Can the tender insight of the Imagination be more fully manifested than in the grief of Constance?

This is the impassioned but simple eloquence of Nature, and Nature's child: Shakspeare.

In these examples the reader will not fail to remark that the Imagination seems to gain much of its power from its love for and sympathy with the objects described. Not only are the objects with which it presents us truthfully rendered, but always lovingly treated.

With the Greeks, the Graces were also the Charities or Loves. It is the love for living things and the sympathy felt in them that induce the poet to give life and feeling to the plant, as Shelley to the 'Sensitive Plant;' as Shakspeare, when he speaks to us through the sweet voices of Ophelia and Perdita; as Wordsworth, in his poems to the Daisy, Daffodil, and Celandine; as Burns in his Mountain Daisy. As a proof of the power of the Imagination, through its Truth, and Love, to invest the lowest of God's creatures with interest, we offer the reader one of these simple songs of the heart.

Such poems are worth folios of the erudite and stilted pages which are now so rapidly pouring their scoria around us. Men seem ashamed now to be simply natural. Either they have ceased to love, or to believe in the dignity of loving. The great barrier to all real greatness in this present age of ours is the fear of ridicule, and the low and shallow love of jest and jeer, so that if there be in any noble work a flaw or failing, or unclipped vulnerable part where sarcasm may stick or stay, it is caught at, pointed at, buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung into, as a recent wound is by flies, and nothing is ever taken seriously or as it was meant, but always perverted and misunderstood. While this spirit lasts, there can be no hope of the achievement of high things, for men will not open the secrets of their hearts to us, if we intend to desecrate the holy, or to broil themselves upon a fire of thorns.

As the poet is full of love for all that God has made, because his imagination enables him to seize it by the heart, he would in this love fain gift the inanimate things of creation with life, that he might find in them that happiness which pertains to the living; hence the constant personification of all that is in his pages. He personifies, he individualizes, he gifts creation with life and passion, not willingly considering any creature as subordinate to any purpose quite out of itself, for then some of the pleasure he feels in its beauty is lost, for his sense of its happiness is in that case destroyed, as its emanation of inherent life is no longer pure. Thus the bending trunk, waving to and fro in the wind above the waterfall, is beautiful because it seems happy, though it is, indeed, perfectly useless to us. The same trunk, hewn down and thrown across the stream, has lost its beauty. It serves as a bridge—it has become useful, it lives no longer for itself, and its pleasant beauty is gone, or that which it still retains is purely typical, dependent on its lines and colors, not on its functions. Saw it into planks, and though now fitted to become permanently useful, its whole beauty is lost forever, or is to be regained only in part, when decay and ruin shall have withdrawn it again from use, and left it to receive from the hand of Nature the velvet moss and varied lichen, which may again suggest ideas of inherent happiness, and tint its mouldering sides with hues of life. For the Imagination, unperverted, is essentially loving, and abhors all utility based on the pain or destruction of any creature. It takes delight in such ministering of objects to each other as is consistent with the essence and energy of both, as in the clothing of the rock by the herbage, and the feeding of the herbage by the stream.

We have seen that the soul rejects exaggeration or falsehood in Art, and indeed all high Art, that which men will not suffer to perish, has no food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is forever looking under masks and burning up mists; no fairness of form, no majesty of seeming will satisfy it; the first condition of its existence is incapability of being deceived; and though it may dwell upon and substantiate the fictions of fancy, yet its peculiar operation is to trace to their farthest limits the true laws and likelihoods even of such fictitious creations.

Thus we again arrive at the fact that the two Divine attributes of Truth and Love, in their finite form indeed, but still 'images,' are absolutely necessary for the creation of any true work of Art. No work can be great without their manifestation; unless they have brooded with their silvery wings over its progress to perfection; and in exact proportion to their manifestation will be its greatness. On these two attributes in God repose in holy trust the universes He hath made; and that which typifies or suggests His faithfulness and love to the soul created to enjoy Him, must be a source, not only of Beauty, but of Delight.

We make no attempt to give an enumeration of the attributes on which Beauty is based; we would rather induce the reader to examine his Maker's great Book of Symbols for himself. We hope we have turned his attention to the fact that every Letter in this sacred Language is full of meaning; enough to induce him to investigate the glorious mysteries of the 'Open Secret.'

