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sumption of payments after the former suspension.* But this view of the subject, as has been amply shown by the most judicious political writers of the day, is directly the reverse of the truth. The continued expansion of the business and issues of the bank, after the first suspension of payments, for the purpose of monopolizing the cotton trade, was the cause of the second. If Mr. Biddle, instead of undertaking to "carry the country through a dangerous crisis," by regulating the currency and monopolizing the principal branch of our commerce, had confined himself throughout his course to the management of his own institution, on the usual principles and with ordinary discretion, he might have been at this moment at the head of a specie-paying bank, as flourishing and prosperous as any bank, conducted on the system now in use in this country, ever can be. Instead of this he undertook, as the head of a national bank, to force a renewal of its charter by intimidating the President, corrupting the members of Congress, and crushing the people under the screw of a money pressure. As the head of a State bank, of which he had obtained the charter by corruption, he grasped at a power, which not even the Government of this or any other civilized country ever pretended to exercise, that of controlling and managing at discretion, to suit his own purpose, the whole business and exchanges

* Of the various explanations that have been given of the second suspension of payment by the United States Bank, the most entertaining, if not the most instructive, is that of Girard in his letters to a Bank Director, republished from a Philadelphia journal in the Boston Daily Advertiser. Girard honestly supposes that because we cannot eat and drink gold, it cannot possibly have intrinsic value; and quotes in illustration of his position, the high authority of Falstaff, who considered honor as a mere non-entity, because it would not set a bone. The illustration, it must be owned, is worthy of the argument. The manner in which Girard is used up by the Bank Director, one of the most intelligent merchants in the country, is, in the newspaper jargon, a caution. We take this occasion to remark that the discussions of the banking question in the Boston Daily Advertiser, both editorial and communicated, are among the ablest that have appeared in any quarter of the Union.

of a great community. In attempting to carry into effect this insane pretension, he has exhibited a desperate recklessness in the use of means, and an utter disregard for the ordinary rules of political economy and morals, of which there is hardly any previous example, except perhaps in the transactions that have consigned to an unenviable notoriety the name of John Law. His public explanations of his conduct, affectedly addressed to a distinguished statesman, who, as he knew at the time, did not approve his course, have never had even the merit of plausibility. When by systematic mismanagement he had reduced the institution entrusted to him to its last gasp, he deserted it at its utmost need with misrepresentation on his lips, and a large fortune in his coffers, bequeathing to his fellow citizens, as the only good result of the immense means that had been placed in his hands, the instruction afforded by a practical illustration of the worst possible abuses of the present banking system.

From the general tenor of the preceding remarks, it will be naturally concluded, that we heartily approve the determination of the banks of New England and New York to sustain specie payments in despite of the threats and allurements of the great regulator at Philadelphia. They will be upheld in this course by the community, and by resolutely persisting in it will, in some degree, relieve themselves from the unpopularity which for some years past has been gathering round the very name of bank. If in addition to this they will manfully consent to relinquish their odious privileges, surrender their charters, and consent to stand, in the exercise of a profession in itself as honorable and useful as any other, upon the same footing with the rest of their fellow citizens, they will entirely redeem their reputation. In so doing, they would merely anticipate a sacrifice which, with or without their consent, must and will be made in a very few years. We earnestly advise them, although we know beforehand that our counsel will be scornfully rejected, to take this course.

ART. V.-The People's Own Book. By F. DE la MenNAIS. Translated from the French. By NATHANIEL GREENE. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown. 1839. 18mo. pp. 188.

THE author of this book is one of the most remarkable men of the day, and one of the ablest and most vigorous writers in the French language. He was originally a Catholic priest, and early distinguished himself as one of the most ingenious and successful defenders of the Catholic Church. His Essai sur l'Indifference en Matière de Religion, the first volume. of which, if we recollect aright, was published in 1810, arrested the attention of the best thinkers and most distinguished literary men in France, and contributed not a little towards awakening an interest in the French for religious studies. Prior to the Revolution of July, 1830, he was generally regarded as a firm adherent to the policy of Rome, and as strongly opposed to the liberal or movement party. Since then, however, he has arranged himself on the side of the people, and exerted himself nobly in the cause of freedom both religious and political, for which he has had the high honor of being deposed by the Pope his spiritual sovereign.

