making an entire recommittal of the control of the currency to the general government; and even this is a doubtful measure. Meantime whatever palliatives may be applied should aim at one single point-the prevention of temporary and fitful expansions. We do not insist that as things are, all expansion should be at once annihilated throughout the globe; but we do insist that unless there is some definite, absolute limitation to it, as regards the country at large, as well as regards single banks, there can be no safety in any form of credit whatever; for a stable currency is the only basis of a safe credit. And this suggests the only practical remedy that the case at present admits; which is so long as the currency is as it now is, and must be for some time to come, let no man accept a long credit. Let all retail business be absolutely a cash business, and all wholesale business, either a cash business or on very short credits. A man who is fully aware of the present condition of our currency, and who will still lay himself liable for some remote day, or suffer incidental details to accumulate against him, is next thing to a madman. He knows not how much real value in products he will be compelled to pay if he promises so many dollars at a future day, no more than if he had promised so many coons. The real value of dollars may become one quarter, or one half, or four, or ten times their present value, before the payday comes. KEEP OUT OF DEBT. This is the only practical remedy at present. This will itself prevent the exorbitant expansion of the currency, or if others will plunge into debt and draw upon the banks and thus expand the currency; the man who is out of debt, at least escapes from the greatest evils of the impend. ing catastrophe. This remedy is for the mass of the people to apply, and for all small retail dealers: if these regarded the rule, those who con

duct a larger business might safely incur the hazards of short liabilities. This course has after all done more to hold the New England banks safe and steadfast than their system of supervisory control, which we admit to be good. Were the people of New England as improvident, and as reckless of their credit, and as eager for hazardous speculations, as the people of some of the other states, the control of a thousand Suffolk banks could never hold their system as steady and safe as it has been for past years. Doubtless their system has done somewhat to save them, but their position and their character have done far more; and any man who imagines that the same system would operate equally well for the Union at large, has but ill considered all the causes that are and must still be at work to produce a different result. When the people of other states shall become as shrewd and industrious, as careful of being trusted, and of trusting others, as are the people of New England, their banking system, bad as it now is, will lose half its power for mischief without any further control; and if New England was more provident and keen-sighted still in these respects, she would be still better off. It would give her more security against the evils of the most absurd currency in the world than ten United States banks or fifty more Suffolk banks.

But if the evils and hazards of expansion are so great, why has not the world discovered them before? They have; but they have ascribed the evil to the mode and not the principle. Adam South seems to have seen some of the dangers. More recent developments have disclosed more of them; and such has been the awful experience of the last ten years, that many a heated partisan of 1837 is quite content to regard the whole topic of banking as an "obsolete idea" in 1843. Amid much to be regretted, it can

scarce be doubted that the minds of our principal statesmen have made great progress on this subject under our recent experience; their general silence is ominous of this; all are beginning to see that a legal remedy is more difficult than they supposed, and that the extremes of no party were quite right. They have at least found that business could be transacted, prices rise, debts be paid, exchanges equalized, and credit confirmed, both without any United States bank, and without any expansion of the currency; for such has been the actual condition of things the past year, while the currency needed in active circulation is still less than the amount of specie now in the country. We can live, therefore, upon the specie basis. But we believe it impossible for any course of governmental policy whatever, to prevent a speedy return into the syren whirlpool of expansion and consequent revulsion? No power of a United States bank can secure us from the evil, whatever good it might do in other respects. During the forty years such an institution existed, the country experienced these same periodical paroxysms, occurring at intervals and with a severity just in proportion to the previous expansion; and in these forty years there were no less than sixteen years of bank suspensions and depreciations, either total or partial, throughout the Union; and we had in fact, then as now, the worst currency on the face of the globe. The report of the Chamber of Commerce of Manchester in 1839, shows that the same disastrous effects have occurred periodically under the Bank of England, in spite of its unparalleled sagacity and power. The same report estimates the losses in consequence of the operations of the Bank of England on the currency, in a few months of the summer of 1837, in six great staples of the empire, at over two hundred millVol. II.

