independent, and to maintain a secure, uniform, and constitutional fiscal system, in the discharge of my limited federal duties; by keeping and disbursing my own revenue; and by confining myself to that only fixed standard of value which is "the law of the land at home and the law of the world abroad," and to which you acknowledge it to be your own highest duty to conform your own paper emissions-though the misfortune, from which I desire to be hereafter exempt, is that you are perpetually wandering far and wide from it.' Such is the language of the Administration to the Banks. On the other hand what is theirs to the Government? You shall not be independent of us. You shall not collect and disburse your revenue yourself. You shall not anchor the Treasury of the country by that obsolete and uncivilized standard of value,' of which we have nothing to say but that it is a humbug. Constitution or no Constitution, we will regulate the currency for you as for the rest of the people, and you shall have nothing to do with any other standard than our paper. If the people are content with it, what right have you to complain of it? We will not rest on our own capital, credit, and our commercial business alone,-you shall give us your credit and especial countenance also. And if you do not surrender at once at discretion, and submit to our dictation, without further impertinent discussions of the principles on which we are organized and conduct our business, we will sweep you out of power, as summarily as we overwhelmed you in the New York elections of last fall.' Such are substantially the respective attitudes of the Administration and the banks. Which is to prevail? Of the answer which will be returned by the Democracy of the United States, with whom the decision rests, we have not the slightest misgiving or doubt. But we are wrong in ascribing this language to the banks. It is to a reckless body of ambitious politicians that it ought rather to be attributed,-who are moving heaven and hell to overthrow the Administration, to place themselves in the seat of power. They were defeated on the ground of a National Bank on which they before made the same attempt. They have now assumed that of the special championship of the State banks, which they then so bitterly attacked. For this they seek to convulse the country with panic, and to blind it with the grossest delusions. For this they take the whole system, with all its evils and abuses, to their arms, endorsing and defending every thing; and falsely charge the Administration with a design to destroy it, and with a general hostility to credit and commerce. False friends they, to the very system in behalf of the evils and abuses of which they are now so clamorous! They do not conceal, though they attempt to keep for the present in the the back-ground, a design of reestablishing a great National Bank if ever they can get the power intrusted to their hands,-an institution which shall constitute an absolute moneyed despotism over the State banks as over the whole country, its laws, its liberties, its property, and its government,—which shall have the power, as the late one once boasted, to crush any of the lesser banks at pleasure,— which shall have the use of the public revenue, and a preference over all the others in the receivability of its paper,-which shall have a monopoly of the business of exchanges, and the power of working the machinery of the currency at pleasure, as its central and controlling main-spring. The question is not between the State banks and the Administration, but between the latter, on the one hand, and the Federal party and National Bank, on the other. The State banks are used only as temporary instruments to be frightened and deluded into a present subserviency to one of the most stupendous schemes of partisan ambition ever conceived, or ever dared to be put in practice. 6 But it will not succeed! It cannot succeed. The pyramid of the democratic cause may be shaken by temporary shocks, but it cannot be overturned. All these popular delusions and panics soon exhaust themselves, and obey the general law of reaction. Great is truth, and it will prevail. Our confidence in the people is unwavering,-and in this sign we shall conquer. Our party will come forth from the present crisis, redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled.' This is the last desperate effort of the Whigs. The independence of the public treasury being once established, their cause falls prostrate. It is evident to every one; it is felt fully by themselves. Their principal leaders must retire in despair from the vain task of battling like the waves with the rock of democracy. The main body of their party, and of the rising generation, will be relieved from their artificial state of prejudice and delusion generated by party excitement, and must obey the natural impulse of the age and the genius of our country, and become democratic. The paralyzing incubus of a large anti-popular minority upon the free action and developement of the democratic principle in our system, will thus become in a considerable degree lightened. A splendid career is opening upon our party, and its high and holy cause; a new era is indeed, as remarked in the commencement of this article, dawning upon our country; and it requires but firmness, courage, and confidence in those great principles which can never deceive or fail, to carry it safely through the present crisis, to the realization of those noble and glorious hopes. III. AMBITION. By Maria James, of Rhinebeck, N. Y. IV. SONG. Translation from the Modern Greek of Christopoulos. V. TALES OF THE PROVINCE-HOUSE. By Nathaniel Hawthorne, Esq., -THIS NUMBER CONTAINS SEVEN SHEETS, OR ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE PAGES. NOTICE.-The Etching to accompany the Political Portrait in the present Number will be given in the next. THIS is perhaps the most extraordinary book of the day. Nay more, it is the most extraordinary book that has yet been written on that stupendous subject of which it treats. Some readers will probably interpret this expression in the sense in which old Fuseli used to reply to his noble patrons, when they would claim his admiration for the merits of the bad pictures with which they had been imposed upon by the virtu-mongers: "Very extraordinary, very extraordinary, indeed, my lord,"-meaning extraordinary bad.' Our meaning, however, is that it is both extraordinary bad' and 'extraordinary good'; though probably most of the limited number of readers it is likely to find at the present day, startled at its wild uncouthness of style, will class it in the former category, and throw it down in disgust before allowing the spell that lurks within its pages time to evolve itself out, and overpower them with its wonderful mastery,-which it will not fail to do if they will but chain down their reluctant attention, and read on. We confess that in point of style its faults are gross and glaring. One of the many poisoned sarcasms ascribed to Talleyrand, is that on one occasion when Rulhières complained of being so generally reputed a wicked man, whereas he had been guilty of but one act of wickedness in his life, the witty but unprincipled bishop replied, "but when will this act be at an end?"-as though his whole life were but one crime. So may we say of this book, or at least of the external form in which the author has chosen to clothe his thought, that it is not only replete with faults, but is itself all one hideous fault from beginning to end. In fact it may be called a French Revolution' of language,-being itself the most striking illustration of the horrors, anarchy, and "culbute générale," of the • The French Revolution: A History. By Thomas Carlyle. Boston, (Republication.) Charles C. Little & James Brown. 1838. |