Whatever may be the decisions of the men of the senses, or the men of the schools, let him fearlessly condemn any work in which he cannot find wrought into its very heart suggestions or manifestations of the Divine attributes, or an earnest effort on the part of its author, naive and unconscious as it may be, to imitate the Spirit of the Great Artist.

We have placed the Rosetta stone of Art, with its threefold inscriptions in Sculpture, Painting and Music, with their union or resumé in Poetry, before him; we have given him the key to some of its wondrous hieroglyphics; let him study the remaining letters of this mystical alphabet for himself! These inscriptions are indeed trilingual, phonetic, and sacred, yet the simple and loving soul may decipher them without the genius of Champollion; their meaning is written within it. It will readily learn to connect the sign with the thing signified, and under the fleeting forms of rhythmed time and measured space, learn to detect the immutable principles which are to be its glory and joy for eternity!

1. History of the Bank of England, its Times and Traditions, from 1694 to 1844. By John Francis. First American Edition. With Notes, Additions, and an Appendix, including Statistics of the Bank to the close of the year 1861. By J. Smith Homans, Author of the 'Cyclopædia of Commerce and Commercial Navigation.' New York. 8vo, pp.476.

2. Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury to the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, in relation to the Issue of an Additional Amount of United States Treasury Notes.

3. Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances of the United States for the Year ending June 30, 1862.

4. The Tariff Question considered in regard to the Policy of England and the Interests of the United States. With Statistical and Comparative Tables. By Erastes B. Bigelow. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 4to, pp. 103 and 242.

5. The Bankers' Magazine and Statistical Register. New York, monthly, 1861-2. Edited by J. Smith Homans, jr.

The Bank of England was created during the urgent necessities of national finance. It was a concession of a valuable privilege to a few rich men, in consideration of their loaning the capital to the treasury. 'The estimates of Government expenditure in the year 1694 were enormous,' says Macaulay, in his fourth volume. King William asked to have the army increased to ninety-four thousand, at an annual expense of about two and a half millions sterling—a small sum compared with what it costs in the year 1862 to maintain an army of equal numbers.

At the period of the charter of the bank, the minds of men were on the rack to conceive new sources of revenue with which to meet the increased expenditures of the nation. The land tax was renewed at four shillings in the pound, and yielded a revenue of two millions. A poll tax was established. Stamp duties, which had prevailed in the time of Charles II had been allowed to expire, but were now revived, and have ever since been among the most prolific sources of income, yielding to the British Government in the year 1862 no less than £8,400,000 sterling. Hackney coaches were taxed, notwithstanding the outcries of the coachmen and the resistance of their wives, who assembled around Westminster Hall and mobbed the members. A new duty on salt was imposed, and finally resort was had to the lottery, whereby one million sterling was raised. All these resources were not sufficient for the growing wants of the Government, and the plan of the Bank of England was devised to furnish immediate relief to the finances. Montague brought the measure forward in Parliament, and 'he succeeded,' as Macaulay remarks, 'not only in supplying the wants of the state for twelve months, but in creating a great institution, which, after the lapse of more than a century and a half, continues to flourish, and which he lived to see the stronghold, through all vicissitudes, of the Whig party, and the bulwark, in dangerous times, of the Protestant succession.'

The birth of the bank and the birth of the English national debt were both in King William's time. In 1691, when England was at war with France, the national debt unfunded was £3,130,000, at an annual interest of £232,000. In 1697, at the Peace of Ryswick, this debt had swollen to £14,522,000. At the Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, it had reached £34,000,000. The war with Spain in 1718 brought it up to forty millions sterling. And here it might have rested, had the advice of Shakspeare been followed:

'Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.'

The war of the Austrian succession followed in 1742, and at the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, 'forever to be maintained,' the English were saddled with a debt of £75,000,000.

It was early in the last century that the abuse of paper money gave a lasting and unfavorable impression against such issues. The scheme of John Law and the South Sea Bubble about the same time broke and scattered their fragments over both England and France. It was in the latter scheme or folly that Pope lost a large portion of his earnings, from which we may infer that his temper was not improved. He wrote, in his Third Epistle, dedicated to Lord Bathurst:

In the same 'Moral Essay' he alludes to paper money in the following lines:

These are among the earliest tirades against paper money; which, like many other good things, is condemned because its power has been abused and prostituted.

