riod of our history. If they obstinately refuse to take this course, we may, for a time, have, as we had in 1819-21, not only a depreciated, but a deficient, currency ;-or have currencies of almost as many different values as we have banks.

By a prompt settle

ment of balances, the notes of the three hundred banks of New England have been kept at par throughout the Eastern States. By adopting a similar policy, the banks of the South and West may cause their notes to be as much sought after, as the notes of the Bank of the United States were in the days of its greatest glory.

Some expense will be incurred at the commencement of a sound system, but this will be inconsiderable when compared with the advantages that will accrue. In no other way can the requisite amount of sound paper medium be supplied, a ruinous fall of prices be prevented, and confidence be generally restored.

When the system is fairly brought into operation, it will entail little or no expense on the banks that conduct their affairs on commercial principles. Confining their credit dealings to business paper, they will find what they owe to some banks exactly balanced by what is due to them by others.

Vacillation must be the order of the day, in a country where there are eight or nine hundred independent sovereignties coining money out of paper. The temptations of great immediate gains will always be luring them from the plain principles which ought to regulate their conduct. Our currency is, moreover, liable to be affected by every commercial change of affairs in Europe. So long as capital is as relatively superabundant in England as it is at present, our banks may by concerted action, keep an immense amount of paper in circulation, and yet not turn foreign exchanges so far against us as to deprive themselves of their metallic basis. To what extent the whole number of banks in a country may, under the most favorable circumstances, increase their issues and yet avoid suspending specie payments, is a problem of political economy which has never yet been satisfactorily solved. We were in a fair way of solving it, when the Bank of England in 1836 withdrew its credit from the "American houses," and our own Government issued the famous "Specie Circular." Men who have no higher object in view than the gratification of their philosophical curiosity, may regret that our banks were not suffered to go on expanding till they had reached the utmost limits of expansion; but then the revulsion that would have ensued would have been overwhelming. If Bank and State be reunited they will not probably have to wait long before their curiosity will be fully gratified; and the revulsion that will then follow may finish the system.

The manly course of the United States Administration, must give great satisfaction to the Democracy of the country. We should be very unwilling to deprive the Legislature and the banks of New

York, of any praise to which they are justly entitled. But what, would have been the condition of things, if the Administration had yielded to the strenuous, and apparently preconcerted, efforts made by parties extending from Boston to New Orleans, to compel it to receive irredeemable paper? There would then have been no fixed standard of value in the country. Neither would there have been a banner, under which the friends of sound currency and sound credit could have rallied their forces. The circulating medium of the whole Union would have been in a condition resembling that of certain portions of the South West. The members of Congress who have now but feebly expressed their wish that irredeemable paper should be received for a little season, would then have carried a resolution to this effect triumphantly through both houses. Then many evils which may now be transient would have been prolonged indefinitely for when motives of temporizing expediency are once suffered to guide the policy of a nation, occasions can never be wanting for bringing such motives into repeated action.

The firmness of the Executive has preserved the country from sufferings greater than any foreign foe could inflict upon us. Though deserted on this vital question by many of its professed friends, perplexed by the factious conduct of some of its subordinates, and assailed with unrelenting virulence by its old opponents, it has spurned the measures of time-serving expediency which so many have tried to force it to adopt. A remarkable spectacle has been exhibited. The men who have, or who seem to have, the most wealth, have been doing all in their power to break up the very foundations of property; and the Administration, in resisting their efforts, has received little support except from those whose own sinewy arms give them all the wealth they possess. Fearful has been the struggle between the industrious classes of society and the Administration on the one side, and the banks and speculators on the other. State and Municipal authorities, Legislative, Judicial, and Executive, have, some from compulsion and some from inclination, all bowed to the mandates of the money-power. They have suspended the operations of the laws, tortured legal ingenuity to evade their force, or openly trampled them under foot. The Democratic Administration of the General Government has had fearful enemies to contend with, but it has never blenched. It has nobly vindicated the insulted majesty of Law and Constitution. It has stood firm, and it has stood almost alone, in this high post of moral dignity; and it is already receiving its reward in the cheering prospect of the termination of bank anarchy, and of the consequent ascendency of law and order in the whole length and breadth of the land.

COTTON.

(THIRD AND CONCLUDING ARTICLE.)

THE PRODUCTION AND MANUFACTURE OF FOREIGN COUNTRIES.

THE views relative to the domestic growth and manufacture of this great staple which were given in our March and April numbers, were necessarily restricted to the leading facts and principles which were supposed to throw the strongest light upon their intimate connection with the general prosperity of the whole country. In entering upon the vast field of inquiry which the produce and manufacture of cotton throughout the rest of the world presents, we shall be compelled to confine our remarks to such limited portions of this great expanse, as may serve to furnish the most pertinent illustrations of the causes of their present importance.

