at rency, with that of bankers-that they should be both the money-makers and money dealers—that they should have the privilege at any one period of inundating the country with an immense amount of paper currency, thereby stimulating speculation as well as trade, raising prices, and profits; and another period drawing in their rags, screwing up all legitimate sources of credit, as well as capital, and thereby lowering prices and wages, and diminishing profits, producing a stagnation of trade, ruining merchants and manufacturers by the hundred, and spreading misery and wretchedness among thousands." If this was the experience of the eminent men of England, what must have been the case in this country, where the inherent evils of the system have been heightened by the most palpable charlatanry, ignorance, presumption, knavery, and fraud, on the part of those who have undertaken to administer the paper currency. The people of the United States will not soon forget the monstrous delusion which made them look upon the late national bank as the great giver of all good, and fix their eyes upon its mountebank president, who, like a rocket, dazzled their visions for a moment in his flight, and then exploded in corruption, leaving nothing in the darkness that succeeded but an offensive odor, which Daniel Webster mistook for the "odor of nationality." The enormous cost of banking has been a main cause of the inability of many of the States to pay their debts; accordingly we find that those States, where banking has been pushed to the greatest extent, are the first to dishonor their liabilities. Six sovereign and independent States are now under disgrace, as follows: Mississippi, Michigan, Illinois, Arkansas, Indiana, Pennsylvania. And the territory of Florida has threatened repudiation through its executive. In all these States banking has been most encouraged, and has been attended with the most disastrous results. The great and rich State of Pennsylvania has been eminently the victim of her banks. Her wild and speculative system of public improvements, which have cost the State near $20,000,000, and yield no revenue, was the result of her fatal connection with the late National Bank. That institution was the direct agent in the negotiation of the stock, and its malign influence was the the State is now near $40,000,000, cause of their creation. The debt of nearly one-fourth of which was borrowed to pay the interest on, and the expenses of negotiating the other half. For a long time the State existed by borrowing money from her banks, until, in the winter of 1840, public opinion demanded a resumption on the part of the banks. To enable themselves to pay their own debts, it became necessary for the banks to cease lending money to the State; and pending the passage of a law in the Pennsylvania legislature, compelling the banks to resume on the 15th of February, 1840, the State interest to the amount of $800,000 fell due, and was not paid. At this moment of discredit, the insolvent banks came forward, and offered to furnish the money to the State on condition that they should be allowed a longer period for suspension. This disgraceful compact was completed, and the interest paid. The Pennsylvania House of Representatives instituted a committee to investigate whether any corrupt means was used by the Banks of that State, in 1840, to procure a legalized suspension of specie payments. The chairman of that committee reported, on the 13th of July, that corruption had been used, but that there had been no direct evidence that the Executive or Legislature had received money. The U. S. Bank alone was reported to have disbursed $131,400 for corrupt purposes. Since that time the State has continued its payments, by various expedients, up to the present month, when the payments again fell due. Notwithstanding all the experience of the past, the Legislature, which has been convened in extra session, have again neglected to levy a tax; but have again authorized the governor to borrow the money on a 6 per cent. stock, or to issue that stock in payment of the State interest. This, at best, is but a partial payment, as the stock will be unavailable to the holders. The 5 per cent. stock of Pennsylvania is selling at 32 cents on the dollar, and the State is bankrupt, although possessing one of the largest, richest, and most industrious populations in the Union. It is true that these people are already heavily taxed, paying, according to a late message of the Executive, near $4,000,000 per annum; of which, however, but $700,000 comes into the State Treasury-the balance being town and county taxes. We have gone thus particularly into the state of affairs in Pennsylvania, because she assumed in relation to the late National Bank the position before occupied by the Federal Government; and the question may be well asked, with this fearful wreck before us, what would have been the fate of these United States, had that concern been rechartered by Congress? What Penn sylvania now is, on comparatively a small scale, would have been the whole Union, on a plan so magnificent, that its fall would have shaken Europe to its centre. The bubble, which was blown up to such a height on the basis of State credits, would have overshadowed the commercial world, backed by the support of the United States; and when the towering mass of credits was sapped by the utter exhaustion of the country, what wide-spread and irretrievable ruin would not the fall have occasioned ? The state of commercial affairs