the approaching winter, descend into the plains, to gather in the harvest. Then the slaughter commences, and does not end till harvest is over, and often not even then. The malaria seizes the hardy mountainer as its lawful prey, and hurries him with fearful rapidity into the grave. Unaccustomed to the scorching sun that beats on those plains, he finds himself at night exhausted and feeble. Inured to toil, and delving among his native hills from morning till night, he wonders at his weariness. Without a hut to shelter him, he flings his complaining limbs on the damp earth, as he has often flung them on the mountain side, expecting the morning will find him fresh and vigorous as ever. But ere slumber has wrapped his weary form, the pestilential vapors begin to steam up from the noxious earth, and noiselessly embrace their unconscious victim. In the morning, he who has felt all his life long his blood leap in his veins like his native torrents, now feels it creeping heavy and hot through his depressed system. Ignorant of his danger, or the cause of his ills, he renews his task, and again staggers on under a burning sun, and lies down again to sleep on the moist earth, in the embrace of his foe. The next day the poor fellow toils with hotter brain and a wilder pulse, and flings himself at night on the cool earth, from which he will never rise again to his labor. Thus, while the scanty harvest of grain is gathered in, the malaria has been reaping its richer harvest of men."

With the same appreciating eye and felicity of language has Mr. Headley dwelt everywhere upon the triumphs of Architecture, Painting, Music and Sculp

ture.

But it is not the splendors alone of nature and of art which fill and illuminate all the shores and cities of Italy, that arrested the quick regard of the traveler. While he leads us into the halls of kings, into the more than regal magnificence of a proud hierarchy, and amid the beautiful and poetic scenes that on every side abound, he has not neglected to introduce to our notice the people crammed into filthy dens, half clothed in tattered garments, with haggard faces, as the fruits of a social and political system that requires "two-thirds to die of starvation, that the other third may die of surfeit." This is the book's chief merit, though it possesses so many other sterling qualities. It thus fills in Italian picturing a space that has hitherto been vacant. We are not willing to be delighted with political descriptions of that lovely country alone, when it is filled with a half-fed people; or, of statues that record the deeds and memory of the great and noble departed,

while the living sufferers that lie beneath them are left out of the picture; or, of churches more magnificent than one could well dream of, while wretched men, in disregarded rags, sit upon their broad steps, begging the bread that is not given. Let us have the full picture, drawn to the life, of this and every other country, or let us have nothing.

He takes frequent occasion to let us know, that all intelligent persons there know the condition of their country and are ready for a change. We extract a striking passage. The long succession of gorgeous papal ceremonies had closed at last with a magnificent display of fire

works.

tion.

and our

"Lent is over-the last honors are done to God by his revealed representatives on earth, and the Church stands acquitted of all neglect of proper observances. Is it asked again if the people are deceived by this magnificence? By no means. A stranger, an Italian, stood by me as I was gazing on the spectacle, and we soon fell into conversaHe was an intelligent man, topic was Italy. He spoke low but earnestly of the state of his country, and declared there was as much genius and mind in Italy now as ever, but they were not fostered. An imbecile, yet oppressive government, monopolized all the wealth of the state, and expended it in just such follies as these, while genius starved, and the poor died in want. I have never heard the poor Pope so berated in my own country. At the close of the representation of a volcano, I remarked with a most bitter sneer, hell is in Rome that it resembled perdition. Yes,' said he, now-a-days.' Had the Pope or one of his gens-d'armes heard it, he would have seen the inside of a prison before morning. I was exceedingly interested in him, for he was an intelligent and earnest man, and when I turned to go away, I took him by the hand and bade him good bye, saying, Yes,' he replied, another day is finished. with the same withering sneer, another day of our Master, another day of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

The common people, too, appear to see quite through the jugglery and falseness of their ghostly teachers. When near the close of a terrible three days storm, bishop and priests "took the ashes of John the Baptist," marched solemnly to the sea, kneeled in the water and prayed to stop the tempest-soon after which the wind whirled about, and the storm lulled, a manifest miracle!—one fellow asks: "why did'nt they pray sooner, before the mischief was all done?"

66

another says, with a noticeable shrug, umph! they watched the barometer !"

Ir is not a work of much difficulty to write an ordinary commercial article for a magazine. A few of the latest returns from the Banks and the Customs, a stock table, the prices of the great staples of the country, and a slur at the Tariff, constitute the materials with which they are generally made. This is surely not all which merchants, or politicians who watch the progress of the United States, have a right to expect. They want broad views, based upon extended observation of cause and effect in the commercial world. We know better what it is they do want, than how ourselves to furnish it. It requires a combination of materials not always equally at hand, and a power of philosophical deduction which is not the lot of many men to possess. We lay claim to neither, and yet we deem the present position of the country sufficiently interesting to warrant us in throwing out a few general reflections upon its cha

racter.

