eve the general effects; but the
vicious currency on this side the water, whatever domestic sins it
may have to answer for, cannot properly be made the scapegoat for the
offences of the other side of the water. The disasters abroad have
occurred under conditions of currency differing in many respects from
our own, and we believe that if there had been no troubles in America,
there would still have been considerable troubles in England and France,
as, indeed, the financial writers of both these countries long ago
predicted from the local signs.

The same train of remark may be applied to those who impute the existing
embarrassments to our want of a protective tariff; for, granting that to
be an adequate explanation of our own difficulties, it is not therefore
an adequate explanation of those in Europe. The external characteristics
of the phenomena before us are everywhere pretty much the same,
namely,--a prosperous trade gradually slackening, an increasing demand
for money, depreciation and sacrifice of securities, numerous failures,
disappearance of gold, panic, and the complete stagnation of every
branch of labor; and it should seem that the cause or causes to be
assigned for them ought also to be everywhere pretty much the same. At
any rate, no local cause is in itself to be regarded as sufficient,
unless it can be shown that such local cause has a universal operation.
But who will undertake to contend that the absence of a protective
system here is enough to prostrate both Great Britain and France,--the
nations which the same theory supposes to have been chiefly benefited
by such deficiency? The scheme of free trade is often denounced by its
opponents as British free trade; but we respectfully suggest that if its
operations lead to so serious a destruction of British interests as
is now alleged, the phrase is at least a misnomer. No! as the
characteristics of the crisis are common to the United States, England,
and France, so the causes of that crisis are to be sought in something
which is also common to the United States, England, and France.

Now the one thing common to all these nations, and to all commercial
nations, is the universal use of Credit, in the transactions of
business. We conceive, therefore, that the existing condition of things
may be most correctly and comprehensively described as a suspension of
credit, and the consequent pressure for payment of immense masses of
outstanding debt. This, we say, i