England's enormous debt, which should have warned the Georges against further war, was not contracted without severe sacrifices. The legal rate of interest at the opening of the funding system was six per cent. In 1714 it was reduced to five per cent. Loans during the early wars of the eighteenth century were raised on annuities for lives on very high terms, fourteen per cent. being granted for single lives, twelve per cent. for two lives, and ten per cent. for three lives. But so far was England from being awake to the enormous debt she was creating by her expensive wars, that the seventy-five millions existing in 1748 became £132,000,000 at the close of the Seven Years' War in 1763. This volume was enlarged at the end of the American Revolution to £231,000,000. During all this time the bank was the lever with which these enormous sums were raised; but the end was not yet.

The French war with Napoleon became more exhaustive, and within twenty years from the peace with America to the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, the debt went up from £231,000,000 to £537,000,000 sterling. From this period to 1815 the debt accumulated annually, until it reached its maximum, or eight hundred and sixty-one millions sterling.

The circumstances of the nation and of the bank were known to the capitalists and to the people. Hence various causes of uneasiness and distress. The bank loaned the public treasury seven and a half millions in the years 1794, 1795, 1796, and the more they loaned to the exchequer, the less they could loan to the people. Thus followed a diminution of gold in the bank, and hoarding by the people. Gold was exported more freely to the Continent, and reduced accommodation was given to the merchants. Finally, on the 26th February, 1797, the king's council passed an order for the suspension of cash payments.

The bank was on the eve of suspension in the year 1847. On the 25th of October the cabinet authorized a violation of the charter, thereby acknowledging the inability of the bank to maintain specie payments. This order of Lord John Russell inspired fresh confidence, and the bank immediately recovered strength, and reduced the rate of interest from 8 per cent. in October to 7 per cent. in November, to 6 and 5 per cent. in December, to 4 per cent. in January, and to 3-1/2 in June following. The distress and revulsion of 1847 were consequent upon the over-trading and railway mania of 1844, 1845, and 1846, and the failure of crops in Ireland and England in 1847.

The distress of England in 1847 was scarcely over when France was more severely affected than at any period since the Continental War. Louis Philippe abdicated in February, 1848, when consols closed at 88-7/8. By the close of the week they fell to 83, upon the formation of a provisional government. The political dissensions and commercial revulsion led to a large withdrawal of gold from the Bank of France, and finally the Government authorized, in March, the suspension of the bank, which was followed by the suspension of the Bank of Belgium and by the Société Generale.

Again, in 1857, the Bank of England was on the verge of suspension. Lord Palmerston and the then cabinet issued an order, November 12, authorizing the bank, if they thought it advisable, again to violate the charter; but it was found at the last moment unnecessary.

November was the critical period of the year 1857. The Times of November 12, 1857, contained these announcements:

The facts and statistics from the year 1844 to 1860 relating to the bank are superadded to the English work by the American editor. Of the important phases of this period the editor gives a slight sketch in the following paragraphs. The prominent financial movements in England, France, and the United States are given in the subsequent pages of the volume.

Attention has been recently directed in this country to the premium on gold, or to the alleged fall in the value of bank paper and Government notes. Although the premium on gold as an article of merchandise has reached a high rate during the present year, it will be seen, on reference to the reliable tables in the History of the Bank of England, that a great difference occurred during the suspension of the bank in 1797 to 1819. Gold at one time (1812) reached £5 8s., a difference of 30 per cent. The annexed table shows the changes from 1809 to 1821.

The increased volume of Government and bank paper afloat in the United States since the 1st January, 1862, is conceded to be only temporary. The Government is engaged in crushing the greatest rebellion known to history; in doing this, the national expenditures are six or seven fold what they ever were before, in a time of peace. During the four years 1813 to 1816, when war raged with England, the whole expenses of the Government were $108,537,000. During the Mexican war, when the disbursements of the treasury were much heavier, the average annual expenses of the Government were about 35 to 48 millions. It will be well to recur to these tabular details for future history. They are presented as follows, for the whole period of the General Government.

During the past fiscal year, 1862-3 and the year 1863-4, the Government expenditures are estimated at ten hundred millions of dollars. These heavy disbursements cannot be carried on merely by the ordinary bank paper and the gold and silver of the country. Instead of sixty-five millions of dollars, the average annual expenditures of the Government during the last administration, these now involve the sum of five hundred millions annually. Hence the obvious obligation on the part of the Government of putting in circulation the most reliable currency, and of avoiding those of local banks, which do not possess the confidence of the people at a distance. This can be done only by maintaining a currency of Government paper which every holder will have full confidence in, and in which no loss can be sustained.