The most obvious feature of it, is the absence of any system of regulation of the currency of the country. After a period of severe distress following hard upon the discontinuance of a National Bank, a new period of great ease and prosperity succeeded, and still continues. There are many who, as they despaired of a change from the former, are now correspondingly sanguine of the permanency of the latter state. They suppose that the great problem which has puzzled economists so long is at last solved, and that after all the real way to regulate the financial affairs of a nation, is to let them regulate themselves. It is useless to remark upon this common tendency to look only upon the surface of things. Political economy is to most minds a science of misty theory, because there is a much greater tendency in writers to substitute their hasty conclusions from partial views for the more difficult and labored process of induction that flows from extensive observation of facts. There is moreover a great need of resort to crucial experiments, in order to arrive at any reasonable certainty of the exact connection of cause and effect in events. So great is the number of disturbing forces operating upon them, that it is barely possible for

the calmest judgment to avoid sometimes confounding that relation. There were probably as many men in America who ascribed the derangement of the currency in 1837 to the existence as to the absence of a National Bank; and neither side was without plausible ground for its view. There are now more persons who consider the present prosperity as the consequence of the freedom from any regulation, than there are who regard that very prosperity as an indication of the necessity of applying in season some sort of control.

In the mean time, the government of the United States remains passive. It is somewhat questionable whether any zealous attempt will be made even to return to the lame expedient of a Sub-Treasury. When in 1837 the Secretary of the Treasury found himself completely paralyzed by the general suspension of specie payments on the part of the Banks, in which thirty millions of the public funds were deposited, he then very naturally turned his attention to some mode of preventing for the future a like embarrassment. The country was fortunate in being in a state of profound peace. What the effect would have been in case of war, it is not easy to say. A national system ought to be predicated as well upon the probability of the one contingency as of the other. Ours is and has been nothing more than a string of expedients. The first National Bank was the offspring of the disorders consequent upon the Revolutionary struggle; the second grew out of a feebly-conducted war. Each lasted its time, and then there was an eager searching for new experiments. The democracy of President Van Buren and Levi Woodbury, profoundly shocked by the test of the infidelity of the whole brood of rotten Banks, into which they had breathed all of vitality they ever possessed, threw itself for protection upon the reserved powers of the Government itself. They argued as the miser does, that after all there was nothing like the strong box. The result was visible in the Sub-Treasury. But that system, even during the brief period that it lasted, never was in truth what it professed to be. The repeal of it was the work of the Whigs.

It remains to be seen whether, now that the Democrats have recovered power, they will restore it. The inaugural address of the President, and the silence of the government press, argue indifference to it, to say the least. There may be many motives which would dictate a formal renewal of the proposition, besides a conviction of its intrinsic merit. It was an expedient, and it had its day. Times have changed, and there appears no present necessity for action upon the subject. It is not to be supposed that the administration which has opened and is pursuing different and more interesting objects, will embarrass itself unnecessarily in taking care of futurity in this particular. If the Sub-Treasury should be adopted, it will be only in form. The Government will continue to use the Banks through its agents, much as it now does directly; and the present system of currency will be allowed to go on without interruption, just so long as it can go by itself. It will be only an urgent necessity which will give rise to the adoption of any new expedient.

What is then the state of our currency in the United States in 1845? It is dependent upon the action of Banks chartered by the several States, just as it was ten years ago. These act without concert with each other, and without responsibility to any common head. The Government of the United States resorts in most cases to them for the transaction of its business, but in some to individuals, having in neither any security for its funds, or control over the agents it employs. The system consists in there being none at all. If it will last forever as it has done now for four years, then is it indeed the euthanasia of a national currency.

In order to form any opinion of its duration, it will be necessary to look back and see where it commenced. Up to the period of the adoption of the Tariff by the Whig party in 1842, there had been no symptom of relief to the distress of the country. Without intending to claim for that measure all of the prosperity that has ensued, we have a right to assume for it that it came in just at the right moment to revive the drooping energy of the people, exhausted by the drain of its resources to foreign countries, which had for years previous been going on under the operation of a scale of prices created by a redundancy of paper money of banks, and raised by it much higher than ruled else

where. It was this which had brought in quantities of wheat to a people able to supply, not themselves alone, but the world besides. It was this which had carried up the value of imports to the enormous amount of one hundred and ninety millions of dollars, in the single year 1836. It was this which gave a great excess of imports over exports during the whole period of the prevalence of what was called the Compromise Act of 1832, down to the year 1840. Even after the scale of artificial prices caused by the expanded currency of the Banks, the original inducement to these excessive imports, had been done away by the failure of those Banks to redeem it, the fatal effect of the system remained. It pressed upon the industry of the people, struggling for the reduced wages of its labor against the competition of great foreign capital, wielding products cheaply wrung from the hands of a needy and starving population in the Old World. It was not so much the payment for goods from abroad which made the paralysis of 1840, as the difficulty of selling anything at a remunerating price at home. The paper circulation of the Banks had been contracted forty-three millions of dollars in three years; the prices of all commodities had been going down at a corresponding rate; and yet the stranger had the whole command of the market, because he could afford to sell at the smallest living profit, or at the least sacrifice, whenever a sale could be made at all.

