uniform currency, and in fiscal services to the government, both at home and abroad. Their profits, then, on the purchase of bills, and the sale of their own drafts, would not only be less than would be charged by the state banks, but at the lowest rates at which they could be afforded.

"Thirdly, the two or three national banks would be salutary and effective checks on each other. We have seen that the state banks, whose excessive issues are so effectually controlled by a national bank, are also a reciprocal check on the latter; but their power could never be so great, both from defect of concert and unity of action, and for want of the important aid that would be afforded by the funds of the government. The national banks, thus equal in capital, in credit, and resources, in all parts of the Union, would give the public the same security against the redundant issues that a single national bank has hitherto afforded against those of a state bank; and thus a further answer could be given to those who have objected to a national bank, that, while it restrained the operations of the state banks, it was unrestricted itself."

We must be pardoned for expressing an opinion that this argument is nothing more than a weak concession to the principles of the Virginia school of statesmen. For as to the question of power, if we give it up at all, we may as well give it up entirely, as to receive it in such useless portions. The only value of a bank is in its ability to do good, and the argument against it from its abuse of power, is only the common one which applies to the use of all the great agents of the universe. Now it is plain if we take three banks instead of one, because three are not so likely to act with equal vigor as one, and because they will check one another; we may find that while we have multiplied the sources of abuse, we have, in the same ratio, been diminishing the ability to benefit the public. For in regard to the matter of competitions, which constitutes the Professor's second reason, that is not what we want to create in America from legislation. It springs up of itself wherever it can be used, and it never will be wanting where any sources of pecuniary profit are to be found. The State banks compete with each other, and would do so with a national bank more than enough. The great object is to keep that competition within bounds; and this can never be done by multiplying national banks. For if the argument in favor of three be good, we know not how that in favor of four could be resisted, or any superior number beyond one. We consider one necessary, exactly as we consider one State government, or one national government, necessary, and not two; because the object is to control and to regulate what can be controlled or regulated in no other manner. But to do this well, it must be done simply. A single agency is the most effective instrument imaginable, as well to avoid the one extreme of regulating too much, as the other of not regulating at all.

Neither do we perceive how two or three banks would be such salutary and effective checks upon each other, as the author pretends. Each would exercise its power of contraction to a certain extent, and no more. It could not prevent the expansion of one of its equals, nor establish any uniformity of action throughout the country. In moments of prosperity, to be sure, the competition for business would be likely to tempt them all to go to the outside of a safe line of conduct in accommodating the public, but we see no evidence to prove that any similar motive would exist in common to prompt a contrary course when it was needed.

Yet, after all, the great obstacle to the Professor's plan would arise

from its failing to supply some general system of regulation. It is now pretty well ascertained that the difficulties most likely to befal the currency must be foreseen by a thorough analysis of the elements which form the foreign exchanges of the country; and that a season of prosperity, and extended domestic trade, is often apt to terminate in a drain of specie from abroad. At these moments it is that a national bank can do good by exercising a counteractive power over the circulation in a system of steady and uniform preparation at all exposed points at once. This system necessarily bears upon the state banks at those points, and turns their attention to the expediency of following suit. The machine of credit, then, moves harmoniously, and the danger apprehended is thus in a way to be avoided. But if there were two or three national institutions, with each a different head and management, and each directed from a different point, as, for instance, from New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans; it may be doubted whether the president of the New Orleans bank would see the state of the currency with the same eyes that he of Philadelphia did, or whether the latter would be always prepared to concur with his rival in New York. Hence, a difference in policy, and the fatal consequences of a disagreement. One institution would rapidly undo the work of the other, and the State banks, thus freed from restraint, would act exactly as they pleased; and the currency would be left to its fate, very much after the same fashion that it now is, when there is no national bank at all.

The great want of the country, then, is of some single power which shall think of the state of the currency, and of that only, and which shall always keep itself prepared to act in cases of emergency. This power should not be entirely under the control of the commercial interest, though it ought to sympathize with it; and it should be wholly separated from political influence of any kind. Nothing but the very highest grade of personal integrity should be called into the management, no suspicion of personal interest should be admitted;-above all, politicians of every denomination should be rigidly excluded from either the direction or the participation of the favors of the institution. This may seem harsh and unreasonable, but it is indispensable. The currency has suffered too much already from the connexion that has been made between finance and general politics. The two should be kept separate; not, to be sure, in the manner contemplated by the present government of sacrificing the one to the other, but by preventing any collision between them. The commercial division of the country ask nothing better than to be let alone. In consideration of the advantages they would derive from a sound currency and a well regulated system of exchange, they would almost too readily consent to retire from the field of political action; and in so doing, they would be more likely to be benefitting the community in their particular province, than those mock patriots ever can, who combine, so very closely, the professions of attachment to the people's interest, with the most active zeal in promoting their own. A respectable merchant, who minds his own business, is a better and more useful man than a factious president. And an upright and independent bank direction, out of politics, would promote the good of the nation much more than any partyridden house of Congress.

