The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857

2. Being the established standard, the precious metals, so long as they continue unchanged in amount, have a precise and definite relation to all other commodities. But they do not continue unchanged; and neither do other commodities continue unchanged. There is more gold at one time than another, and more wheat at one time than another; so that the relation between the two is not a determinate, but a variable one; and it is this variation which causes or constitutes the fluctuation of prices. If wheat increases in quantity, more of it will be given for the same money; and if it decreases, less of it will be given for the same money; on the other hand, if money increases, more of it will be given for a specific quantity of wheat, and if it decreases, less will be given; while if they increase or decrease together, a relative equilibrium will be maintained. But the beauty of the precious metals, as we have said, is that they are not liable to very sudden or considerable increase or decrease; only twice in the course of history, on the occasion of the discovery of the South American mines by the Spaniards, and of the California mines by the Americans, has there been recorded an unusual production of gold and silver; and in both cases, it is important to note, the same effect followed,—a very considerable enhancement of prices; that is, all other articles seemed to grow dear, although the real fact was that money had only grown cheap. In Spain every commodity rose; everybody experienced that delicious feeling, which we sometimes enjoy in dreams, of going up without spring or effort; and Spain was considered to be enviably prosperous and happy. As for San Francisco, we all remember the fabulous prices which ruled in that vicinity. An acquaintance of ours wrote us then, that he gave five dollars for a dinner consisting of half a pullet and two potatoes, and when he added a pint of champagne, it came to five dollars more. He allowed his washerwoman one hundred and fifty dollars a month, paid fifty dollars for a pair of second-hand cow-hide boots, and hired a cellar, seven feet by nine, and six feet under ground, at the rate of fifteen thousand dollars a year. But both in Spain and in San Francisco this ludicrous exaggeration of values cured itself. The manufacturers and merchants of all the world sent their goods of all sorts to such tempting markets; and it was not long before the goods, not the money, were in excess. Prices came down, as sailors say, by the run, and Spain and San Francisco were reduced once more to rationality and comfort. These were exceptional cases, but they illustrate the general principle, that the increase of money raises prices, and the decrease of money lowers them, which is all we wish to state. In ordinary cases, however, when the currency is in its normal condition, this rise and fall of prices is like the rise and fall of the tides, the mere pulsations of the great sea, which drown and damage nobody, and rather keep the waters more clear and wholesome by their gentle agitation.

3. The same law is observed to operate, whenever anything is made, either by the decrees of government or the usages of society, to take the place of the precious metals as money. Paper, in the shape of bank-bills, promising to pay money on demand, is the most frequent, because the most cheap and convenient substitute; accordingly, when convertible paper-money is increased, it raises prices, and when it is diminished, it depresses prices, just as in the case of a metallic currency. But there are these two signal points of distinction between a paper and a metallic currency: first, that paper money may be increased or diminished much more easily than metallic money; and, second, that any excess or deficiency of the former is not so easily corrected by the natural operations of trade. The sudden or large increase of the metals is prevented by their scarcity and the laborious processes necessary to produce them, and a sudden or large decrease of them could be brought about only by some great public calamity which should destroy them or cause them to be hoarded. But paper money, whether made by a government or made by authorized corporations, may be issued and put in circulation almost at will, and again be withdrawn at will. We do not mean that the issue and withdrawal of it are wholly unchecked, but that the checks, as the entire history of banking would seem to prove, are comparatively inefficient and delusive. If the rise and fall of prices, caused by the fluctuations of metallic money, are to be compared to the rise and fall of the tides, the rise and fall of paper prices are more like the increase and decrease of steam in a boiler, which is an admirable agent, but demanding an incessant and scientific control. The sea-tides, even after a tempest, will regulate themselves, because they have all the oceans and all the rivers of the globe to draw upon; but the steam in a boiler is a thing confined, and yet capable of immense and destructive expansion. A metallic currency runs from nation to nation, and has its perturbations corrected from nation to nation; but a paper currency is local, and cannot be so well corrected by the great interchanges of the globe. Let us make this clearer in another way.