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ions of dollars, to say nothing of the terrible individual and incidental results of this disaster. The terrible effects of expansion in France, as depicted by Mr. Irving, and the commercial stability and power which the virtual annihilation of the system under Napoleon gave to the empire, is well known to all. We have no Bonaparte here; and in any thing less than a Bonaparte, we can see no hope of relief from our present system, however much we may deplore its existence, save in these five short words-"Do NOT GO IN DEBT." Let the pulpit and the press both unite in resounding these words in the ears of the people, turning their minds from all hope of relief from any other quarter, and impressing upon them the true reasons, and the unutterable necessity of this advice in our present circumstances, until they shall see, and feel, and act upon it, to the needful extent; and they will be saved from the danger and the possibility of such expansions and revulsions. And we believe it the only possible security. We believe that God has suffered this scourge of expansion to arise in the world mainly for two reasons-to chastise the avarice of the age, and to force men to regard the injunction, "Owe no man any thing;" in other words, to compel them to live on their earnings, instead of on their ima ginations and their hopes.

This is the only source of relief and safety. Politicians, office-seekers, and demagogues, may and will talk long and loud of their various political remedies. It is all a noisy, clamorous, and oftentimes heartless brawl for party, place, and power. It is impossible for a democratic state essentially to relieve these, or any other kindred evils. They have followed, and they will follow us, through all modes of policy that can be devised short of a despotism. In all such matters the people of a free country will ever prove too

strong for the state as such; and in all save crime from within, and assault from without, they do, and they must hold their own destiny, for weal or for woe, in their own hands. The state can never banish the intoxication of either drinks, or commerce, or money, or credit; the people alone can. Sound the alarm there; give the people knowledge, honesty, and prudence, and this as well as all other evils will prove powerless; for these are in all cases, except war and crime, the only available saving influences in a democracy. True, bad policy may enhance such evils; but the best policy can never relieve them without the enlightened, virtuous, social cooperation of the people in their individual capacity. For such action of the people is the only supreme power in every democratic state.

We have said that the pulpit as well as the press should raise its voice. If there is a moral subject under heaven which the pulpit ought fully and faithfully to discuss, it is this; and that too in despite of those puling demagogues who always attempt to muzzle it when they augur danger to their own schemes of deception and ambition. In the single year of 1840, the direct frauds and robberies committed on banks in the United States, mostly by their presidents, officers, and clerks, amounted to over forty two millions of dollars!! Add to this the bankruptcies, failures, suspensions, and secret shifts and frauds of our moneyed institutions, diffused by example through all ranks and classes, and the only wonder is, that what little pecuniary honesty is still left should have so long survived.

THE period of five or six years that preceded the late extraordinary depression of business in our country, was rendered remarkable by the distinguished liberality with which the friends of Protestant Christianity in the eastern states responded to the calls of the west in behalf of her collegiate and theological institutions. Alarm had taken possession of the public mind not without cause. A formidable foe had appeared in the new settlements of the west in the persons of numerous Roman priests. They had already occupied the most commanding points in the country; and were heard to boast, prematurely indeed, but confidently, that in ten years the west would be theirs, and that when the west should fall into their hands, they could easily take care of New England. In addition to this, large bodies of foreign Papists were constantly landing upon

our shores, having as their place of destination, the regions beyond the Alleghany Mountains. It seemed as though the dragon had, as in the apocalyptic vision, cast out of his mouth water as a flood. The spirit of propagandism awakened in Europe, and a system of measures set at work in the United States sustained by powerful societies in Italy, France, and Austria; the well known jealousy of transatlantic legitimatists; the then recent declaration of the governor of Canada, who professed to know the fact from personal conversation with most of the sovereigns of Europe, that they looked upon, and were promoting the rapid emigration of their most worthless subjects, and their settlement in the new world, as the certain means of destroying our free institutions; and various other evidences then spread out before the public eye, of a 'foreign conspiracy'

against the liberties of the United States; all these causes combined, produced a deep and general sensation in the community. In addition to this, the current of emigra tion from the old to the new settlements began to be broader and more rapid. Glowing descriptions of the extraordinary fertility of the soil, of the rapid growth of the population, and of the certain prospect of increasing wealth, induced multitudes of that class of persons who constitute the majority of every community-persons of moderate means to turn their faces toward the land of promise with the hope of bettering their fortunes. Speculation also was turned into the same channel. The prospect of making money by the ready sale of lands increasing in value at the rate of fifty or a hundred per cent. a year, created an eager desire for western investments. Thus things were moving on. Every thing betokened a change at hand-the rapid rise of an empire, as it were, in a part of our territory, which, up to that period had been but little known and valued. "Westward the star of empire takes its way," was the leading idea of the day, and the one that more than any other thing gave direction to men's plans and enterprises.

