s all reference to the possibility of a great
fluctuation of prices being produced by other means than an excess or
deficiency of money.[A] In France, as we know, the currency is almost
entirely metallic, while in England it is metallic so far as the lesser
exchanges of commerce are concerned; there is an obvious impropriety,
therefore, in extending to the financial difficulties of those nations a
theory founded upon a peculiarity in the position of our own.

[Footnote A: A failure of one half the cotton or wheat crop, we suspect,
would play a considerable part among "the prices," whatever the state of
the note circulation.]

If, however, it be alleged that the disturbances there are only a
reaction from the disturbances here, we must say that that point is
not clear, and Brother Jonathan may be exaggerating his commercial
importance. The ties of all the maritime nations are growing more and
more intimate every year, and the trouble of one is getting to be more
and more the trouble of the others in consequence; but as yet any
unsettled balance of American trade, compared with the whole trade of
those nations, is but as the drop in the bucket. John Bull, with a
productive industry of five thousand millions of dollars a year, and
Johnny Crapaud, with an industry only less, are not both to be
thrown flat on their backs by the failure of a few millions of money
remittances from Jonathan. The houses immediately engaged in the
American trade will suffer, and others again immediately dependent upon
them; but the disturbing shock, as it spreads through the widening
circle of the national trade, will very soon be dissipated and lost in
its immensity. That is, it will be lost, if trade there is itself sound,
and not tottering under the same or similar conditions of weakness
which produced the original default in this country; in which event,
we submit, our troubles are to be considered as the mere accidental
occasion of the more general downfall,--while the real cause is to be
sought in the internal state of the foreign nations. Accordingly, let
any one read the late exposures of the methods in which business is
transacted among the Glasgow banks, the London discount-houses, and the
speculators of the French Bourse, and he will see at a glance that we
Americans have no right to assume and ought not to be charged with the
entire responsibility of this stupendous syncope. Our bankruptcy has
aggravated, as our restoration will reli