CHRONICLES OF COMMERCE.

ART. III. COMMERCIAL SKETCH OF BOSTON, WITH STATISTICAL FACTS, AND NOTICES OF EMINENT MERCHANTS.

THE state of Massachusetts, it is well known, was settled by the puritans in the early part of the seventeenth century; men of stern minds and great inflexibility of purpose, who abandoned their native country, and sought in the wilderness for that religious toleration, which was denied them at home. There they reared their temples to the Almighty, and worshipped, as they believed, in the manner most primitive and apostolic, abjuring all such rites and ceremonies as conflicted with their peculiar tenets. From the commencement, the settlers were men of different classes and occupations in life, and some of them were traders or merchants, and naturally turned their attention to those pursuits to which they had been accustomed. Others were mechanics, but the larger portion were cultivators of the soil. In September, 1628, two years after the first company settled at Salem, the number of inhabitants exceeded two thousand; the greater part of these arrived with Winthrop, in June, 1630, and settled at Charlestown, Watertown, Boston, Dorchester, and Roxbury. So large was the annual increase, that, including the few removed to Hartford and New Haven, the population of Massachusetts, in 1641, amounted to twenty-one thousand. This would justify, and naturally excite, the commercial spirit, and the inhabitants were too active and enterprising to leave the trade of the colony in the hands of the British merchants. In the first eleven or twelve years, dating back from its earliest settlement, two hundred ships had arrived at Boston and Salem, with large quantities of goods and provisions, of various kinds; and as we have before remarked, bringing large numbers of emigrants, to encourage and strengthen the earlier adventurers; and we find them soon competing with the English merchants for the trade of the colony. Vessels were early purchased for this purpose, and employed in voyages to the West Indies, and to Great Britain. Several were built for the coasting trade to Virginia, returning with cargoes of corn-and one ship of three hundred tons, for more distant voyages. Governor Winthrop early had one built of a smaller size, and one was built at Plymouth, by subscription among the inhabitants.

Maverick, who was settled on an island, or more properly a peninsula, in Boston harbor, now called East Boston, was among the first who turned his attention to navigation; and, on the arrival of Winthrop and his company, in 1630, was a merchant, and the owner of a small vessel engaged in the West India trade.

Edward Gibbons became connected with him at an early period, and visited the islands for the purposes of trade. They also traded with the French near the bay of Fundy, where the French had two places fortified and a considerable settlement; but Gibbons, trusting De La Tour, a French resident there, with goods to a large amount, which he had imported from the West Indies, and purchased of British merchants, trading to Boston; by the failure of De La Tour to pay, Gibbons became embarrassed, and eventually a bankrupt, when he was somewhat advanced in life. Gibbons appears always to have sustained a high reputation, as he was a representative for Boston in the general court, for several years, and commander in chief, under the governor, of the militia of Massachusetts.

As population increased, commerce and navigation became extended.

Twenty or thirty years before the settlement of Boston, say from 1600 to 1610, the English and French had engrossed the fisheries on the coast of Massachusetts and Maine, and large quantities were taken and exported to the West Indies, and to Europe; but in twenty years after the first settlement of Boston, they engaged in an active competition in the fisheries; and furs, to a large amount, were sent to Europe, and disposed of at handsome profits. Sarsaparilla was also shipped to England, and found a ready market, on account of its supposed medicinal qualities, and the charm of novelty attached to the early shipment of the article. But, with all their exertions, the balance of trade could not be otherwise than in favor of the mother country, and the colonial merchants, from want of adequate capital, being obliged to purchase on credit, and at high prices, realized far less profits on their adventures, than their British competitors.

From the first settlement of the colony, carpenters, masons, and smiths, were sufficiently numerous for ordinary purposes, but most articles, composed of iron and steel, were imported from necessity. Shoemakers and feltmakers were few, and shoes and hats were imported in large quantities.

The manners of the inhabitants at that time were simple, and their means small-they had not the taste or the ability for the luxurious indulgences of modern times; and the demand for many foreign articles now considered indispensable, was necessarily very limited. Wine was used sparingly, silks were worn by few, and mere ornamental articles, always the most expensive, were very nearly, if not wholly, proscribed. In fact, a law was long in force, prohibiting the common people from wearing gold and silver lace, &c.

