so many bones to set them growling at each other, or running themselves over head and ears in debt to counteract their neighbors in some great plan of public improvement, which is to divert the travelling and transportation from one portion of the country to another, thus strengthening the bonds of union by creating and fostering antagonistical pecuniary interests. The whole length and breadth of the country is cut up into mince-meat by these village, county, and State struggles, for the privilege of injuring, perhaps beggaring, their neighbors, by obtaining a monopoly, or a decided advantage in some branch of business or other; and the most sordid unsocial feelings engendered and fostered by this assumption by the legis lative power of what is, in fact, the exclusive prerogative of the great Architect of the universe. Can any thing good, can any thing conducive to the general permanent happiness of mankind result from this arrogant assumption of the attributes of Infinite Wisdom? We can tell these presumptuous reasoners, that, in proportion as they attempt to wrest the powers of nature and the direction of causes and effects from the hands of Omnipotence, they will only more glaringly demonstrate their own folly, impotency, and presumption. They may for awhile seem to travel the faster, but it will only be toward the region of corruption, decay, and dissolution. The evils we have thus briefly pointed out may, in a great measure, be traced to monopoly created and fostered by special legislation, and fed by money. It has now become a system. It reaches everywhere, and pervades every thing. Corporations and combinations of individuals, all operating through a moneyed monopoly, now dabble in every thing, buy up every thing, and, in fact, monopolize, not only the medium through which the necessities of man are supplied, but the very necessaries of life themselves. Not many years since a country bank in the State of New-York monopolized all the butter in the surrounding region; another, all the turkeys; and we have heard of a third in some other quarter that secured a monopoly of potatoes. There are, we understand-in fact, we know-in almost every market of our cities, individuals, and combinations of individuals, who watch the arrival of the market-boats and wagons, the steamers and railroad trains, the droves of beef-cattle, and, indeed, all other supplies necessary for the daily consumption of the citizens, for the purpose of buying them up by wholesale, and retailing them at greatly enhanced prices, established by a general combination. Every article of supply is thus forestalled, and, in fact, becomes a monopoly in the hands of a few persons, who are for the most part furnished with the means by banks, whose agents and partners they very frequently are in thus fleecing the rich as well as the poor. There is not proper legitimate employment for one half the little village and country banks, and they take this mode of administering to the public benefit, by employing a portion of their capital (real or imaginary) in forestalling the necessaries of life, and enhancing the price of every mouthful we swallow. When the legislatures of the several States usurped the power of chartering banks for the issue of paper-money, which is expressly prohibited by the Constitution, they laid the foundation for this stupendous system of monopoly, which now pervades every vein and artery of society. We are as stern and immov. able advocates of the rights of the States as any man, let him be who he will; but we affirm, that the power of creating banks of issue is a sheer usurpation on the part of the States. The quibbling distinction between bank-notes and bills of credit furnishes no justification. The only bank ever known in the United Colonies, previous to the Revolution, was in Boston, and its notes were never called by any other name than "Bills of Credit." The framers of the Constitution knew of no other term for bank-notes but that of bills of credit, and the issue of these they expressly prohibited to the States. Had the question of the constitutionality of the first Bank of North-America been presented to the people of the United States, at a period when the Democracy was in the ascendency, there is not the slightest reason to doubt that they would have checked the usurpation in the bud. As it was, they opposed it in all its early stages of progress, until at length they themselves yielded to the inevitable temptation of making their own money, and became accomplices in a great scheme of monopoly, of which they have since been the victims. It is with no expectation of having the slightest influence in remedying the horrible frauds, corruptions, and deplorable evils of papermoney, or checking their accumulation, that we have given this slight sketch of the progress of this stupendous infraction of the Constitution. It is past all cure. It is an evil which has arrived at that magnitude which overrides all others. It is a disease of which the patient himself will not consent to be cured. It is an evil from which