The adoption of the Tariff at that moment, changed the whole face of things. The people began to draw breath. Importations continued for some time, it is true; but having been made in the face of a low scale of prices, under the delusive idea that the advance of duties would raise those prices, they paid little profits, and inspired no disposition to extend them. The first sensible improvement was in the firmness of the domestic markets. The lowest point of prices had been reached. Trade then began to assume its natural channels. The Banks, which had been busy in contracting all obligations until they had almost put a stop to the formation of new ones, found a farther perseverance in their policy unnecessary. With the returning confidence of the community, their resources became more available. The process of liquidation which had been going on for three years, gradually accumulated a great amount of capital in money unemployed.

While in 1836 the community was gorged with paper and yet demanding more, in 1842 and 1843 it had little and wanted little. The wheel had been turning so long that it had got completely round, and the currency was beginning a new

career.

If we are correct in our conjecture of the effect of the Tariff of 1842 upon the present state of things, it becomes a matter of some interest to know what the probability is of its continuance. It is well known that the party unfriendly to it is now in possession of power, and that it will modify or repeal as it can hope to be sustained by popular opinion in the act, but not without. Had the revenue from customs been as abundant this year as it was the last, there is no doubt that some modification of its provisions would have been sustained. The contrary is, however, likely to be the case to a sufficient extent to remove all argument of necessity on that account. There will be no great surplus to brag of. From present returns of the first half of the year, it would seem that the receipts for 1845 will be less than those of 1844 by at least one-fifth of the whole amount. It will scarcely be the part of prudence in Government to recommend a measure having in prospect a reduction, in the face of this decline; more particularly if the calculations of the friends and authors of the system itself should prove well-founded, a decline in the import of dutiable goods will hereafter go on in proportion as the manufacture of them becomes established here. This expectation is likely to prove well-founded in the great article of iron, at least. A concurrence of circumstances has had the effect of raising the price of that article so high in Great Britain, as to stimulate to the production of it in America, at least to an extent to supply the domestic market. Considering the peculiar quarter in which this great article is most manufactured, it may admit of a doubt whether the Administration will feel inclined to disturb that interest seriously; and if it does not, it will not be easy to frame any general modification of the system of which it makes so material a part. Neither does it appear probable, that in the present somewhat confused state of our relations with foreign nations, when the necessity of increased expenses in preparation for any result that may take place is pressing, a material reduc

as,

tion of the present revenue can with safety be recommended.

Assuming then, for a moment, that the Tariff of 1842 will not be essentially changed, we have the great element upon which the safety of the present no-system of the currency rests, still undisturbed, and the experiment will go on under tolerably fair prospects. We are, nevertheless, entire sceptics of its ultimate success. Without presuming to go over the ground so often trodden in the contests of the last ten or fifteen years, we must yet be permitted to maintain that no experience worth having, in any country, has yet shown that the currency of a country, when made up of paper resting upon credit, can be safely left to regulate itself in irresponsible hands. The progress of the last three or four years proves nothing on one side, any more than the distress of the preceding years does on the other. The excessive revulsion from one to the other, the great swing of the pendulum carrying with it as it does the fortunes of myriads of individuals, proves more than both. It proves that some system should be devised, no matter what it shall be called. Whether it be Bank, Sub-Treasury, or Exchequer, so long as it shall prove effective in bringing the entire circulating medium of the Union to a specie standard, and keeping it there; the friends of a sound and stable currency ask no more. They ought not to be satisfied with less, or that nothing at all should be proposed, or that what shall be proposed prove little likely to effect any really good end. To them it ought to be no argument, that things are going on well enough of themselves. Supposing, for a moment, that the fact be granted, is the inference also to be conceded, that the virtue of the present "well enough" is in the let alone policy itself, and not in mere chance? As well might the captain of a ship argue, that because the helm may be left without a steersman in a time of dead calm at sea, therefore the vessel may be safely trusted to take care of itself in the next storm.

The operations of commerce require periods, of time to develop themselves. From the spring of 1837 to the autumn of 1842, the revulsion consequent upon the suspension of specie payments had its sway. Of the suffering of that time, it is perhaps unnecessary to remind our readers. Its cause lay in the necessity of submitting to a steady contraction of the paper circulating