culation, but, what is most remarkable, there was no unusual
increase in the issues of the banks, of any kind.

Let us not hope too much, therefore, from the suppression of small
notes, should that scheme be carried into effect; let us not delude
ourselves with the expectation that it will prove a satisfactory remedy,
in any sense, for the periodical disease of the currency; for its
benefits, though probable, must be limited.[E] It is a remedy which
merely plays round the extremities of the disorder, without invading the
seat of it at all.

[Footnote E: It is very curious, that, while our leaders are in favor
of exorcising small notes, many of the French and English Liberals are
calling for an issue of them!]

We have endeavored, in the foregoing remarks, to point out (for our
limits do not allow us to expound) two things: first, that in the
universal modern use of credit as the medium of exchanges,--which credit
refers to a standard in itself fluctuating,--there is a liability to
certain critical derangements, when the machinery will be thrown out of
gear, if we may so speak, or when credit will dissolve in a vain longing
for cash; and, second, that in the paper-money substitutes which men
have devised as a provision against the consequences of this liability,
they have enormously aggravated, instead of counteracting or alleviating
the danger. But if these views be correct, the questions to be
determined by society are also two, namely: whether it be possible to
get rid of these aggravations; and whether credit itself may not be so
organized as to be self-sufficient and self-supporting, whatever the
vagaries of the standard. The suppression of small notes might have a
perceptible effect in lessening the aggravations of paper, but it would
not touch the more fundamental point, as to a stable organization
of credit. Yet it is in this direction, we are persuaded, that
all reformatory efforts must turn. Credit is the new principle of
trade,--the _nexus_ of modern society; but it has scarcely yet been
properly considered. While it has been shamefully _exploited_, as the
French say, it has never been scientifically constituted.

Neither will it be, under the influence of the old methods,--not until
legislators and politicians give over the business of tampering with the
currency,--till they give over the vain hope of "hedging the cuckoo," to
use Locke's figure,--and the principle of FREEDOM be allowed to adjust
this, as