will have accomplished a
valuable work in restoring the true construction of the Constitution,
and, in this particular at least, will have proved a public blessing. It
will be very easy, in the course of time, to redeem the Treasury notes,
and gradually to substitute for them a species of national paper based
on actual deposits, which will afford all the conveniences with none of
the dangers of the present system, by which the local banks virtually
establish the currency of the country, flooding it with all varieties of
paper, without uniformity of value, with no adequate control or
regulation of its quantity, thus producing periodical convulsions and
robbing the people of their hard-earned savings.
If the rebellion, by the burdens which it leaves behind, shall bring
about these two results--the adoption of a wise and permanent system of
revenue, and the establishment of a sound currency by the prohibition of
all bank circulation--it will have accomplished ends only inferior in
importance to the two primary consequences, the overthrow of the
principle of secession and the destruction of slavery. Thus, this
tremendous convulsion would bring out of the chaos a new order in the
political world, by annihilating secession, and by perpetuating the
Union and banishing all fear of its dissolution; in the social, by
substituting free men for slaves; in the financial, by a permanent
adjustment of tariffs and taxation; and in the commercial, by the
prohibition of bank paper and the substitution of a safe and uniform
currency.
'I;' OR, SUMMER IN THE CITY.'
'I love the sweet security of streets.'--CHARLES LAMB.
'I,' my charming friend, do not fully sympathize with the late Mr.
Lamb's statement, as quoted above; which statement I always have
believed partially owed its origin to its very tempting alliterative
robe.
For myself, I do _not_ particularly like the 'sweet security of
streets,' but vastly prefer 'a boundless contiguity of shade,'
especially during the present month--August--or
'A life on the ocean wave.'
I do not mean a permanent residence there--that would be liable to be
damp and unhealthy, and altogether too insecure to be 'sweet;'--but when
I say a 'life on the ocean wave,' it is merely my poetical license for a
cottage at Newport. (I wish, indeed, that I had any _but_ a poetical one
for such a possession!)
But what folly for me to talk of a cottage there! when my limited income
does
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