

Now this principle, enunciated twenty years ago by men, who now hold the reins of the English Government, is especially one for us to bear in mind. While England, from her limited surface, can never be independent of other countries for the supply of food, we may say, and we can demonstrate, that the United States can reach that preeminence to which the great English statesman alluded—a preeminence which he would gladly attain for his own countrymen.

To the General Government was confided by the framers of the Constitution the power to 'coin money, and regulate the value thereof;' and the States were forbidden to 'emit bills of credit;' from which we may infer that it was intended to place the control of the currency in the hands of the General Government. It will be generally conceded that it would be wiser to have one central point of issue than several hundred as at present. There should be but one form for, and one source of, the currency. It should emanate from a source where the power cannot be abused, and where the interests of the people at large, and not of individuals, will be consulted.

The people have thus an interest at stake. It is for their benefit that a national circulation, of a perfectly reliable character, should be established. The remark made by Sir Robert Peel, in parliament, in May, 1844, at the time of the recharter of the bank, applies with equal force to the national currency of this or any other country.

'There is no contract, public or private, national or individual, which is unaffected by it. The enterprises of trade—the arrangements made in all the domestic relations of society—the wages of labor—pecuniary transactions of the highest amount and the lowest—the payment of the national debt—the provision for the national expenditure—the command which the coin of the lowest denomination has over the necessaries of life—are all affected by the decision to which we may come.'

Sir Robert Peel wisely comprehended the powers and attributes of a national currency, and we may wisely adopt his idea that such a national currency, controlled by the national legislature, for the use and benefit of the people, is the only one that can be safely adopted.

* * * * *

The national banking system established by Congress, in the year 1863, at the suggestion of Secretary Chase, of the Treasury Department, is the initiatory step toward a highly desirable reform in the paper currency of the country. Already over seventy national banks have been organized, under the act of Congress, with a combined capital of ten millions of dollars, whose circulation will have not only a uniform appearance, but a uniform value throughout the whole country. Numerous others are in process of organization. To the community at large the new system is desirable, because it secures to the people a currency of uniform value and perfect reliability. The notes of these institutions will be at par in every State in the Union, and holders may rely upon the certainty of redemption upon demand: whether the institution be solvent or not—in existence or not—the Government holds adequate security for instant redemption of all notes issued under the law.

This feature of the paper currency of the country is one that has long been needed. For the want of it the States have been for many years crowded with a currency of unequal market value, and of doubtful security. Added to this is a marked feature of the new system which did not pertain to the Bank of the United States in its best days. Its workings are free from individual favoritism. No loans are granted to political or personal friends, at the risk of the Government, and all temptation to needless and hurtful expansion is thus destroyed. There is no mammoth institution, under the control of one or a few individuals, liable at times to be prostituted to political and personal ends of an objectionable character. While the banks under the new system are spread over a large space, they perform what is needed of the best managed institutions; and although perfectly independent of each other in their liabilities, expenses, losses, and in their action generally, yet together they form a practical unit, and will be serviceable in counteracting that tendency to inflation and speculation which has marked many years in the commercial history of this country.

We consider the Bank Act of 1863 as one of the most important features of the Thirty-seventh Congress, and of this Administration. It will create a link long wanted between the States and Territories, and do much to strengthen the Union and maintain commercial prosperity. The country will hereafter honor Secretary Chase for the conception and success of this scheme, even if there were no other distinguished traits in his administration of the Treasury and the Government finances.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: 'The scenes exhibited far exceeded in horror anything yet recorded in European history.' (Alison.) America, in her own fulness, sent succor to famished Ireland, in 1847, and when her own day of travail came near, in 1861, England volunteered no helping hand to her kindred.]

[Footnote 7: See 'History of the Bank of England,' p. 851.]



OCTOBER AFTERNOON IN THE HIGHLANDS.

Slowly toward the western mountains Sinks the gold October sun; Longer grow the deepening shadows, And the day is nearly done.