It was under these peculiar circumstances that funds were liberally bestowed by eastern Christians for the establishment of colleges and theological institutions at the west, which under the guidance of Christian men, should continually send out a powerful influence in favor of the great principles of Protestant Christianity, upon the maintenance of which the hope of the world reposes.

But the scene soon changed. The results of those vigorous efforts to which the whole body of evangelical Christians were aroused at the time now referred to, began to be seen. A well educated ministry was planted in the west; far, far

indeed below an adequate supply, yet faithful, pious, and laborious. The seminaries of learning also, both collegiate and theological, began to send forth their healthful influences, and the interests of Protestantism were seen to rise up and to make rapid headway in the face of the enemy. The danger that had threatened the country was in part averted, and the current of events was fast rolling on a better state of things. What else was to be anticipated as the result of the general waking up of the Christian public to the dangers and necessities of the times? Such mighty energies as were thus put forth in behalf of evangelical truth, could not fail to make an impression, and in a greater or less degree to change the moral aspect of society. They never have been known to fail in other cases, and why should they in this? In the present case the results in some respects followed the means more speedily than was to be expected. The work that was wrought by the action of Christian minds upon the community, took place so rapidly, that the ploughman seemed in reality to overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that sowed the seed. The west was saved; not indeed beyond the danger of relapse; but the practicability of planting evangelical churches and of raising an army of evangelical men to fight for the principles of Protestantism, which are the same as genuine Christianity, with the love of those principles in their hearts, was practically and successfully tested, and the certainty established that those principles would grow, and yield an increase no less abundant than in any other period of time or portion of the globe. The experiment was a successful one, and called for a continued and still more vigorous prosecution of the enterprise, until the partial good already achieved, should result in the perfect triumph of

truth and purity, over error and corruption.

But to many Christian minds, the subject presented itself in a different aspect, and the conclusion to which they were led was both painful and discouraging. They felt that imposition had been practiced, undesignedly indeed, but through mistaken views; that their fears had been unnecessarily excited, and that money drawn from them under a state of excited apprehension, had been partly squandered, and was in a great measure lost to the cause of benevolence. The fear that an impression, so unjust, and so unwarranted by the facts in the case, and so disastrous in its influence, would cut off the feeble institutions of the west from the sympathies of the east, at the very time when their infant powers began to expand, and when foreign support was exceedingly necessary to enable them to bear up manfully against the adversities of the times; the fear of such a state of things spread a deep gloom over the minds of those persons at the west, who, seeing what had already been accomplished in the incipiency of the enterprise, and that the abandonment of it in the present stage, would be a loss that ages could not repair, felt that Providence had called them to trials and discouragements which nothing but faith could enable them to endure.

Let it even be granted, if it be required, that there never was a period when popery threatened to become the overshadowing influence of the west; that the alarm felt on this subject was altogether unnecessary-the concession is not so important as it may at the first view, appear to be. Let it be proved, that the growth of the Catholic population is not, and never was rapid, and that the education of the youth was not, to any alarming extent, in the hands of the papists. All this, though contrary to

fact, may be granted. But what then? Are the colleges and other seminaries therefore to be prostrated? Is the field to be abandoned, as some would infer, or at least have practically inferred, by refu sing to extend further pecuniary aid? The practical inference is a wrong one. It seems to say, the west is in no danger, if not from the pope and his emissaries. It overlooks the important fact, that, in the most favorable view that can be taken of the case, evil influences will outrun the progress of evangelical religion, without strenuous efforts to resist and counteract them; that there are a thousand different forms in which depravity will break out, unless restrained directly by that system of truth by which alone man can be made wise unto salvation; and that the ruin which must inevitably befall the great west, if it should be abandoned to itself, will involve among its numerous disastrous results, the downfall of the republic. Viewed therefore from either position, the west has claims for aid, from which neither the Christian nor the patriot can escape.

What then must have been the feelings of those who were personally engaged in the labors and trials necessarily connected with an ef fort to found literary and theological institutions, under all the disadvantages incident to their situation, when the hope of receiving the aid necessary to the further prosecution of the enterprise was about to be cut off. They were devoted to a high and solemn calling. To resign it would be unfaithfulness to the cause of the church. Yet how were they to stand up under the crushing weight of poverty and debt, with the prospect of absolute want staring them full in the face. Those persons only who have been in similar circumstances, are able to appreciate their trials and discouragements. But they were not to be diverted from their underta