The rapid growth and prosperous state of the colony, in its steady and advancing steps in trade and navigation, was perceived with a spirit of rivalry and dislike by the mother country, and measures were taken to arrest its progress by the passage of the navigation laws in the British parliament. As early as 1661, on the restoration of Charles the Second, this spirit began its odious manifestation, and the idea of raising a revenue, by duties on the commerce of the colonies, was first developed. The court of Great Britain, profligate and needy, wanted money; and though the colonies in New England had never been nurtured by the parent government, or received any favors or indulgences from the crown, and had borne all the expenses of their early settlement, and defence against the Indian tribes, it was thought politic to tax the industry and enterprise of those whom their wants of conciliation, in matters purely of a spiritual nature, had driven to take shelter in a wilderness, there to raise their altars to religious liberty, and to worship God, as they believed, in spirit and in truth. These laws were extensively evaded for a long time, and gave rise to a practice generally destructive to public morals, and only justifiable by the injustice of the requisition. Smuggling was extensively practised, the duties enjoined were not paid, and the practice justified on the ground of oppression and injustice, in taxing the colonies for the support of a government, who demanded every thing and yielded nothing, and gave them no protection. Besides, it was asserted that their charter recognised, or at least inferred, the exclusive right of the colonial assembly to lay taxes and duties on the colonists, as there they had a voice in the representation, which they had not in the British parliament, and there was reason and justice in the plea; but whenever the power of the mother country could enforce the law, it was carried into execution, and the fatal foundation laid for the loss to the British empire of one of the brightest jewels of the crown.

During the civil war in England, and the protectorship of Cromwell, the colonial trade was entirely free, and the commerce of the country increased

as its resources were developed, and they paid no duties on their products exported to Great Britain; but from 1675, the British navigation acts. were strictly enforced, and often illegal fees were exacted by the arbitrary Randolph.

Among the earlier merchants in Boston, we may also name Keayne, Usher, Vassall, Newgate, Hibbins, Tyng, and Richards; and in the former part of the last century, Belcher, Hutchinson, Savage, Brattle, Welles, Cheekley, Winthrop, and Fitch. In Plymouth, were Allerton, Hatherby, Paddy, Attwood, Doane, and Willett; in Salem, Hawthorne, Brown, and the Rev. Hugh Peters encouraged navigation and trade.

So much, however, were the colonists attached to trade, that notwithstanding the duties on commerce were often vexatious, and always a subject of complaint, yet many of the inhabitants, allured by the gainful pursuits, and indisposed to part with the conveniences procured by its means, continued to engage in it under all its restrictions and taxes, up to the time of the revolution.

Some adequate idea may be formed of the rapid growth of the New England colonies, from the following extract from New England entries, in the plantation office in England, in 1673, which we find in one of the volumes of the Massachusetts Historical Society: -"One hundred and twenty thousand souls, sixteen thousand capable of bearing arms; thirteen thousand families; twelve ships of between two hundred and one hundred tons; one hundred and ninety between twenty and one hundred tons; five hundred fishing vessels, (many of these only large boats of six to eight tons.") The greater part of these belonged to Boston, some to Salem, and a part to New Haven.

At this period, and for nearly half a century after, the greater portion of foreign goods and products, imported into the New England states, were landed at Boston, and were for account of the merchants at that place, excepting only a portion shipped for sale on British account. From thence they were transported to Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine; but Boston early became the central point of trade and navigation, and increased rapidly during the period we have just mentioned. The rigid deportment introduced by the first settlers, and followed by their descendants, under the influence of increasing wealth, now began to give way to more courtesy of manner, and greater luxury and refinement in living, and more display in dress and furniture. It was, however, of a different description to the fashionable demeanor of the present day; which, in attempting to be easy, often oversteps the bounds of propriety and decorum; for it was exhibited in that profound courtesy and respect, and that deference to the opinions of others, and that reciprocal and delicate attention, which marked the finished gentleman of the sixteenth century, and which left an impress on the manners and habits of the citizens of Boston, which has never been obliterated.

The merchants then, as now, were justly praised for liberal sentiments, and their patronage of the fine arts-of literary, charitable, and religious institutions and several of them were early donors to Harvard College. It may gratify curiosity to quote further from the work we have just mentioned. "There were ten to fifteen merchants whose aggregate property amounted to £50,000, or about £5,000 each-five hundred persons worth £3,000 each -1,500 families, then in Boston, containing about eight individuals each, or about 12,000 inhabitants, nearly a tenth part of the population of New England. No house in Boston with more than twenty rooms; some of these were probably very small, sufficient only for a single bedthan twenty houses with ten rooms. The poorest cottages are lofty, (so that

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