4. It is universally conceded, by all the writers on finance, that any unusual production of currency occasions a rise of prices; the relative value of money is less than it was before, while the relative value of other articles is greater; a greater quantity of money is given for other articles, and fewer of other articles are given for the same amount of money. This rise has the double effect of provoking the importation of foreign commodities, and of preventing the exportation of domestic commodities; inasmuch as the same enhancement of rates, which opens a good domestic market for the former, closes the foreign market to the latter; and thus an unfavorable balance accumulates rapidly against the country where the rise occurs, in respect to other countries where it has not occurred. Now sooner or later this balance must be paid; and as products cannot be profitably shipped abroad to furnish a fund whereupon to draw bills of exchange, it must be paid in coin. The coin is therefore abstracted from circulation; and if coin were the only currency, such an abstraction would of itself induce a fall of prices, which would operate as a check upon importations until the old relation of equilibrium should be restored. But where the government, or where individuals, whether organized or alone, have the power to replace the departed coin by issues of paper money, prices are for a while maintained, and importations continued as vigorously as ever. All this, however, is but a postponement of the day of settlement. The balance to be extinguished is a substantial balance, which can be discharged only by substantial means; a mere promise to pay, a mere sign and representative of debt, will not extinguish it, any more than the smell of a cook-shop will extinguish a ravenous appetite. The insatiable creditor will have money; and the depositories of that essential become, under his assaults, more and more meagre and tenuous. The managers of them at last get alarmed, and begin to withhold their issues of paper; which means that they begin to reduce their loans to the community. The money-market grows "tight," as it is phrased; the money-world feels generally as if it had taken an overdose of persimmons. Merchants and dealers, shorn of their usual accommodations, are compelled to borrow at ruinous usuries, or to fail to meet their payments. Their default involves others; others fail, and others again. The bowels of the banks, with us the great money-lenders, close with the snap and tenacity of steel-traps; and then a general panic, or want of commercial confidence, brings on a paralysis of the domestic exchanges, and wide-spread bankruptcy and ruin. Importations are checked, of course; but they are checked in a sharp, rapid, and violent way, accompanied by the most painful embarrassments and convulsions.

This we believe to be an outline of the history of all our commercial catastrophes, stripped of those local and incidental circumstances which vary from time to time: over-issues of money,—speculative prosperity,—all the world getting rich in the most agreeable manner,—fairy palaces rising on all sides, without the sound of trowel or hammer; then,—the day of adjustment,—the rapid contraction of the currency,—all the world getting poor in the most drastic and disagreeable manner,—and those fairy palaces, which rose under our very eyelids over-night, vanishing, like the palace of Aladdin from the vision of the Grand-Seignior after he awoke in the morning. But, alas! the revulsion does not stop with the overthrow of the palaces which had been reared without labor; it is not satisfied with the dissipation of mere fancies and dreams; but, being itself a most real thing, it carries with it many a stately structure, which the toil, the economy, the self-denial of years had hardly raised. Extraneous causes,—a short crop,—a reduced tariff,—a peculiar mania of enterprise,—may hasten or retard the various steps of the process which has been described; but its cause and its course are almost always the same, and the discerning eye may easily detect them, from the beginning to the end of our modern commercial experience. In the existing difficulties, in this country, the railroad speculations have had much to do with producing and aggravating the effect; but the primary source of it, we think, is to be found in the ease with which our currency is inflated, under a banking system which varies from State to State, and which, outside of New England and New York, where it is by no means perfect, is as bungling a contrivance, for the ends to be answered, as was ever inflicted on the patience of mankind. Much of the trouble is due also to the extravagance and reckless waste of our people, which, though owing in some degree to our want of good manners and good taste, are directly traceable to the stimulus given to expense by the over-issue of artificial money. While the paper which passes for money is plenty, and every man can easily get "accommodations" from the banks, we squander without thought. No matter how costly the articles we buy; the expansion of the currency is greater than the rise in market values; and it is only when the contraction comes that we see how foolishly lavish we have been.

