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thoughts upon these topics, excepting under the pressure of engage. ments which require immediate relief, have been apt to suppose that money cannot be too plentiful. But, independent of the inevitable and destructive revulsions which a plethora of paper currency produces, it is certain that a sudden and superabundant increase of the aggregate amount of currency, whether metallic or fictitious, will always prove ruinous to those numerous and respectable classes whose incomes are stationary. Great numbers of unprotected individuals, who subsist upon the savings of their former enterprise and industry, as well as those who live by daily wages, are gradually impoverished and brought into a state of absolute want and suffering by the increased prices of all articles of necessary consumption. The price of labor is always the last and least of all to be raised by the expansion of currency. Those who are engaged in traffic are able at once to appreciate their commodities and increase their profits by the enhancement of price. The means of livelihood of all the rest of the community are thus placed within the control of a very limited number of individuals. Any person who will take the pains to reckon the increased weekly expense of a family in consequence of the depreciation of the measure of value, while its income remains nominally the same, will readily perceive that in the course of a few years, or even months, of exorbitant prices, a frightful source of poverty is disclosed. While the few are enriched by extravagant profits, the many are reduced to a condition of dependence and privation.

The great variety of expedients which have from time to time been resorted to by designing men, for the purpose of artificially increasing the amount of currency in general circulation, and consequently depreciating its relative value, are therefore but so many frauds upon the stability of property and the welfare of the community at large. Like fire and water, money is essential to social comfort-but a superabundance of either of these important agents always produces great calamities. To show the effect of this principle, it can hardly be necessary to call to the recollection of our readers the suffering produced throughout the whole length and breadth of the land by the great expansion of the Bank of the United States, during the first six months of 1835. We have at the present moment the spectacle of two great States of this Union, possessing vast natural resources, and peopled with a productive population, remarkable for their activity and enterprise, who have been plunged into such distress by the affluence of paper, which had inflated prices to such an extravagant height, as now to threaten general ruin both to debtors and creditors. Artificial stimulus had produced such a general derangement in the performance of contracts, that, like desperate topers, these States have been impelled to swallow larger draughts of madness. Believing that money

could not be too abundant, immense amounts of currency have been manufactured for the purpose of meeting obligations, which is refused by all excepting those whose necessities require them to receive it, or fare worse. The measures of relief, into which both Mississippi and Michigan have been driven by popular suffering, are a beacon of warning to the other States of the Union.

The insecurity of property-the destruction of the confidence which man should repose in his fellow-man-and the general relaxation of all the ties of social order which have grown out of the twenty years domination of the Bank of the United States over the productive interests of the community, afford lessons upon the demoralizing influence of paper currency but too dearly purchased. Not among the least injurious effects of the influence of this institution upon public opinion, is the total obliteration, among large classes, of all regard to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, as well as the dictates of universal justice, in relation to the currency. As we are a self-governing people, this corruption of public sentiment has already produced the greatest evils. Sanctions under which property is held and enjoyed have become as precarious, and as practically inefficient under the paper money system among us, as in South America. No individual engaged in active business can feel assured, that his resources and means of livelihood will not be swept from him by some plausible scheme of gambling upon a great scale. Commercial men, whose sanguine expectations of gain are easily wrought upon, and for whose immediate advantage most of these new fangled projects are ostensibly contrived, are constantly involved in paroxysms of elation or despondency. Their pursuits, heretofore so respectable, are placed upon the same level with those of the hazard table, the faro table, or the lottery office. Instead of the regular and systematic pursuit of business upon principles of forecast and calculation, their success has been so entirely involved in the movements of the managers of paper money, as to have become wholly a matter of luck and chance. Their care-worn anxiety at one moment, and their excited hilarity at another, render it almost impossible for a casual observer to recognise the same individuals, under such sudden changes of demeanor. No doubt but such a life possesses its charms. A profound observer has remarked, that man is naturally a gambling animal. Whether this principle of action should be encouraged, and thousands of young men annually seduced from the sober pursuits of industry, to partake of its excitement, by the extension of the machinery of the paper money power, is a grave question for legislators.

This alternation of hope and despair, among the commercial community, has grown out of the preposterous experiments which have been made, at various times, to create property by law for the pro

fessed convenience or advantage of our Governments, either State or National, by means of granting exclusive privileges to favored classes or individuals. Representatives delegated for the discharge of public trusts have either neglected the great interests reposed to their care, and which they were solemnly bound to protect, or have been guilty of more heinous delinquencies. Surrounded by swarms of interested speculators, many of the laws which have imposed permanent burdens upon the vital prosperity of the respective communities were, doubtless, passed by legislative bodies under influences which it was difficult to resist. The hope of acquiring wealth is, at the present day, the great incentive in every pursuit. A just government should be careful to leave the avenues equally open to all, instead of affording a short-sighted encouragement to particular classes or individuals, at the expense of the general welfare.

No one has ever examined and weighed, with greater discrimination and more sound judgment, all the questions which the complicated subject of currency can present, than David Hume. He was a fellow countryman of John Law, and was intimately acquainted with the credit system from its origin, under all its variety of phases and ramifications. His three essays upon Commerce, Interest, and the balance of Trade, are indeed master-peices of foresight and sagacity. Common as Hume's Essays are among reading people, we are tempted to subjoin a single passage from the last mentioned of these profound disquisitions, which may serve to show their value to those who are inclined to examine the subject, and are not already familiar with them.

"I scarcely krow any method of sinking money below its level, but those institutions of Banks, funds and paper credit, which are so much practised in this kingdom. These render paper equivalent to money, circulate it through the whole State, make it supply the place of gold and silver, raise proportionally the price of labor and commodities, and, by that means, either banish a great part of these precious metals. or prevent their further increase. What can be more short-sighted than our reasonings on this head? We fancy because an individual would be richer, were his stock of money doubled, that the same effect would follow, were the money of every one increased; not considering, that this would raise as much the price of every commodity, and reduce every man, in time, to the same condition as before."

It is to be remarked, that the evil consequences of a superabundance of currency were found, at one of the most important eras in modern history, not to be confined to paper circulation. Soon after the discovery of America, poverty was extensively brought upon the bulk of the community, in several of the nations of Eu

By the term funds is meant public debt-the usual phrase to designate that species of property in England. We have at present, from the short-sighted prodigality of some of the States, a most plentiful supply of this means of deteriorating the measure of value in our markets. We hope it will be found, when the necessity of providing for the interest of the immense sums which have been borrowed for the purpose of enriching speculators, by en hancing nominal prices at the expense of future taxation shall occur, that the people of the several States, on whom these burdens must fall so heavily, will act considerately and wisely. VOL. V. NO. XVII.-YAY, 1839. D D

rope, by a great and sudden influx of metallic currency. But as gold and silver enjoy universal value, they always find the general level by flowing into those countries where there may happen to be found less than the due proportion, comparing the existing prices of commodities, which can be exchanged with profit in those countries where specie is too abundant. No such corrective applies to paper currency, the value of which is wholly arbitrary and local.

The effect of currency upon pauperism in England will clearly illustrate the consequences of a superabundance both of metallic and paper circulation. Mr. Sedgewick dilates at length upon the vast numbers, and the miserable condition, of the poor in England; and presents a melancholy picture of the servility and dependence of all the industrious classes in that country. We shall attempt to offer some suggestions upon the origin of this unhappy state of things, and upon the causes by which it has been aggravated to its present deplorable extent.

We are aware that it has been the prevailing opinion, that the necessity for poor laws in England was occasioned by the failure of the assistance previously derived by the poor from the religious houses dissolved in the latter part of the reign of Henry the Eighth. This is the view taken of the origin of these laws by Blackstone, and several of the most eminent English authors on the subject of pauperism. A brief investigation into the matter cannot fail to convince any candid individual that these opinions are incorrect.

By the recourse to the statutes at large, it will be seen, that the first law on this subject was passed by Parliament in 1530, being the twelfth chapter of the 22d, Henry the Eighth, entitled "An act directing how aged, poor, and impotent persons, compelled to live by alms, shall be ordered; and how vagabonds and beggars shall be punished.” From the terms of this law it is evident, that pauperism had already become a great and increasing evil in England, though none of the religious houses had as yet been disturbed. The difficulties which the King had found in obtaining his divorce from Catharine of Arragon had, at that time, scarcely begun to influence the allegiance of the "Defender of the Faith," to the see of Rome. No acts of hostility to Catholic observances had been manifested by any of the ruling powers. The first act against the religious houses, granting to the King all "which have not lands above two hundred pounds by the year,' was not passed until more than five years afterwards. The act for "dissolution of monasteries and abbies," under which the balance of these institutions were taken from the church, was not passed until the 31, Henry the Eighth, nine years after the enactment of this original poor law.

Nothing can therefore be more conclusive, than that pauperism in England was created by some other cause than the failure of the

relief accustomed to be given by the religious houses. When the original law on this subject was passed, their hospitality and charity were in full operation, and were found inadequate to meet the existing necessities of the poor. On examining into the state of the world at that period, it does not appear difficult to discover the great change which rendered such a law necessary.

Immense sums in gold and silver were brought to Europe from America, early in the sixteenth century, which produced a great rise of prices in Spain, under whose auspices the New World had been discovered, near the close of the preceding century; and led to the necessity, for the first time, of legal provisions with regard to the poor in that kingdom as early as 1523. Those countries which did not in the first instance receive this vast efflux of the precious metals, could not be prevented, by the rigid laws against their exportation, from enjoying the profits derived from carrying commodities produced with less cost to the markets of Spain, nor from receiving in payment large portions of this new supply of money. Many of the cultivators and manufacturers of Spain, who had previously possessed not only the monopoly of their own markets, but had produced many articles for exportation, were at once thrown out of employment, and compelled by their necessities to emigrate to America, or become burdens to the community. The tide of gold and silver gradually flowed from Spain into the producing countries, and consequently effected a corresponding rise of prices there. From the middle of the reign of Henry the Eighth, to the close of that of his daughter Elizabeth, the statutes at large show, that hardly a single year occurred without new enactments respecting wages, and the price of commodities, which clearly manifest the intestine convulsions continually produced by the contest between fixed incomes and increasing prices. Our English ancestors of that day do not appear to have entertained the slightest suspicion of the true causes which produced this great social transition, which was constantly going on from the increase of money, any more than many of their descendants now can comprehend the origin of the revulsions among ourselves, which have placed all property in such an alarming condition of uncertainty. We have been struck, in referring to Hollinshed's Chronicle, with the repeated allusions to the troubles and disorders occasioned by this state of things. His continuator, Harrison, who died at the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, says, in his account of the fourteenth year of her reign

"In this Parliament, for so much as the whole realme of England was exceedingly pestered with roges, vagabondes, and sturdie beggars, by means whereof dailie happened diverse horrible murthers, thefts, and other great outrages-it was enacted, that persons above the age of fourteen years, being taken begging, vagarant and wandering disorderlie, should be apprehended, whipped, and burned through the grisle of the right ear with a hot iron of one inch compasse for the first time so taken."

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