The most remarkable feature in the Abbé de la Mennais' doctrine of liberty, is its connexion with religion. It is well known, that for some time the friends of freedom in Europe have been opposed to the Church, and in general to all religion. The privileged orders have also taken great pains to make it widely believed, that religion requires the support of existing abuses, and that no one can contend for social meliorations without falling into infidelity. This has created a false issue, one which M. de la Mennais rejects. He has endeavored, and with signal success, to show that there is no discrepancy between religion and liberty: nay, more, that Christianity offers a solid foundation for the broadest freedom, and that in order to be true

to its spirit, its friends must labor with all their might to restore to the people their rights, and to correct all social abuses. He proves that all men are equal before God, and therefore equal one to another. All men have one Father, and are therefore brethren, and ought to treat one another as brothers. This is the Christian law. This law is violated, whenever distinction of races is recognised; whenever one man is clothed with authority over his equals; whenever one man, or a number of men are invested with certain privileges, which are not shared equally by the whole. As this is the case everywhere, everywhere therefore is the Christian law violated. Everywhere therefore is there suffering, lamentation. The people everywhere groan and travail in pain, sighing to be delivered from their bondage into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. To this deliverance the people have a right. For it every Christian should contend; and they wrong their brethren, deny Christianity, and blaspheme God, who oppose it.

This is a new doctrine in France. It is something new since the days of the philosophers, to undertake to show that Christianity is the religion which favors not kings and privileged orders, but the people, the poor and needy, the wronged and down-trodden. Hitherto the few have made the many submit to the grievous burdens under which they groaned, by representing it as irreligious to attempt to remove them. They have enlisted the clergy on their side, and made religion, the very essence of which is justice and love, contribute to the support of oppression. They have deterred the pious from seeking to better their condition, by denouncing all who seek the melioration of society as infidels. But the Abbé has put a stop to this unhallowed proceeding. He has nobly vindicated religion and the people. He has turned the tables upon the people's masters, and denounced their masters, not the people, as infidels. He has enlisted religion on the side of freedom; recalled that long forgotten. gospel, which was glad tidings to the poor, and dared

follow the example of Jesus whom the common people. heard gladly, and whom the people's masters crucified between two thieves. He speaks out for freedom, the broadest freedom, not in the tones of the infidel scoffer, but in the name of God, Christ, and man, and with the authority of a prophet. His "Words of a Believer" has had no parallel since the days of Jeremiah. It is at once a prophecy, a curse, a hymn, fraught with deep, terrible, and joyful meaning. It is the doom of the tyrant, and the jubilee-shout of the oppressed. We know of no work in which the true spirit of Christianity is more faithfully represented. It proclaims, "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven;" and woe unto the rich oppressor, the royal spoiler, the scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, who bind heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, while they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

We need not say that we heartily sympathize with this doctrine, nor that we rejoice to find such a man as the Abbé de la Mennais sustaining with his fervid imagination, poetic fire, and unmatched logic, a doctrine to the promulgation and defence of which our own life has for many years been devoted. The view he takes we had also taken, and attempted to set forth; and that too when we seemed to ourselves to stand alone. We had seen the evils of society, the wrongs and outrages to which man is subject even in this land of equal rights, and we had ventured to demand reform, to labor to redress the grievances we saw; but our first and most uncompromising enemies we found in the church, among the clergy. Young and inexperienced then, we took it for granted that religion and social abuses were inseparable. We therefore rejected religion. Experience soon taught us that infidelity had no power to reform the world. We reëxamined religion, read again the New Testament, sought to comprehend the Christian movement, and came at length to the conclusion, that all the doctrines of Christianity harmonize with, or rather

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