What, then, is the remedy? "Why, away with paper currency altogether!" says one. Yes,—tear up your Croton-water-pipes, because the breaking of a main sometimes submerges your dwellings; destroy your railroads, because the trains sometimes run off the track; arrest your steamships, because an "Arctic" and a "Central America" go disastrously down into the deep, deep sea! That were not wise, surely; that were very unwise, even were it possible, which it is not.—"Give us a high protective tariff," says another. Most certainly, friend, if we are to be perpetually flooded with paper, a high tariff is needed;—your theory is at least consistent, however it may have worked in practice. But a high protective tariff is an impossibility, because it can be attained only by favor of the Federal legislature; and, as we all know, at the door of that legislature stands the inexorable shape of the Slave Power, which consults no interest but its own in the management of government, and which will never make a concession to the manufacturers or the merchants of the North, unless it be to purchase some new act of baseness, or bind them in some new chains of servility.—But have you inquired whether that flood of paper is necessary? We frankly tell you that we do not believe it is; we believe that a better system is possible,—to be brought about, not by greater restrictions on banking, but by greater freedom; and we only regret that we have not now space to discuss that faith with you in all its reasons and results. We hope to be permitted to do so at some other time. Meanwhile, let us rejoice that the whole subject is in a position to be frankly discussed. A few years ago, when the question of the currency was a question of party politics, there was no aspect in which it could be presented, which did not arouse all the restless jealousies of party prejudice. If you talked of hard-money, you were denounced as a Benton bullionist; if you talked of credit, you were called a Whig banker, plotting to devour the poor; and the calmest phrases of science were turned into the shibboleths of an internecine warfare. A better hour has come, and let us improve it to our mutual edification.

SONNET

The Maple puts her corals on in May,While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling,To be in tune with what the robins sing,Plastering new log-huts 'mid her branches gray;But when the Autumn southward turns away,Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring,And every leaf, intensely blossoming,Makes the year's sunset pale the set of day.O Youth unprescient, were it only soWith trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined,Thinking their drifting blooms Fate's coldest snow,You carve dear names upon the faithful rind,Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknowThat Age may bear, silent, yet unresigned!

THE ROUND TABLE

It was said long ago, that poets, like canaries, must be starved in order to keep them in good voice, and, in the palmy days of Grub Street, an editor's table was nothing grander than his own knee, on which, in his airy garret, he unrolled his paper-parcel of dinner, happy if its wrapping were a sheet from Brown's last poem, and not his own. Now an editorial table seems to mean a board of green cloth at which literary broken-victuals are served out with no carving but that of the editorial scissors.

La Maga has her table, too, and at fitting times invites to it her various Eminent Hands. It is a round table,—that is, rounded by the principle of rotation,—for how could she settle points of precedence with the august heads of her various Departments without danger of the dinner's growing cold? Substantial dinners are eaten thereat with Homeric appetite, nor, though impletus venter non vult studere libenter, are the visits of the Muse unknown. At these feasts no tyranny of speech-making is allowed, but the bonbons are all wrapped in original copies of verses by various contributors, which, having served their festive turn, become the property of the guests. Reporters are not admitted, for the eating is not done for inspection, like that of the hapless inmates of a menagerie; but La Maga herself sometimes brings away in her pocket a stanza or so which she esteems worthy of a more general communication. Last month she thus sequestered the following Farewell addressed by Holmes to the historian of William the Silent.