throughout the month has been characterized by the same degree of uncertainty as described in our last; and for the same cause, viz., the want of some permanent settlement of the tariff laws, through legislative action. The tariff bill, which we noticed in our last as likely to be vetoed, and the object of which was to extend the revenue laws to the first of August, has met the fate anticipated, and for the cause alluded to in our last Number. The collection of duties has, however, been continued under regulations prescribed by the President; not, however, without opposition from the merchants, who pay duties, under protest. The prob ability now is, that this state of things will exist until a new Congress shall give a more efficient action to federal legislation. Should the Executive be sustained by the judiciary in his construction of the existing powers to collect revenue, the existing rate of duty, viz., 20 per cent. on the home valuation, will probably be the best, both for the revenue and the country, that could be adopted under existing circumstances. The abundance of produce in this country renders it necessary that a foreign market should be found to as great an extent as possible; and to do so the return of foreign goods in payment must be encouraged. The specie level of the currency forbids the idea that goods can be imported to any great extent under high duties. Duties levied upon the foreign cost of goods, when prices here are inflated by the action of a paper currency, do not much restrict trade; but duties levied upon the home valuation, when demand and supply in a specie currency alone govern prices, must seriously affect the amount of imports. It has been a favorite notion with the advocates of a high tariff, and has been frequently laid down by Daniel Webster, that where one country is the principal producer of one article, and another a principal consumer of it, a duty imposed by the latter would have the effect, not of raising the price in the country where it was laid, but to reduce it where they were produced. To illustrate the fallacy of this assumption, we have compiled the following table of three articles of import into the United States, from the Treasury returns, from 1821 to 1841, showing the quantity imported, the foreign cost, and the home value under each rate of duty. The value is that contained in the Treasury reports for the same articles exported, as follows: QUANTITIES OF HAMMERED IRON, HEMP, AND COAL, IMPORTED ANNUALLY, UNDER THE VARIOUS DUTIES SINCE 1821, WITH THE FOREIGN COST OF EACH ARTICLE, AND the HOME VALUE OF EACH ARTICLE AT THE CORRESPONDING PERIOD. This presents the operation of four different tariffs, on two articles, the chief products of England, and one, hemp, a staple of Russia. It will be seen, in the case of iron, that under the low duty of 1816, the foreign cost of the article was less than that of the four succeeding years, when the duty was doubled here, and that the value in this market bore the same proportionate increase. In the year 1828, when the high duty was expected, the demand for iron in England to export to this country before the new duty should be levied, increased 50 per cent., and apparently caused an increase in the foreign cost of 20 cents. This was the natural operation of trade, and is directly the reverse of the assumption of Daniel Webster and others. In the next two years of high duty, the foreign cost was higher than in the four years of low duty prior to 1825; and the value in the home market was reduced apparently by the increased supply. Since 1832 the duty has undergone biennial reductions. We have not here taken the influences of the paper currencies in both countries, upon prices, into consideration. The article of hemp exhibits still more clearly the operations of trade, in opposition to the propositions of the tariff men. In the article of coal the price in this country has fluctuated in a great degree. The tariff has not been altered since 1825; but the foreign cost has steadily decreased, while the import has increased in the same proportion, the price here remaining nearly the same, giving evidence of the greatly increased consumption of the article here, as well as of its production abroad. The import of iron, since 1832, has been greatly increased by the internal improvements of the States. The iron in very many cases was purchased for State bonds, without much regard to cost. This operating cause will cease to act for the future, and the effective demand for foreign iron will be regulated by the profit that it will yield to import it, and the American ironmasters will have decidedly the advantage over others. A very moderate duty under such circumstances must be protective. The same influences operate upon all articles of import, to a greater or less extent. The breaking down of the credit system affords of itself the most ample protection to manufactures, and to yield a revenue the rates of duty must be very moderate. 1842.] The New Books of the Month. THE NEW BOOKS OF THE MONTH. Poems. By ALFRED TENNYSON. 2 vols. 12mo. Boston: William D. Ticknor. 1842. We have long regretted that the exqui- A certain dim and shadowy beauty, a VOL. XI.