pannels, broken columns, and cornices. Bushels of coffee paved our way. A boy presented me with a half-fused watch-key from the cellar of what had been a jeweller's store. The blackened ruins of a church frowned over all. The most singular spectacle was a store, standing alone and unharmed, amidst the desolation. It belonged to a Jew, was fire-proof, and contained hay, not a blade of which was singed. This square-fronted, elongated, ugly building, standing obliquely, and as clean as if smoke had never touched it, had a most saucy appearance: and so it might, so many erections, equally called fire-proof, having disappeared, while it alone remained.

By the next July, the entire area was covered with new erections; and long before this, doubtless, all is to the outward eye, as if no fire had happened.

But for the testimony afforded by this event, of the substantial credit in New York, the enormous prices given for land,—the above-mentioned ground lots, for instance,-might cause a suspicion that there was much wild speculation. I trust it is not

SO.

The eagerness for land is, however, extraordinary. A lady sold an estate in the neighbourhood of New York, for what she and her friends considered a large sum; and a few weeks after she had concluded the bargain, and soon after the destruction of eighteen millions of the wealth of the city, she found she might have obtained three times the amount for which she had sold her estate. The whole south end of the city is being rapidly turned into stores; and it is obvious that the mercantile princes of this emporium have no idea of their conquests being bounded by any circumstance short of the limits of the globe.

Is there anything to be learned here, as well as E 2

to admire? any inference to be drawn for the benefit of other nations?

An English member of parliament wrote to a friend residing in one of the American ports, inquiring whether this friend could suggest any course of parliamentary action by which the commerce of England, or of both countries, could be benefited. The American replied by urging his friend to work incessantly at a repeal of the corn laws, and in any way which may keep the United States continually before the eyes of the commercial rulers of Great Britain. "You talk," said he, "of your commercial arrangements with Portugal. Well and good! but what is Portugal? She has two millions of priests and beggars; and at the end of the century she will have two millions of priests and beggars still. What will the wealth and productions of the United States be then?" If the United States have now 18,000,000 of people, and their population is increasing at an unexampled rate,-a free and an opulent population,-the interest of Great Britain is plain;-to have a primary regard to the United States in the arrangement of her commercial policy.

SECTION I

THE CURRENCY.

The fundamental difficulty of this great question, now one of the most prominent in the United States, is indicated by the fact that, while the

practice of banking is essential to a manufacturing and commercial nation, a perfect system of banking remains to be discovered.

When it is remembered that the question of the Currency has never yet been practically mastered in the countries of the Old World; that in America it has fallen into the hands of a young and inexperienced people; that it is implicated with constitutional questions, and has to be reconciled with democratic principles, it will not be expected that a passing stranger will be able to present a very clear view of its present aspect, or any decided opinion upon difficulties which perplex the wisest heads in the country. The mere history of banking in the United States would fill more than a volume and the speculations which arise out of it, a library.

It is well known that there was an early split into parties on the subject of the constitutionality of a national bank. Washington requested the opinions of his cabinet upon it in writing; and Hamilton gave his in favour of the constitutionality of a national bank: Edmund Randolph and Jefferson against it. The question has been stirred from time to time since; while Hamilton's opinions have been acted upon,

The ground of objection is a very strong one. It lies in the provision that "all powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people." No power to establish corporations is, in any case, delegated by the constitution to the United States; nor does it appear to be countenanced by any fair construction of the permissions under which its transaction of the general business is carried on.

The answer to this is, that the supreme law of the country may give a legal or artificial capacity,

(distinct from the natural,) to one or more persons, in relation to the objects committed to the management of the government: in other words, that the government has sovereign power with regard to the objects confided to it; all the limitations of the constitution having relation to the number of those objects. This was Hamilton's ground; and this is, I believe, the ground which has been taken since by those who shared his opinions on the main question. To me it appears as unsatisfactory as any other mode of begging the question. If the power of making corporations is to be assumed by the general government, on the ground of its being implied, the whole country might be covered with corporations, to which should be entrusted the discharge of any function exercised by the general government.

In countries differently governed from the United States, it appears as if it would be most reasonable either to have the currency made a national affair, transacted wholly by the government, on determined principles, or to leave banking entirely free. In neither case, probably, would the evils be so great as those which have happened under the mixture of the two systems. But in the United States, the committing the management of the currency to the general government is now wholly out of the question. Free banking will be the method, some time or other; but not yet. There is not yet knowledge enough; nor freedom enough of production and commerce to render such a policy safe. Meantime, various doctrines are afloat. Some persons are for no banking whatsoever: but mere money-lending by individuals. Some are for the abolition of paper-money, and the establishment of one public bank of deposit and transfer in each State. Some are for private banking only, with or without paper money. Some

are for State incorporations, with no central bank. Others are for restoring the United States Bank.

No objections against banking and paper-money altogether will avail anything, while commerce is conducted on its present principles. It answers no

practical purpose to object to any useful thing on the ground of its abuse: and while the commerce of the United States is daily on the increase, and the only check on its prosperity is the want of capital, there is no possibility of a return to the use of private money-lending and rouleaus.

The use of small notes may well and easily be discontinued. The experiment has been tried with success in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The prohibition might, perhaps, be carried as high as to notes of twenty dollars. There seems no adequate reason for the public being, further than this, deprived of the convenience of a representative of cash; a convenience so great that there is much more probability that the ingenious Americans will devise some method of practically insuring its convertibility, than that they will surrender its use. It has often occurred to me that out of the currency troubles of the United States, might arise such a discovery of the true principle (which yet lies hidden) of insuring the convertibility, or other limitation, of a paper currency, as may be a blessing to the whole commercial world. This is an enterprise worthy of their ingenuity; and one which seems of probable achievement, when we remember how the American merchants are pressed for capital, and how all-important to them is the soundness of their credit. The principle lies somewhere, if it could but be found: and none are more likely to discover it than they.

Private banking is, in the present state of affairs, necessary and inevitable; so that there is little use in arguments for or against it. Capital is griev