tage, they thrive at our expense. The increase of the cost of production is the greatest evil. This is not, except in peculiar cases counterbalanced by increased price, since it is the price in foreign markets, and not our own, which regulates the profits both of manufacturers and planters. Their interests, therefore, seem to be identical in preventing the fluctuation of currency beyond the metallic level. The hazard of producing their commodities under a paper currency has obviously kept both in subjection. There is only one permanent remedy for the precarious condition of both, and that is, the equal and efficient protection afforded by a metallic currency, liable to no control but the universal laws of trade. Our manufacturers and planters, under such a currency, might bid defiance to the mismanagement of the Bank of England, or any other paper coiners in any quarter of the world where the people might be blind and thoughtless enough to suffer a few irresponsible individuals to create the general measure of value from nonentity, and loan it for their own profit. The cost of production under a metallic currency would become stable, instead of being increased and diminished, by the caprice or cupidity of paper money speculators either in Philadelphia or London. We have repeatedly seen subsistence enhanced by the manœuvres of these paper coiners towards each other, until the cultivator found it impossible to sell his crops without loss, and the manufacturer discovered it to be equally impossible to find a market for his wares at their cost. They must both be exposed to ruin, while prices and expenses here are governed by a false and fictitious currency.

These leading classes whose industry creates the principal addition yearly made to our real wealth, have not alone been impoverished by this artificial system which enables its managers to extort interest not only upon the debts due to them, but upon the amount of their own obligations to the community. The merchants themselves have suffered, not only from the uncertainty of transacting business with a medium continually fluctuating in value in different sections of the country, but from the improvidence and contagious recklessness with which all mercantile affairs have been managed in most sections of the country. This evil has been visited with great severity upon the leading houses of New York and Philadelphia. The merchants of many other sections have suffered under the great centralizing influence which Philadelphia Banking has gradually created, and carried into effect in every section of the land, while the merchants of these great marts, which have been thus made the focus of all mercantile affairs, have not derived a corresponding benefit from this concentration. It is impossible for them to become sufficiently acquainted with the character and property of the vast numbers of purchasers who flock thither from every section of the Union, to be able to discriminate between those who are worthy of credit and who are not. A great proportion of their profits, and not unfrequently of their capital, is absorbed in bad debts. Those who are able to pay are inevitably made to suffer for the profligacy of those who are totally worthless.

Had mercantile business been conducted upon the principles which formerly prevailed, commerce would have been more equally distributed among the different sections of the Union, and would be incalculably more stable, secure, and profitable in the long run, to every part of the country. The arbitrary control over the currency which has been concentrated by Philadelphia Banking, has accordingly produced a train of consequences which are beginning to attract great attention, though the efficient causes have as yet been little regarded. The Southern Commercial Convention, composed of individuals of great experience and ability, has lately published an address, in which the origin of the state of things described as their principal grievance is strangely overlooked. They say :

"The evil complained of is, that the southern and southwestern States, while producing nearly three-fourths of the domestic export of the Union, import scarcely one-tenth of the merchandize received in exchange for them. The foreign commerce, which derives its existence from the productions of our industry, (and which is the unfailing source of much wealth to others,) is carried on by the citizens of other States, causing their cities to flourish, while ours have been falling into decay."

Now nothing can be more evident than that this transfer of the commercial control over the interests of the South and Southwest from their own cities to the great focus of paper currency, and which has equally affected most other sections of the Union, is, in a great degree, to be attributed to the centralizing influence of the "Credit System." So far from the creation of new banks affording a remedy, as seems to be the opinion of this convention, the increase of these institutions is, with truth, regarded by the managers of Philadelphia Banking as the most efficient mode of extending and perpetuating their power. They have constantly endeavored to increase these institutions every where, North, South, East and West. They have taken the stock of whole corporations in many instances and in more, have become the proprietors of such large amounts as to elect officers and direct measures. They perfectly understand that new banks, by driving all specie from circulation within their sphere, inevitably became tributary to their operations. This is the only mode by which these banks can sustain their credit, which is the source of their profits. From the relations which exist between Philadelphia Banking and the similar system which prevails in England, this central power is able to control not only the importations from that country, but the market of our own staples. This was directly exhibited in the great experiment of the Bank of the United States for monopolizing the cotton crop of 1837. In the existing state of indebtedness, established by so many years' practical direction of the currency, the commerce, and the public Treasury of the Union-an independent course of action on the part of any particular section of the country seems to be impossible, except by the restoration of legal currency as the measure of value. So long as an artificial currency shall be tolerated as the general medium of interchange, the credit of which ultimately depends upon the management of Philadelphia Banking, it will always be in its power to control the transactions of every section of the Union, and make them all tributary to its profit. Take this District for example-this ten miles square-selected by Washington, for the seat of the National Government. It should, by its natural and political advantages, be as little dependent in its business as any portion of the whole United States. Its Legislature is Congress itself, who has always acted towards its interests with the greatest liberality. The aggregate expenditure of money raised upon the people of the rest of the Union for the establishments here, including the public buildings, public works, the legislative, executive, and judicial expenses which concentrate at this point, have not, within the last twenty years, fallen short of fifty millions of dollars, among forty thousand inhabitants, including slaves. Has the District of Columbia been enriched by this vast expenditure? At this hour there is far less commerce, and probably much less individual wealth here than previous to 1818. We hope no section of the country of similar extent and population has been so severely scourged by "the Credit System" in all its phases. Since that period the direct loss incurred by the failure of banks in Alexandria, Georgetown, and Washington, cannot be fairly estimated at less than five millions of dollars. This, however, is a small item compared with the incidental losses from the same source. By the expulsion of solid currency from general circulation, our banks, our dealers, and our citizens, have all become tributary to the great central paper-money power. The profits of the whole business and employments of this small community only serve to increase its ascendency. Wherever this power is able to exercise a monopoly over both products and supplies, this tax must fall even more heavily. In this District our tastes and necessities are supplied as may best promote the profit of the paper-money managers. In other regions of the Union the same power is exercised, and in addition, their absolute control of the artificial medium of payment enables them to command the sale of the produce of the agriculture and of the industry of those regions in such a manner, as to derive large advantages from each side of all transactions.

