for his wrath was terrible. Dr. Bowditch went home, and slept on it; and the next day, hearing from some authentic source that the man was extremely poor; and had probably been driven by the necessities of his family to commit this audacious plagiarism, his feelings were touched, his heart relented, his anger melted away like wax. He went to him again, and said, "Sir, you did very wrong, and you know it, to appropriate to your own use and benefit the fruit of my labors. But I understand you are poor, and have a family to support. I feel for you, and will help you. That plan is unfinished, and contains errors that would have disgraced you and me had it been published in the state in which you found it. I'll tell you what I will do. I will finish the plan; I will correct the errors; and then you shall publish it for your own benefit, and I will head the subscription list with my name." What a sublime, noble, Christian spirit was there manifested! This was really overcoming evil with good, and pouring coals of fire upon the poor man's head. The natural feeling of resentment, which God has implanted within all bosoms for our protection against sudden assault and injury, was overruled and conquered by the higher, the sovereign principle of conscience. Dr. Bowditch was very familiar with the Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testaments. He had read the Bible in his childhood, under the eye of a pious mother, and he loved to repeat the sublime and touching language of Holy Writ. In his religious views he was a Unitarian. His religion was an inward sentiment, flowing out into the life, and revealing itself in his character and actions. It was at all times, and at all periods of his life, a controlling and sustaining principle. He confided in the providence and benignity of his Heavenly Father, as revealed by his blessed Son, our Lord, and had an unshaken trust in the wisdom and rectitude of all the divine appointments. He looked forward with firm faith to an immortality in the spiritual world. Such had been the life, and such the character, of this distinguished man; and such was he to the last, through all the agonies of a most distressing illness. In the midst of health and usefulness, in the full discharge of the duties of life, and in the full enjoyment of its satisfactions, the summons suddenly comes to him to leave it. And he meets the summons with the utmost equanimity and composure, with the submission of a philosopher and with the resignation of a Christian. He certainly had much to live for- few have more-but he gave up all without repining or complaint. He said he should have liked to live a little longer, to complete his great work, and see his younger children grown up and settled in life. "But I am perfectly happy," he added, "and ready to go, and entirely resigned to the will of Providence." He arranged all his affairs, gave his directions with minuteness, and dictated and signed his last will and testament. While his strength permitted, he continued to attend to the necessary affairs of his office, and on the day previous to his death put his name to an important instrument. In the intervals of pain he prepared, as I have already remarked, the remaining copy, and corrected the proof sheets of the fourth volume of his great work, the printing of which was nearly finished at the time of his death. It was gratifying to him to find that his mind was unenfeebled by disease and pain; and one day, after solving one of the hardest problems in the book, he exclaimed, in his enthusiastic way, "I feel that I am Nathaniel Bowditch still-only a little weaker." On the morning of his death, when his sight was very dim, and his voice almost gone, like the patriarch Jacob, he called his children around his bedside, and arranging them in the order of age, pointed to and addressed each by name, and said, "You see I can distinguish you all; and I now give you all my parting blessing. The time is come. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word." These were his last words. Soon after this he quietly breathed away his soul, and departed. "And the end of that man was peace." Such a death alone was wanting to complete such a life, and crown and seal such a character. He died on the 16th day of March, 1838, having nearly completed his 65th year. He has built his own monument, more enduring than marble; and in his splendid scientific name, and in his noble character, has bequeathed to his country the richest legacy. The sailor traverses the sea more safely by means of his labors, and the widow's and the orphan's treasure is more securely guarded in consequence of his care. He was the Great Pilot who steered all our ships over the ocean; and though dead, he yet liveth, and speaketh, and acteth, in the recorded wisdom of his invaluable book. The world has been the wiser and the happier that he has lived in it. He has left an example, as was intimated in the beginning of this Memoir, full of instruction and encouragement to the young, and especially to those among them who are struggling with poverty and difficulties. He has shown them that poverty is no dishonor, and need be no hinderance; and that the greatest obstacles may be surmounted by persevering industry and an indomitable will. ART. VI. THE STATE OF THE CURRENCY. Ir is now half a century, since the great impulse given by the organization of an efficient system of general government, to the commercial energies of the United States, was first communicated. The period of time which has clapsed, has been full of important public events; many of them by no means favorable to the full development of our prosperity. There have been wars, embargoes, a depreciated paper currency, and an irregular national policy, to contend with, in almost every country with which we have had relations, as well as in our own. Yet, notwithstanding all these obstacles, the progress of the United States, as a commercial nation, has been almost uniform. The exports of the country, which, in 1790, hardly equalled in value the sum of $20,000,000, have gone on increasing until they now amount to $100,000,000, annually. Our