Rosy gleams the quiet River 'Neath the crimson-tinted sky; White-winged vessels, wind-forsaken, On the waveless waters lie.

Glow the autumn-tinted valleys, On the hills soft shadows rest, Growing warmer, purple glowing, As the sun sinks toward the west.

Slanting sunlight through the Cedars, Scarlet Maples all aglow, Long rays streaming through the forests, Gleam the dead leaves lying low.

Golden sunshine on the cornfields, Glittering ripples on the stream. And the still pools in the meadows Catch the soft October gleam.

Warmer grows the purple mountains, Lower sinks the glowing sun, Soon will fade the streaming sunlight— See, the day is nearly done!



THE ISLE OF SPRINGS.

CHAPTER III.

THE COUNTRY

After having been detained in town several days longer than I had reckoned on, by heavy rains, which ran through the streets in rivers, and filled the bed of Sandy Gully, through which we must pass, with a rushing torrent of irresistible strength, a small party of us left Kingston one morning for the mountains of St. Andrew and Metcalfe, among which lie the stations of the American missionaries whom we had come to join. We were mounted on the small horses of the country, whose first appearance excited some doubts in the mind of a friend whether he was to carry the horse or the horse him. However, they are not quite ponies, and their blood is more noble than their size, being a good deal of it Arab. They are decidedly preferable for mountain travel to larger animals.

We directed our course over the hot plains towards the mountains which rose invitingly before us, ready to receive us into their green depths. On leaving the town, we passed first through sandy lanes bordered by cactus hedges, rising in columnar rows, and then came out upon the excellent macadamized road over which thirteen of the sixteen miles of our journey lay. As we went along we met a continual succession of groups of the country people, mostly women and children, coming into Kingston with their weekly load of provisions to sell. They eyed us with expressions varying from good-natured cordiality to sullenness, and occasionally we heard a rude remark at the expense of the 'Buckras;' but for the most part their demeanor was civil and pleasant. Most of them had the headloads without which a negro woman seems hardly complete in the road, varying in dimensions from a huge basket of yams or bananas to an ounce vial. How such a slight thing manages to keep its perpendicular with their careless, swinging gait, is something marvellous, but they manage it to perfection. Almost every group, in addition, had a well-laden donkey—comical little creatures, looking hardly bigger under their huge hampers than well-sized Newfoundland dogs, and hurrying nimbly along, with a speed that betokened a wholesome remembrance of a good many hard thrashings in the past and a reasonable dread of similar ones in the future. If I held the doctrine of transmigration, I should be firmly persuaded that the souls of parish beadles, drunken captains, and other petty tyrants, shifted quarters into the bodies of Jamaica negroes' donkeys. One patriotic black woman, whose donkey was rather refractory, relieved her mind by exclaiming, in a tone of infinite disgust, 'O-h-h you Roo-shan!' accompanying her objurgation by several emphatic demonstrations on his hide of how she was disposed to treat a 'Rooshan' at that present moment.[8]

Going on, we passed several beautiful 'pens,' as farms devoted to grazing are called. These near town are little more than mere pieces of land surrounding elegant villas, the residence of wealthy gentlemen whose business lies in Kingston. Here you see 'the one-storied house of the tropics, with its green jalousies and deep veranda,' surrounded by handsomely kept meadows of the succulent Guinea grass, which clothes so large a part of the island with its golden green, and enclosed by wire fences or by the intricate but delicate logwood hedges, or else by stone walls. On either side of the carriage road which swept round before the most elegant of these villas, that of Mr. Porteous, we noticed rows of the mystic century plant.

At last we left the comparatively arid plain, with its scantier vegetation, and began to ascend Stony Hill, which is 1,360 feet high where the road passes over it. The cool air passing through the gap, and our increasing elevation, now began to temper the heat, and soon the clouds began to gather again, and a slight rain fell. But I did not notice it, for every step of the journey now seemed to bring me farther into the heart of fairyland. It was not any variety of colors, but the unutterable depth of green, enclosing us, as we ascended, more and more completely in its boundless exuberance. From that moment the richest verdure of my native country has seemed pale and poor. Reaching the top of the hill, we saw above us the higher range, looking down on us through the shifting mists, with that inexpressible gracefulness which tempers the grandeur of tropical mountains.

