the hidden rocks and shoals
upon which our bark had wellnigh stranded; and the science of politics
will henceforward have a broader sweep, a loftier appreciation of
national responsibility, a purer benevolence, a sublimer philanthropy.

Among the influences which will greatly modify the future of American
politics, not the least is the lately enacted banking law. Hitherto we
have been divided in our finances as no nation ever was before. Every
individual State has had not only its own system of banking, but its own
separate and distinct currency; a currency oftentimes based upon an
insufficient security, and possessing only a local par value. The
traveller who would journey from one portion of the country to another
was driven to the alternative of converting his funds into bills of
exchange, or of shopping from broker to broker to procure the currency
of the particular localities which he proposed to visit. Not to mention
the inconvenience of such a state of things, it is productive of many
dire evils, which it is not my purpose to enumerate, since they are
already familiar to the majority of my readers. Suffice it to say that
such a diversity in a point so vital to all enlightened nations, is
antagonistic to the very spirit of our institutions, under a government
whose existence depends upon the principle of unity, in a land whose
prosperity depends upon the consolidation of all its constituent parts
into one homogeneous whole. Not only is this diversity in the money
market forever destroyed by the establishment of a uniform currency, but
from the peculiar nature of the law, the stability of the Government is
made a matter of direct self-interest to every individual citizen, than
which no surer or more enduring bond of union can be devised. For
self-interest, the Archimedean lever that moves the world, loses no jot
of its influence when even honor and patriotism have withered away.
Every dollar of the security upon which the currency is based must be
deposited in the treasury vaults: in other words, the wealth of every
individual citizen is under Government lock and key. Should, then, in
the future, any misguided portion of our people see fit to withdraw from
our communion, irretrievable ruin not only stares them in the face, but
is actually upon them from the moment the bond is severed. On the one
side is devotion to the country, and a firm, secure currency, which at
any moment will bring its full value in gold; on th