There is here no conflict or competition between the Government and the State banks. The latter have the benefit of their legitimate circulation in their own respective localities; while the national treasury furnishes to the troops and to the creditors of the nation a circulation of treasury notes which must possess confidence as long as the Government lasts.

The policy of the English Government in this respect was a wise one. At the adoption of the last charter of the bank (1844) the Government allowed the country banks to maintain from that time forward the circulation then outstanding, which was not to be increased; and as fast as the banks failed or were wound up voluntarily, their circulation was retired and the vacuum became filled by the notes of the Bank of England. The latter was forbidden by its new charter to exceed certain prescribed limits in its issues. They could issue to the amount of their capital, £14,000,000, and beyond that to the extent of gold in the vaults. Thus the bank circulation of England, Scotland, and Ireland is less now than in 1844, when the new principle was established, viz.:

BANK CIRCULATION.

Let us recur to the eventful history of the bank. Although a private institution, owned and controlled by private capital, its large profits accruing for the benefit of its own share-holders, yet it became so closely inter-woven with the commerce, manufactures, trade, and the public finances of the nation, that it may be considered as in reality a national institution. At its inception its whole capital was swallowed by the treasury. This was a part of the contract of charter. Its subsequent accumulations of capital, from £1,200,000, have likewise been absorbed by the Government, until now the bank reports the Government debt to them to be £11,015,100, and the Government securities held, to be £11,064,000. Without the aid of the bank, the national treasury could not, probably, have made the enormous disbursements which were actually made between the commencement of the American Revolution in 1776, and the termination of the continental war of 1815. The bank here furnished, almost alone, 'the sinews of war.'

During this eventful period there were large numbers of provincial banks of issue created in England and Ireland. These were managed mainly with a view to private profit, while the public interests have suffered severely from the frequent expansions and contractions of the volume of the currency through such private management, and from the numerous failures of these concerns. The evils of this system were for many years the subject of discussion in Parliament and among prominent journals. In 1826 the Edinburgh Review expressed the opinion that

This was a period of great speculation in England. In the year 1823 no less than 532 companies were chartered, with a nominal capital of 441 millions sterling. These speculations were fostered by the increasing volume of bank paper. The evil increased, and was allowed to exist until the year 1844, when a stop was put to the further increase of the volume of bank circulation, and to the further incorporation of joint stock banks.

We learn one lesson here, which may have a good effect upon us if we will bear it in mind in our future legislation, and take warning from the experiences of our contemporaries. We allude to the obvious necessity in a country like ours, and, indeed, in any country, of maintaining a national moneyed institution as a check upon the vacillation, expansions, and contractions which mark the policy of small banks of issue. This national institution, while free from individual profit, and without power to grant individual favors, should create and perform the functions of a national currency, and execute all the details required by or for the national treasury. Its chief utility would be as a check upon the excess to which all joint stock banks are liable—a sort of controlling and conservative power to prevent that mischief which our past experience shows has been the result of paper money when issued merely for private gain.

The Bank of England, in its early stages, was endangered by various and extraordinary circumstances. Within three years of its establishment it was compelled to suspend payment to its depositors in cash, and issued certificates therefor payable ten per cent. every fortnight. In 1709 the Sacheverell riots occurred in London, and fears were felt that the bank would be sacked; but this violence was obviated by well-trained troops. In 1718 John Law's bank was established in France, and for two years kept the people in a ferment. This was followed by the South Sea scheme in England, in 1720, 'a year (the historian Anderson says) remarkable beyond any other which can be pitched upon for extraordinary and romantic projects.' The bank, of course, suffered by these speculative measures, and was repeatedly exposed to a run upon its specie resources.

In 1722 the rest (or reserve fund) was established by the bank, as a measure to cover extraordinary losses in the future, and to inspire more confidence among the public as to the ability of the bank to meet reverses. This fund, in July, 1862, had accumulated to £3,132,500 sterling, or about twenty-one and a half per cent. of the capital.

The first forged note of the Bank of England was presented in the year 1758, or sixty-four years after the bank was established. In 1780 these forgeries became more numerous, and were so well executed as to deceive the officers of the bank.

Let us now recur to some of the incidents connected with the bank in early ages. Of these, the author, Mr. Francis, furnishes numerous instances.