-NO. L. verse, which does not permit it to rise to The Fountain, and other Poems. By WIL LIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 12mo. pp. 100. Another volume from Bryant - not much of it perhaps in bulk, but so, too, may it be said of diamonds. The greater part of these poems, we observe, including the one from which the volume takes its title, have appeared originally in the pages of the Democratic Review-and many of our readers doubtless, therefore, know them by heart, though we are well assured that that will constitute a recommendation, rather than a reason to deter them from purchasing the beautifullyprinted volume in which they will find them here collected, together with a number of others of kindred beauty, well worthy to be threaded on the same string of pearls. The Poetical Works of John Sterling. Mr. Griswold, who appears as the editor of this volume, has conferred a substantial benefit on the public by the act, for which, independently of his other literary deserts, he is entitled to its thanks. There is a calm contemplative depth of thought, and a pure tenderness of senti ment, with a classic chasteness of language and versification, in the poetry of the Rev. Mr. Sterling, (better known as the “Archæus” of Blackwood,) which will secure for this volume many a reader who will return more than once to dwell upon the quiet and pleasant charm of its pages. "The Sexton's Daughter" is one long strain of deep and gentle pathos, inexpressibly sweet and beautiful; and several of the Hymns are a fit music to swell through the echoing temple of a devout heart in adoration to its God. The Climate of the United States, and its J. and H. G. Langley. 1842. Several months have now elapsed since the appearance of this work, during which period it has been noticed by nearly all of our periodicals, both literary and exclusively medical, in terms of very high commendation. "The design of the work," says the writer, "is to exhibit a connected view of the leading phenomena of our climate both physical and medical, comprising a condensation of all the author's observations on the subject." It is based chiefly on the " Army Meteorological Register," and the "Statistical Report on the Sickness and Mortality in the Army of the United States," embracing a period of twenty years, (1819 to 1839,) both of which are the result of the labors of the same author. We hail the appearance of this volume with no ordinary degree of pleasure, inasmuch as it is the first systematic treatise on the climate of that great portion of the globe, embraced within the boundaries of the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Unlike all other treatises on the same subject, which are generally loosely written and made up of the most vague and general statements, Dr. F.'s deductions are based upon precise instrumental observations. The isolated facts relative to our climate have been carefully collated by him, and their relations to one another and to general laws determined. Having thus presented in Part First a classification of the principal phenomena of our climate, physically considered, he traces out in Part Second the medical relations of these laws, thus establishing in both a classification of climates having for its basis observation; and by extending his observations through a long series of years, and over vast masses of individuals, Dr. F. has disclosed many important relations having reference to the health and disease of our wide-spread borders. The advantages of change of climate to pulmonary and other invalids-a subject of the highest interest to every class of readers-have been pointed out most happily by the author. But as we do not feel ourselves competent to express an opinion upon a subject pertaining strictly to medical science, we will here make the following quotation from the "Select Medical Library" of Philadelphia, edited by Dr. John Bell :-" The present work of Dr. F. comes out under peculiarly imposing auspices. This is just such a volume as every physician has felt the want of, whether his opinion be invoked respecting the effects of season or of travel and change of place for a common invalid, to say nothing of the eagerness and anxiety with which these questions are propounded, when the answer will direct the movements of a person in incipient consumption, or one, alas! in its last, and, to all others but himself, hopeless stage." Did our space permit, we would willingly present to our readers some extracts bearing upon the interesting topics discussed in this volume; such as the influence of our ocean-lakes on our climate -the different laws of temperature on the eastern and western coasts of the same continent-whether the climate of Europe has experienced any permanent change since the era of the first Roman Emperors-whether the climate of the New World has been rendered milder by the cultivation of the soil-whether the region west of the Alleghanies enjoys a milder temperature than that to the east. We must conclude, however, with the remark that Dr. F. has brought to the investigation of these various points, great industry and method as well as good sense; and, that seeing the vast mass of information collected and digested into fixed results in this volume, and adapted, too, for general perusal, we take pleasure in commending it to our readers as a standard production. Forest Life. By the Author of " A New Home." In 2 vols. 12mo. New York: C. S. Francis and Co., 252 Broadway. Boston: J. H. Francis, 128 Washington street. 1842. No less graphic, witty, kindly, sensible, and amusing a book than the predecessor of which it is a sequel. And agreeable as are both the volumes from beginning to end, there is no portion of either which we read with greater pleasure than the concluding intimation, that it is only "for the present" that the |