For a long succession of ages the only cotton, of which any information is now extant, was produced in those regions where the arts appear to have reached a high degree of perfection, while all other portions of the globe were involved in ignorance and barbarism. The cultivation and manufacture of this material seem to have been common employments in India at an era far beyond the range of the profane records of our race. Five hundred years before Christ, the Father of History presented himself to the Greeks, assembled at the celebration of the Olympic games, and recited to them his narrative of the most novel and interesting objects which had come to his knowledge during his long exile from his native land. Of the facts which he had gathered in his wanderings into remote regions, the existence of a kind of wool, possessing a degree of fineness and excellence far superior to that produced by sheep, which was found growing upon plants in India, and was manufactured by the natives into cloth in which they generally dressed themselves, doubtless appeared among the most marvellous to his auditors. The account may be found in the third book of Herodotus, and contains our first authentic information of the growth and manufacture of cotton. It is evident, from the manner of the narrative, though no further particulars on this subject are stated, that cotton was then extensively manufactured by the people of India.

Notwithstanding the wonderful improvements which have been introduced by modern skill and science into every branch of the manufacture of cotton, it is admitted on all hands, that nothing can be produced in any other part of the world which compares in point of delicacy and elegance with the muslins manufactured by

primitive processes in some parts of that region. Yarn, greatly superior in the essential requisites of fineness, softness, and durability, to any which can be made in Europe, is spun by the Hindoos solely by the fingers, without the assistance of either cards or wheels of the most simple form. This is effected by a degree of manual dexterity and delicacy of touch which appears to be unattainable by individuals of European descent. The looms in which these unrivalled fabrics are woven, perfectly correspond in rudeness with the mode of spinning employed in the preparation of the material.

That a race, endowed with such an extraordinary physical aptitude for the highest proficiency in manufactures, should have remained stationary, in this respect, for unnumbered ages, will not occasion surprise when we reflect upon the institutions under which they have lived from a very remote period of antiquity. The establishment of caste, and of hereditary employments, has prevailed among the native population of India as far back as our knowledge of their history extends. Unless where partial and local changes have been introduced and maintained by the power of the belligerent foreigners who have, at various periods of its history, subjugated the country-the employment of the industrious classes, as well as the advantages derived by them from their productions, has been strictly regulated by customs of the highest antiquity. The mass of agricultural produce passes through the hands of the several individuals whose hereditary labor is applicable to its culti vation or manufacture, each of whom receives his proportion determined by immemorial usage. The prescriptive officers established in the native communities, are also entitled to a proportion of the products of the soil and labor of the operatives. Property in land, in the commonly received sense of the term, was wholly unknown in India before Lord Cornwallis, at the close of the last century, gave qualified titles to a portion of two or three provinces which comprehend a very insignificant portion of the British possessions in Hindostan. Whoever was master of the political and military organization of any particular region, was held to be the only true and lawful proprietor of the soil. The actual head of the government has, in all ages, been regarded throughout India as the absolute owner of every part of the territory over which his authority extended; and the immense population of that vast region have never enjoyed any right in the soil beyond the naked privilege of occupation.

Every person of reflection will perceive that such a tenure of real property, coupled with a system of prescriptive labor embracing all the pursuits of industry, must inevitably prevent the adoption of any modification in the pursuits of industry devolving upon each class, acting independently in a sphere of duty regulated

through unnumbered ages. A slight change would materially affect the means of livelihood of vast numbers depending upon the process which might become the subject of innovation, and would lead, if such alterations should become general, to the total derangement of the established structure of such a state of society. Hence the uniform resistance manifested on all occasions, by all classes of the Hindoos, whenever even trifling improvements have been attempted upon any of their native customs. The present lords of the soil of India have found it indispensable, for the preservation of their ascendancy, to cautiously abstain from all interferences, either by influence or power, in the habits or employments of the native population. Whenever new objects of cultivation, or new processes of manufacture, have been established, it has been done (as in the case of the production of indigo in the new and improved mode) under the immediate direction of British managers, and cannot be said to be introduced among the Hindoos in operations carried on by themselves.

It cannot be regarded as astonishing, that in such a state of social polity, the knowledge of those potent agents which have been mainly instrumental in producing an entire revolution in the condition of the mass of the people of Europe within the last three or four centuries, has never effected any perceptible change in the East. The effects of the introduction of the art of printing among our ancestors were almost magical-corresponding with its supposed origin during a period of general ignorance. The information which was rapidly diffused by this means soon overthrew many of the grossest corruptions of both civil and religious affairs; while the use of gunpowder levelled at once the proud distinction previously enjoyed by hereditary rank in actual warfare,-and in a short time subverted, or rendered powerless, the most oppressive regulations of the feudal ages. Both printing and gunpowder were unquestionably known and used in their substantial forms during many centuries in the East, before they were introduced into Europe. Ingenious fireworks for the purposes of parade and ornament were made with gunpowder-splendid volumes printed with inks which vie with the colors of the rainbow-but neither information nor power appear to have been communicated to the mass of society by these potent and active instruments of civilization.

The annals of mankind present to the researches of the political student no subject of deeper interest, than the investigation of the causes of the relative progress and comparative condition of the predominating races of Asia and Europe. Up to a recent period, the Asiatics were far more accomplished in every pursuit which gives strength and ornament to society than any people in Europe. Their warriors were as brave-their statesmen more profound and skilful-while in the arts of luxury, and the elegancies of social life,