Within the period referred to, not only has the District of Columbia afforded a most instructive example to the rest of the Union of the impoverishing effects produced by the centralizing power of paper currency -but striking instances of the injurious influence of bolstering banks by the use of the public money. Among the most serious of the celebrated charges against Mr. Crawford in 1824, for official misconduct as Secretary of the Treasury, was that resulting from the aid he had afforded from the Public Treasury to sustain the Mechanics' Bank, the Union Bank, and the Franklin Bank of Alexandria-the Bank of Columbia, and the Union Bank of Georgetown-and the Patriotic Bank of Washington, during the distressed situation into which they had been plunged by the management of the Bank of the United States, which has been the subject of the present article. No one who has examined the facts can hesitate to acquit that distinguished individual of any unworthy motive in the exercise of his official power in those instances. That attack upon Mr. Crawford, as well as our more recent experience, cannot fail to carry conviction to the minds of all, that no integrity and honesty of purpose can afford adequate protection to the characters of our public men so long as they shall be compelled to co-operate with this perfidious system in carrying on the public service.

The system of Philadelphia Banking has undoubtedly realized, in the fullest extent, the original design of those who contrived to fasten it upon the country. It has concentrated the control over the most absorbing and important interests of the people of the United States into a few privileged and irresponsible hands. By commanding the circulation they are able to excite the community with prosperity, or depress it with adversity, at their pleasure. Its power has become more absolute and extensive than could have been anticipated by Morris and Hamilton, with all their anxiety to erect a government wholly independent of the people. It has, in short, nearly realized the wish of the Roman tyrant, that the people had but one neck. It enables the life blood oftraffic throughout the Union to be stopped at a single stroke, which may be inflicted either by foreigners or among ourselves, in defiance of any precaution under existing laws which can be adopted either by the General or State Executive Governments.

In Niles' Weekly Register of the ninth September, 1818, may be found the following statement in connection with the transition of pecuniary affairs which was then just beginning to operate upon the country.

"One of the Directors, and a principal stockholder of the Bank, remarked that he trembled for the standing of the Government, and for the liberties of the people, if this great engine ever passed into the hands of their enemies."

We shall endeavor, in another article devoted to an explanation of the political management of Philadelphia Banking, to enable our readers to judge whether this was a just appreciation of its power.

SONNETS.

BY PARK BENJAMIN.

I read the praises of past years, and lose
My mind among the temples and the shrines
Eternal, in the sweet, recording lines
Of bards majestic, who invoked the muse.
I taste ambrosia, sip nectarean dews,

And at the suppers of the gods sit down-
Whose radiant seats Olympus' summit crown,
And all around a glorious light diffuse.

Yet soon the pageant fades, and real fame
Alone the deathless amaranth can claim:
For unto me the splendor and the pride
Of old mythology are misty dreams-
A gorgeous spectacle that only seems-
And none are gods save heroes deified!

II.

Time! thou destroy'st the relics of the Past,
And hidest all the footprints of thy march
On shattered column and on crumbled arch,
By moss and ivy growing green and fast.
Hurled into fragments by the tempest-blast,
The Rhodian monster lies-the obelisk,
That with sharp line divided the broad disc
Of Egypt's sun, down to the sands was cast:---
And where these stood, no remnant-trophy stands,
And even the art is lost by which they rose:
Thus with the monuments of other lands-
The place that knew them now no longer knows.
Yet triumph not, oh Time; strong towers decay,
But a great name shall never pass away!

AMERICAN WOΜΕΝ.*

"MEANS AND ENDS," is the appropriate title of a very valuable though unpretending little work, which is the latest contribution to our American Literature of the sound practical benevolence, the acute and healthy good-sense, and the polished and graceful taste, of the author of "Hope Leslie." The "End" proposed is the formation of the character appropriate to the social and domestic relations of the American Woman; and the suitable "Means" of attaining this end constitute the subject to the illustration of which Miss Sedgwick has devoted about three hundred pleasantly and familiarly written duodecimo pages. "Self-Training," as indicated on the title-page, being after all the only true mode in which all the educational precepts that may be preached by the wisdom of expe