Yes, we knew we must lose him,—though friendship may claimTo blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame;Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own,'Tis the whisper of love when the bugle has blown.As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel,—As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel,—As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string,He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring.What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loomTill their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom,While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyesThat caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies!In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time,Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime,There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung,There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue!Let us hear the proud story that time has bequeathedFrom lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed!Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom,Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom!* * * * *The stream flashes by, for the west-winds awakeOn pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake,To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine,With incense they stole from the rose and the pine.So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushedWhen the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed:THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING,—the world holds him dear,—Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career!Aug. 8, 1857.

LITERARY NOTICES

The Greyson Letters, Selections from the Correspondence of R.E.H. GREYSON, ESQ. Edited by HENRY ROGERS, Author of "The Eclipse of Faith," &c. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1 vol. 12mo.

We are assured in the American preface to this volume, that while it exhibits Henry Rogers as the peer of Butler as a reasoner, it also shows him not inferior to Lamb as a humorist. Much as we are inclined to echo the critical decisions of prefaces, we regret being unable to indorse this confident statement. In amplitude, vigor, and fertility of thought we must think the author of the "Analogy" holds some slight advantages over the author of "The Eclipse of Faith"; and we seriously doubt if the lovers of Charles Lamb will be likely to rush into mirthful ecstasies over the humor of "The Greyson Letters." But we suppose that Henry Rogers himself would make no pretensions to the rank of a writer, or reasoner, or humorist of the first class. Far from being a great man, he occasionally slips into the prejudices of quite a little one, and he never wholly puts off the pedagogue and puts on the philosopher. Without much original force of nature, and never unmistakably stamping his own image and superscription either on his arguments or his language, he is still a well-trained theological scholar, a skilful logician, and one of that class of elegant writers who neither offend the taste nor kindle the soul. As a controversialist on themes which are now engaging popular attention, he grasps the questions he discusses at one or two removes from their centre and heart, where they pass out of the sphere of ideas and pass into the region of opinions; and in this region he is candid to the extent of his perceptions, quick to detect the weak points in the formal statements of his opponents, and, without touching the vitalities of the matter in controversy, is always hailed as victor by those who agree with him, but rarely convinces the doubters and deniers he aims to convert. "The Greyson Letters" are evidently the work of an amiable, learned, accomplished, and able man, interested in a wide variety of themes which especially attract the attention of thinkers, but in his treatment of them indicating a lack of deep and wide experience, and of that close, searching thought which pierces to the core of a subject, and broods patiently over its living elements and relations, before it assumes to take them as materials for argumentation. This broad grasp of premises, which implies a penetrating and interpretative as well as dialectic mind, is the distinguishing difference between a great reasoner and an able logician. In regard to the form of the work, we can see no reason why its essays should be thrown into the shape of letters. The epistolary spirit vanishes almost as soon as "Dear Sir" and "Dear Madam" create its expectation. The author's mind is grave by nature and culture, and is sprightly, as it seems to us, by compulsion and laborious levity. His nature has none of the richness and juiciness, none of the instinctive soul of humor, which must have vent in the ludicrous. Occasionally an adversary or adverse dogma is demolished with excellent logic, and then comes a dismal grin or chuckle at the feat, which hardly reminds us of the sly, shy smile of Addison, or the frolic intelligence which laughs in the victorious eyes of Pascal. Still, with all abatements, "The Greyson Letters" make a book well worthy of being read, contain much admirable matter and suggestive thought, and might be allowed to pass muster among good books of the second class, did they not come before us with professions that seemed to invite the tests applicable to the first.

* * * * *

Essays in Biography and Criticism. By PETER BAYNE, M.A., Author of "The Christian Life, Social and Individual," &c. First Series. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1 vol. 12mo.