population, which, at the former date, scarcely numbered 4,000,000 souls, cannot at the present moment be estimated below 16,000,000. Whilst the wealth of the community, if it can be at all measured by the amount of the currency it sets in motion, must be allowed to have enlarged even in a greater proportion still. All of this immense extension has been carried on under the agency of a system which may emphatically be denominated one of credit. The generation, in active business, has been constantly running in advance of the means actually possessed in its efforts for improving its condition; and although, occasionally, the effect of pushing the work a little too hard, must be admitted to have been for the moment injurious yet, when we look back upon the field of action to observe results, when we consider how much has been done, and how few and ill provided were those who had the work to do, we can scarcely fail to wonder that a doubt should exist of the value that credit has been to our community, or an idea should have been suggested that it has been an obstacle to its advance. The passage of time has, however, been attended with important changes in our condition, not less in a positive than a relative point of view. It has raised us up, a new nation, to take a leading position in the commercial affairs of the world, acting upon principles somewhat peculiar to itself, and not altogether recognised by older and longer established ones. These principles, as they go into operation upon a daily expanding scale, are furnishing new materials for the observation of men, and new results for the science of political economy. It is a peculiarity of our countrymen in all departments of active life, rarely to take for granted that there is a limit to experiment. They are not satisfied with any instrument in ordinary use, merely because it works well, but must seek to find out whether it cannot be made to work better. This disposition has doubtless some occasional inconveniences, particularly in the fact that it often causes experience to be purchased three or four times over but on the whole, it has advantages more than compensating. The great want in this country, is the want of power enough to develop its resources. Whatever, then, is found in any degree to serve the purpose of supplying it, whether it is a labor saving machine, or a good substitute for capital, must be considered as a useful invention. Mistakes may, and no doubt do, often occur, and many contrivances come to be abandoned after experience of their failure to yield the benefits expected of them; but on the other hand, others which prove eminently advantageous are retained, and go to enlarge the active resources of the community. Thus has the country gone on, furnishing results often at variance with the rules which abstract notions, drawn from the study of books, decide to be true, and at the same time a series of facts upon which, at some future moment, new and more sound deductions may be made. - In the midst of the progress now referred to, one thing is strikingly observable; and this is, that the subject of money, considered as a science, is acquiring tenfold greater importance in the eyes of the American public, than it has ever heretofore enjoyed. Just in proportion às the motive force becomes greater through the increase of the materials of trade, the exchanges of which are always represented by money, do the results of their movements become more palpable and astonishing to every eye. Strange and unaccountable appearances present themselves to the observation even of the most experienced, which they desire to explain. And extraordinary dangers are apprehended, to avoid or guard against which, by a recurrence to some safe and well established principles of action, always applicable in such contingencies, becomes an important object to all. Neither is the study of our financial affairs confined entirely to this side of the Atlantic. The fluctuations in our currency, and the stability of our moneyed institutions, excite interest abroad as well as at home, and are observed almost as narrowly in the banking parlors of London, the great money mart of the world, they are upon the exchange in our own city. The doors of those very parlors are now besieged by swarms of applicants from America, for the loan of no little of their superfluous money, which the States are anxious to apply to the execution of vast schemes of internal. communication. They seek for it to fill up valleys and cut down mountains, which thirty years ago would have been regarded as the possible undertaking of a tenth generation later. When as in 1811, the state of New York was applying, through De Witt Clinton and others, to the General Government at Washington, for a little assistance in executing what was then thought the stupendous work of the Erie Canal, who could have foreseen that in five and twenty years afterwards it would seem a trifle, in comparison with what not merely that state, but others of not half her size and wealth, were undertaking to do? Who could then have supposed, that she who shrunk from the proposal of applying five millions of dollars to the original plan, would be considering whether eight times that sum was too much to be devoted to the same and similar purposes? It is the recollection of such facts as these, which bring to the mind of foreigners as well as natives, something like a feeble realization of the rapidity with which we advance. The world has given no similar lesson in its history. Strong as the expression may seem, yet it is no great exaggeration after all to say, that time and space, those obstacles to industry, once regarded so impracticable to deal with, stand nearly annihilated before the force of our experience. We can Yet it must be allowed that this amazing rapidity is calculated to confuse and dizzy the head most calmly employed in observing it. take no note of distance but by its loss; and as to the scrutiny of every particular wheel or spring that is set in motion, while all are in such constant action, the attempt is vain and fruitless. Whatever danger there may be in the path, must