We descended the hill on the other side into a small inland valley, containing the two estates of Golden Spring and Temple Hall. The former, which presented nothing very noticeable then, has since passed under the management of a gentleman who to a judicious and energetic personal oversight has added a kindliness and strict honesty in his dealings with the laborers much more desirable than frequent in the island. As a result of this, Golden Spring has become a garden. A great many more dilapidated estates would become gardens under the same efficacious mode of treatment.

The streams were so swollen by the rain that on coming to what is commonly a trifling rivulet, we found it so high as to cost us some trouble to cross. However, we all got over, although one servant boy with his pack horse was caught by the current and carried down several rods almost into the river, which was rushing by in a turbid torrent. I ought to have been much alarmed, but having a happy way, in new circumstances, of taking it for granted that everything which happens is just what ought to happen then and there, I stood composedly on the farther bank, nothing doubting that the boy and the beast had their own good reasons for striking out a new track, and it was not till they were both safe on land that I learned with some consternation that they had come within an inch of being drowned.

At length we turned aside into a byroad leading up a steep hill, slippery with mud, and left this pleasant valley. I passed through it many a time afterwards, and never lost the impression of its peaceful richness.

We now found ourselves in the wild country in which our missionary stations lie. Hills rose around on every side; their surfaces broken and furrowed into every fantastic variety of shape, with only distance enough between their bases for the mountain streams to flow. In our latitude such a country would be much of the time a bleak desolation. But here the mantle of glorious and everlasting green softens and enriches the broken and fluctuating surfaces into luxuriant and cloying beauty. In such an ocean of verdure we now found ourselves, its emerald waves rolling above, below, and around us. Our road, when once we had surmounted the short hill, was a narrow, winding bridle path, which kept along almost upon a level over a continual succession of natural causeways, spanning the gullies with such an appearance of art as I have never seen elsewhere. I afterward learned that these are dikes of trap, from which the softer rock has been gradually disintegrated, leaving them thus happily arranged for human convenience.

After three miles' travel over these roads of nature's making, in a rain which at last became quite uncomfortable, we came finally to Oberlin Mission House. A West Indian country house, without fire or carpets, must be very pleasingly fitted up not to look dreary in a wet day, and Oberlin House appeared rather cheerless as we alighted with streaming garments, the romance pretty well soaked out of us for the time. But after supper and a change of clothes, and the clearing away of the clouds, our dismal spirits cleared up too, and we went out into the garden to enjoy the rare flowers and plants—the crimson-leaved ponsetto, the Bleeding Heart, with its ensanguined centre, the curiously pied and twisted Croton Pictum, the Plumbago, well named from the leaden hue of its flowers, the long, deep-red leaves of the Dragon's Blood, the purple magnificence of the Passion flower, relieved by the more familiar beauty of the Four o'clock and of the Martinique rose. Seeing something that pleased me, I stepped forward to view it more narrowly, when a sudden access of acute pain in one foot, quickly spreading to the knee, admonished me that I had got into mischief in the shape of an ant's nest, and gave me the first instalment of a lesson I learned in due time very thoroughly, that the beauties of Jamaica are to be enjoyed with a very cautious regard to the paramount rights of the insect creation.

When I went to bed, I found the bedclothes saturated with dampness. But I learned that it was like a Newport fog, too saline to be mischievous. The atmosphere of the island, even in the brightest and most elastic weather, is so impregnated with moisture, that a Leyden jar will lose its charge in being taken across the room, and an electrical machine will not work without a pan of coals under the cylinder. But as no part of the island is more than twenty-five miles from the sea, this continual moisture appears to be quite innocuous, its worst effect being the musty smell which it causes in everything in the mountains, where there is the most rain. Use fortunately takes from us the perception of this, or it would be quite intolerable. Perpetual summer, and the utmost glory of earth, sky, and sea, are not to be enjoyed without drawbacks that would make a careful housekeeper very doubtful about the desirableness of the exchange. And so ended my first day in the country.