This volume contains essays on De Quincey, Tennyson and his Teachers, Mrs. Barrett Browning, Glimpses of Recent British Art, John Ruskin, Hugh Miller, The Modern Novel, and Currer Bell. Though of various degrees of merit, they all evince careful study and patient thought, and are written with considerable brilliancy and eloquence. As a critic, Mr. Bayne is generally candid, conscientious, and intelligent, with occasional remarks evincing delicacy and depth of thought; but his perceptions are not always trustworthy, and his judgments are frequently of doubtful soundness. Thus when we are told that Wordsworth owed his fame to his moral elevation rather than to his "intellectual or æsthetic capacities," and that there is hardly an instance of the highest creative imagination in the whole range of his poetry,—when we are informed that since Shakspeare no one "has laid bare the burning heart of passion" so perfectly as Byron,—and when the question is triumphantly asked, "Where, out of Shakspeare, can we find such a series of female portraits as those" in Bulwer's "Rienzi,"—we feel inclined, in this association of Byron and Bulwer with Shakspeare, and this oversight of Wordsworth's claim to represent the highest original elements in the English poetry of the present century, to dispute Mr. Bayne's right to assume the chair of interpretative criticism. But still there are so many examples in his book of fine and true perception, and so evident a sympathy with intellectual excellence and moral beauty, that we do not feel disposed to quarrel with him on account of the apparent erroneousness of some of his separate opinions. Besides, his work is written in a style which will recommend it to a class of readers who are not especially interested in the subjects of which it treats, and it cannot fail to stimulate in them a desire to know more of the great writers of the century.

* * * * *

White Lies. A Novel. By Charles Reade. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1 vol. 12mo.

The early chapters of this novel lack the brisk movement, the sparkling compactness, the stinging surprises of Mr. Reade's usual style, but he kindles and condenses as he proceeds. As a whole, the work compares favorably with his most brilliant compositions. He is a writer difficult to criticize, because his defects are pleasing defects. Dogmatism is commonly offensive, and Mr. Reade's dogmatism is of the most uncompromising, not to say insulting character; yet it is exhibited in connection with insight so sure and vivid, that we pardon the positiveness of the assertion for the truth of what is asserted. Then he has a way of forcing Nature, much against her wish, to be epigrammatic,—of producing startling effects by artifices almost theatrical; and though his devices are obvious, they are more than forgiven for the genuine power and real naturalness behind the rhetorical masquerade. Other men's freaks and eccentricities lead to the distortion of truth and the confusion of relations, but Mr. Reade has freaks of wisdom and eccentricities of practical sagacity. Occasionally he has a stroke of observation that comes like a flash of lightning, blasting and shattering in an instant a prejudice or hypocrisy which was strong enough to resist all the arguments of reason and all the appeals of humanity. "White Lies" is full of examples of his power, and of the peculiarities of his power. Blunt and bold and arrogant as his earnestness often appears, it is capable of the most winning gentleness, the most delicate grace, and the most searching pathos. The delineation of the female characters in this novel is especially admirable. Josephine and Laure are exquisite creations, and the Baroness and Jacintha, though different, are almost as perfect, considered as examples of characterization. In the invention and management of incidents, the author exhibits a sure knowledge of the means and contrivances by which expectation is stimulated, and the interest of the story kept from flagging. We hope to read many more novels from the same pen as delightful as "White Lies."

* * * * *

Brazil and the Brazilians. Portrayed in Historical and Descriptive Sketches. By Rev. D.P. Kidder, D.D., and Rev. J.C. Fletcher. Illustrated by one hundred and fifty Engravings. Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson. 1 vol. 8vo.

Brazil is a country but little known to the majority of readers, and the little that is known is so fragmentary that it is as likely to convey a false idea as an incomplete one. The writers of this volume combine two qualifications for the work of dissipating this ignorance. They have a direct personal knowledge of Brazil, gained during a long residence in the country, and they have carefully studied every valuable book on its history and resources. The manners, customs, laws, government, productions, literature, art, and religion of the people have all been carefully observed under circumstances favorable for accurate investigation. The result is a valuable, interesting, and attractive volume, well worthy of being extensively read. The elegance of its mechanical execution, and the profusion of engravings illustrating the text, will add to its popularity, if not to its value.