come, and must be met without any hope to avoid its consequences; for the people of the United States have become so habituated to swiftness of motion in their career, that they are as little conscious of it as they are of the daily revolution of the globe. We know not that the result would be greatly different, if they thought more about it. The country is generally considered as destined to furnish illustrations of the practical working of new theories in political economy as well as in government. Things unattempted yet, are the great ends which we would arrive at. And, inasmuch as the success of this policy has hitherto been unexampled, we have no right to presume that it will not continue hereafter, when more extensively fol lowed out. Our province in America is not to dogmatise about any thing, but to observe; not to strain and twist facts into an arbitrary theory of our own, but to let the theory be drawn out from the facts by that process of philosophical induction which ascends to a general principle only, over the steps formed by the study of particulars. It may be affirmed that there have been three eras in the progress of the United States, in wealth and resources. The first and longest was that during which the organization of the financial system of the country took place, and efforts were making to release it from the embarrassments incurred in establishing its independence. The second period passed in opening the means of internal communication between the States, and in attempts to develop the natural resources which they were believed to contain. The third and last, which is even now barely begun, appears to be likely to establish in its course the new principles by which credit and currency are hereafter to be regulated. Until the expiration of the charter of the National Bank, in 1836, the system first recommended by Hamilton, was, with a single brief interruption, that upon which the stability of our circulating medium was made to rest. It was then determined that the objections to a continuance of this system, were too serious to compensate for the advantages it furnished, and accordingly it was suffered to expire by its own limitation. The experiment was at that moment first entered upon, of letting the currency take care of itself, the ultimate value of which, although it was extremely disastrous in its first consequences to the community, remains still to be tested by the result of a longer continued trial. The first effect of liberating the banks throughout the Union, from all idea of central control, was perceived in an expansion of their issue of bills to an amount largely upon trebling what it had before been. A rapid rise in price of all commodities liable to be affected by it, was the consequence, which stimulated gambling speculation. Credit may accelerate the formation of capital, but it can never itself be capital. This idea was not remembered in the hurry to make money; and the consequence was, that the first application of the unerring test of exchange with foreign countries, which easily recognise the difference between the two, brought on a convulsion. The banks suspended the payment of their obligations in cash, and the little gold and silver in circulation instantly disappeared All of these event sfollowed each other with extraordinary rapidity; the fluctuations incident to them were all experienced in turn; the distress which they create was suffered, and yet here we are, in the year of our Lord 1839, to all external appearance, recovered from the effect of every injury. Coin has again gone into circulation as money quite as much as it ever did, while the paper bills of the banks still form the great medium for effecting the exchanges of the community, as much, if not more, than they have always donea convulsion of no ordinary character, in the estimation of all those who ever studied the subject from books, has actually passed away, if not without leaving its marks upon the fortunes of numberless private individuals, at least, making no visible alteration in the prosperity of the mass. Prices have not fallen in bringing round the change-the wages of labor are as high as ever the returns from industry are as quickly realized the profits of business do not fall short. Now, we must frankly confess at once, that there is something in this, very well calculated to make students of politico-economical treatises stare. There is no such thing in the record, as the so rapid recovery of a nation from an inconvertible paper money, upon so slight a previous preparation, as was made by this one. The amount of that paper diminished during the year that cash payments were suspended, far less than it changed its character, particularly in those states where the banks had been prohibited from issuing notes under five dollars. The sum of debt actually existing, was diminished by bankruptcy, far more than by payment. Property changed hands, but it did not become the more available as it went. And yet, notwithstanding the existence of these unfailing indications of a deeply disordered pecuniary condition, most of the banks were enabled to re-assume, within a year from the time of their suspension, the performance of their engagements, and that, as it proved, with hardly a risk to themselves from the effort. And now we should like to know, how many people can be found who take bank bills in payment, the less willingly, because they have found out that they are not equally, at all times, convertible into as much gold or silver as they represent? It is impossible to come at any adequate explanation of this phenomenon of recovery, without a close examination of all the resources to which we may have had access to produce it. Perhaps the most effectual, as it certainly was the most curious, was the extension of our credit in foreign countries, in the midst of all our distress. It now appears clearly, that whilst we at home were considering our case as very desperate, it was viewed with different eyes from abroad. The punctual payment of the interest and part of the principal of some of the loans negotiated by the States, with a liberal allowance for |