CHAPTER IV.

GEOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE ISLAND

I had intended writing some of my first impressions about Jamaica, particularly its negro population. But I find, on reviewing my residence of five years and a half in the tranquil island, that first impressions melt so imperceptibly into final conclusions, that it appears best not to attempt a too formal separation of them. Before recounting the results of my own experience, however, in any form, it will not be amiss to attempt some general description of the island and of its population, and to give a slight sketch of its history.

The parallel of 18 deg. N lat. passes through the island of Jamaica, which has thus a true tropical climate. It is 160 miles in length and 40 in average breadth, having thus a plane area of 6,400 square miles, being about equal to the united area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Although the third in size of the Greater Antilles, it comes at a great remove after Hayti, the second, being not more than one-fourth as large. Nor does it compare in fertility with either Hayti or Cuba. The former island is the centre of geological upheaval, and the great rounded masses, sustaining a soil of inexhaustible depth, run off from thence splintering into sharp ridges, which in Jamaica become veritable knife edges, sustaining a soil comparatively thin. The character of the island is that of a mountain mass, which, as the ancient watermark on the northern coast shows, has at some remote period been tilted over, and has shot out an immense amount of detritus on its southern side, forming thus the plains which extend along a good part of that coast, varying in breadth from ten to twenty miles, besides the alluvial peninsula of Vere. In the interior, also, there is an upland basin of considerable extent, looking like the dry bed of a former lake, which now forms the chief part of the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. The mountain mass which makes the body of the island, running in various ranges through its whole length, culminates in the eastern part of it in the Blue Mountains, whose principal summit, the Blue Mountain Peak, is 7,500 feet high. It is said that Columbus, wishing to give Queen Isabella an impression of the appearance of these, took a sheet of tissue paper, and crumpling it up in his hand, threw it on a table, exclaiming, 'There! such is their appearance.' The device used by the great discoverer to convey to the mind of the royal Mother of America some image of her new-found realms, forcibly recurs to the mind of the traveller as he sails along the southeastern coast, and notices the strange contortions of the mountain surfaces. But seen from the northern shore, at a greater distance, through the purple haze which envelops them, their outlines leave a different impression. I shall always remember their aspect of graceful sublimity, as seen from Golden Vale, in Portland, and of massive sweetness, as seen from Hermitage House, in the parish of St. George. The gray buttresses of their farthest western peak, itself over 5,000 feet in height, rose in full view of a station where I long resided, and the region covered by their lower spurs, ranging in elevation from seven to ten and twelve hundred feet, is that which especially deserves the name of the 'well-watered land,' or, as it is poetically rendered, the 'isle of springs,' of which Jamaica, or perhaps more exactly Xaymaca, is the Indian equivalent. There you meet in most abundance with those crystal rivulets, every few hundred yards threading the road, and going to swell the wider streams which every mile or two cross the traveller's way, laving his horse's sides with refreshing coolness, as they hurry on in their tortuous course from the mountain heights to the sea. Farther west the mountains and hills assume gentler and more rounded forms, particularly in the parish of St. Anne, the Garden of Jamaica. I regret that I know only by report the scenes of Eden-like loveliness of this delightful parish. It is principally devoted to grazing, and its pastures are maintained in a park-like perfection. Grassy eminences, crowned with woods, and covered with herds of horses and the handsome Jamaica cattle, descend, in successive undulations, to the sea. Over these, from the deck of a vessel a few miles out, may be seen falling the silver threads of many cascades. Excellent roads traverse the parish, which is inhabited by a gentry in easy circumstances, and by a contented and thriving yeomanry. St. Anne appears to be truly a Christian Arcadia.