Among other frauds upon the bank was that of clipping the guineas, by one of the clerks employed in the bullion office. This occurred in 1767.

The forgery of its notes having been made a capital offence, the waste of life in consequence was severe. During the eight years, 1795 to 1803, there were one hundred and forty executions for this crime; and two hundred and nine between 1795 and 1809; and from 1797 to 1811 the executions were 469. 'The visible connection between the issue of small notes and the effusion of blood, is one of the most frightful parts of this case.'

In 1803 a fraud on the bank to the extent of £320,000 was perpetrated by Mr. Robert Astlett, a cashier of the bank. This was in the re-issue of exchequer bills that had been previously redeemed, but which were not cancelled. This fraud amounted to about 2-1/2 per cent. of the capital, and although it did not prevent a dividend, it prevented the distribution of a bonus which would otherwise have been paid to the shareholders.

In the year 1822 another fraud on the bank came to light. This was perpetrated by a bookkeeper, and amounted to £10,000. In 1824 the fraud of Mr. Fauntleroy on the bank was discovered, amounting to £360,000. This was done by forged powers of attorney for the transfer of Government consols.

Speculation had been rife in 1824; no less than 624 companies were started with a nominal capital of £372,000,000, including mining, gas, insurance, railroad, steam, building, trading, provision, and other companies. At the same time foreign loans were contracted in England to the extent of £32,000,000, of which over three fourths were advanced in cash.

The country banks of England had increased their circulation from £9,920,000 in 1823 to £14,980,000 in 1825, or over fifty per cent., thus stimulating prices, and promoting speculation widely throughout the country.

Immediately following the revulsion at the close of the year 1825, Mr. Huskisson's free trade policy was advocated in the House of Commons by a vote of 223 to 40. In the same year lotteries were suppressed in England. In 1828 branches of the Bank of England were established—a measure, of course, unpopular among the provincial joint stock banks.

In the year 1832-'3 were brought forward three important measures in Parliament. One was the abolishment of the death penalty for forgery; another was the modification of the usury laws; the third was the re-charter of the bank.

The last criminal executed for forgery was a man by the name of Maynard, in December, 1829. Public sentiment had long been opposed to the infliction of this punishment for the offence of forgery, and transportation was now substituted in the prominent cases. England, at the same time, opened the way for a gradual abolishment of the usury laws. At first the relief was extended to short commercial paper, afterward to all paper having not over twelve months to run, 1837; and finally, in 1854, the usury laws were removed from all negotiable paper, as well as from bonds and mortgages.

By the new charter of 1833, Bank of England notes were, for the first time, made a legal tender, except at the bank itself. Joint stock banks were authorized in the metropolis, but were prohibited from issuing notes.

The English work of Mr. Francis is anecdotical in its character. The American edition conveys to the reader, for the first time, a resumé of the leading movements in Parliament on the subject of the bank, and its close connection with the Government finances. The part which Mr. Pitt, Mr. Canning, Sir Robert Peel, and other distinguished statesmen took in the relations between the bank and the exchequer, is in the supplementary portion of the new edition shown, as well as the views of Lord Althorpe, Lord Ashburton, Lord Geo. Bentinck, Mr. Thomas Baring, Lord Brougham, Mr. Gilbart, Sir James Graham, Lord King, Earl of Liverpool, Jones Loyd, Lord Lyndhurst, Mr. Rothschild, and others who exercised a large influence over the monetary interests of their day.

In the consideration of the banking and currency questions of the day and of the last and present century, it is desirable to have thus brought together in a single work, a continuous history of the institution which has had so large an influence upon the public interests of Europe, and a review of the important circumstances which marked the progress of the bank in its successful efforts to sustain England against foreign enemies and domestic revulsions, an index to the speculative movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when commerce, trade, and the vast monetary interests of Europe and America have been unnecessarily and cruelly involved.

But a state of things exists now in this country hitherto unknown. The contracts of the Government involve the expenditure of larger sums than were ever paid before in the same space of time by this or any other Government. In the disbursements of these large sums it is an obvious duty of Congress to provide a national circulation of uniform value throughout the whole country—a circulation of a perfectly reliable character, not subject in the least to the ordinary vicissitudes of trade or to the revulsions which have frequently marked our history. These revulsions have been witnessed, and their results seen by the leading public men of the century. Mr. Madison saw at an early day the importance of creating and sustaining a government circulation. His language was: 'It is essential to every modification of the finances that the benefits of an uniform national currency should be restored to the community.'