even those who are most sensible of its enormity shrink in despair. To cure it, requires an effort of selfdenial, and a series of sacrifices beyond the ordinary standard of human virtue, and which can not be reasonably expected. Doubtless, it may be restrained in some respects, and checked in its further progress by wise progressive legislation. But, when radically cured, we fear it will be in the only way it was ever cured, in any age or country, by death-by suicide. It will kill itself. It will perish, like the frog in the fable, by its own efforts at distension; and, however deplorable its evil consequences at first, its fall will be the herald of better times, of a more healthful, substantial, and permanent prosperity; for it will carry with it that stupendous system of monopoly which impoverishes every man who does not feed at its crib; and more than any other cause, or all other causes combined, it has contributed to the alarming progress of extravagance, idleness, pauperism, and vice among the once moral, industrious, and economical people of the United States. It has established a despotism, not of gold-for that is comparatively respectable -but of paper-money, the meanest and basest of all despotism, since it is acquired without merit, sustained without exertion, and has no other foundation but the credulity of mankind. It is a common legalized cheat that promises what he never performs, and lives by palming off counters for pure gold. In some few of the States it has received a salutary check, by prohibiting the issue or circulation of bank-notes under the denomination of five dollars, thus at once banishing from circulation that miserable, ragged, loathsome trash, the counterfeit representative of silver and gold, out of which—as may be seen by the average bank returns-not one in ten is thus represented. If the prohibition were extended to all notes under ten, and finally under twenty dollars, our currency would be effectually purified, and the paper-system limited to its legitimate object, namely, that of furnishing a convenient medium for merchants in extensive transactions of commerce. Thus much, at least, might be done, by a wise, cautious, and, if you please, dilatory legislation; and thus much might be done in this way without suddenly arresting the general course of business, or occasioning any sudden revulsion in the social or monetary system. All things are comparatively easy, if brought about gradually, and it is only when reforms are attempted too suddenly, that the remedy often proves worse than the disease. There never was, and probably never will be, a time, when a curtailment of the paper-money monopoly could be commenced more auspiciously. Gold is annually flowing into the United States by scores of millions; and, if it flows out again almost as fast as it comes in, it is only in obedience to that inflexible law by which specie is invariably banished by that beggarly usurper, paper-money. There is now an ample sufficiency of the precious metals in this country to answer all the purposes of a circulating medium, and yet throughout the whole land a piece of gold is little less than a phenomenon. And so it would be, if the bowels of the earth were teeming with silver and gold, simply because they are the products of human labor, and paper rags may be manufactured with little cost and less toil. Hence, so long as they answer the purposes of the precious metals, they will entirely supersede them, as a matter of course, since they cost nothing, except a few thousands-more or less-employed in enlightening legislative darkness to a proper perception of the blessings of paper money. Instead, however, of attempting to restrain or diminish this great fountain of individual and legislative corruption, we see the inauguration of the great reforming party in the once Keystone State of the Democracy, commencing its career by the creation of some dozen or fifteen new paper-money manufactories; and, in the Democratic State of Indiana, we see the banking system almost indefinitely expanded, and all restrictions, for securing the community from becoming the victims of its swindling operations, removed. Well, all we can say is, let those who are determined to dance pay the piper, as they have recently done, and we predict will ere long do again. If one dose is not enough to cure the patient, it must be repeated till it operates thoroughly. SAP PH O. BY C. G. ROSENBERG. L A GASP, a gurgle, and a cry, Calm and deep, the purple wave Cheated the earth of one more grave, And held one corpse the more; Naked and bare, against the peaceable sky, Stood out Leukados' steep, And the summer winds went by The universal dirge Which they sing to the constant Death, Whose tireless foot with every step Treads out a human breath. It was the ancient tale Which has never yet grown old, Love's passion and despair In every age has told The curse of the hot soul- In that creative mood Accursed be the hour! For ever, and for ever! To cancel woe, joy never yet had power. When did possession recompense endeavor? |