r more public detriment than
these incessant revolutions in the value and tenure of property. Those
afflict limited classes alone, but these every class; they relax and
pervert the whole moral regimen of society; and if, as it is sometimes
alleged, the present age is more profoundly steeped in materialism
than any before,--if its enterprise is not simply more bold, but more
reckless and prodigal,--if the monitions of conscience have lost their
force in practical affairs, and the dictates of religion and honor alike
their sanctity, it is because of the uncertain principle, the gambling
spirit, the feverish eagerness, and the insane extravagance, which beset
the ways of traffic. Living in a world in which days of golden and
delusive dreams are rapidly succeeded by nights of monstrous nightmares
and miseries, society loses its grasp upon the realities of life, and
goes staggering blindly on towards a fatal degeneracy and dissolution.

[Footnote B: Yet this is not to be lightly estimated. Seaman, in his
_Progress of Nations_ says the direct losses by paper money, within the
last century and a half, have equalled $2,000,000,000.]

The question, then, is, whether this melancholy march of things should
be allowed to proceed, or whether we should strive to do better. Our
good sense, our moral sense, our progressive instincts, conspire with
our interests in proclaiming that we ought to do better; but how shall
we do better? "Why," reply the great Democratic doctors,--Mr. Buchanan,
the President, and Mr. Benton, the Nestor of the people,--"suppress the
issue of small bank-notes!" Well, that nostrum is not to be despised;
there would be some advantages in such a measure; it would, to a certain
extent, operate as a check upon the issues of the banks; it would
enlarge the specie basis, by confining the note circulation to the
larger dealers, and so exempt the poorer and laboring classes from the
chances of bank failures and suspensions. But if these gentlemen suppose
that the extrusion of small notes would be in any degree a remedy for
overtrading, or moderate in any degree the disastrous fluctuations of
which everybody complains, they have read the history of commerce only
in the most superficial manner. Speculations, overtrading, panics, money
convulsions, occur in countries where small notes are not tolerated,
just as they do in countries where they are; and they occur in both
without our being able to trace them always to the st