Mr. Calhoun, in 1816, said: 'By a sort of undercurrent, the power of Congress to regulate the money of the country has caved in, and upon its ruin have sprung up those institutions which now exercise the right of making money in and for the United States.'

'It is the duty of government,' says a well known writer, 'to interfere to regulate every business or pursuit that might otherwise become publicly injurious. On this principle it interferes to prevent the circulation of spurious coin.' Counterfeit coin is more readily detected than a fictitious paper currency, yet no sane man would advocate the repeal of the laws which prohibit it. Why, then, permit the unlimited manufacture of paper money of an unreliable character?

In the consideration of this subject we should divest ourselves of all selfish views of private profit and advantage. We should look only to the public good, to stability in trade and commerce, and to the general interests of the people at large as distinguished from those of a few individuals. It is clearly then the province of government to establish and to regulate the paper money of the nation, so that it shall possess the following attributes:

I. To be uniform in value throughout all portions of the country.

II. To be perfectly reliable at all times as a medium for the payment of debts.

III. To be issued in limited amounts, and under the control of the Government only.

IV. To be convertible, at the pleasure of the holder, into gold or silver.

It must be conceded that these requisites do not belong, and never can belong, to paper issued by joint stock banks, which are governed with a view to the largest profit, and which are but little known beyond their own immediate localities.

If the Bank of England had been governed by considerations of public welfare, and not by those of private interest, it would not have reduced the rate of interest to 2-1/2 per cent. in 1844-'5, thus producing violent speculation, and leading to the revulsion of 1849. Nor would the bank have established low rates of interest only in the year 1857, thus leading this powerful institution to the verge of bankruptcy, and to the clemency of the British Cabinet in November of that year.

England has checked the paper circulation of the country, but has not withdrawn from the bank the power to promote speculation by extravagant loans at a low rate of discount.

The Governments of France and England have both assumed control of the paper currency of their respective countries. This is sound policy, and it is one of the prerogatives that must be exercised, in its full force, by the Government of the United States and by all other governments, if stability, permanency, consistency are to be observed or maintained for the people. This is obviously necessary in a time of peace and prosperity; it is perhaps more so in a time of rebellion or war, like the present. Circumstances may arise where it will be the course of wisdom and safety to suspend specie payment; and, in some extreme exigencies, to forbid the export of specie.

This position was well explained by Mr. J.W. Gilbart, manager of the London and Westminster Bank, who, in his testimony before Sir Robert Peel, in 1843, said, 'If I were prime minister, I would immediately, on the commencement of war, issue an order in council for the bank to stop payment. I stated also that I spoke as a politician, not as a banker. * * * I came to the conclusion that, under the circumstances of the war of 1797, a suspension of cash payments was not a matter of choice, but of necessity.' (Vide 'History of the Bank of England,' New York edition, p. 130.)

We come now to consider what is necessary, in order to restore the currency of the United States to a specie footing. This restoration is demanded alike by motives of justice and sound policy. No contracts can be well entered into, unless the currency of the country is upon a substantial and permanent footing of redemption. It is a matter which concerns every individual in the community; it is especially so to the General Government in view of its extraordinary expenditures: and no commercial prosperity can be maintained without it.

A restoration of public and private credit can be accomplished only by an observance of those sound principles of finance that have been announced by the wise men of our own and other countries. Mr. Alexander Hamilton, Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, each in his turn advocated a national institution, by which the currency of the country could be placed upon a reliable and permanent footing. Such an institution should control the currency and receive surplus capital on deposit; but need not interfere with the legitimate operations of the State banks as borrowers and lenders of money, nor encourage in the slightest degree, through loans, any speculative movements among the people.

In the next place our people must resort to and maintain more economy in their individual expenditure, and thus preserve a balance of foreign trade in our own favor. It is shown that, during the fiscal year ending 30 June, 1860, there were imported into the United States goods, wholly manufactured, of the value of ... $166,073,000, partially manufactured, 62,720,000.

besides other articles exceeding one hundred millions in value.

Rather than send abroad thirty or forty millions in gold annually, as we have done of late years, let us dispense with foreign woollen goods, silk and cotton goods, laces, &c., and encourage our own mills, at least until the war and its debt are over.

Mr. Madison said much in a few words, when he said: