The loans keep the exchanges favorable, so long as the States are contracting them; and overcoming, as they do, the influence of high duties on the amount of imports, the two combined swell the government revenues, and increase the amount of government deposites. The banks, protected against all demands that may be made upon them, furnish immense resources to those who combine in themselves the several characters enumerated; and enable them to realize immense profits, when the policy adopted all but ruins those who confine themselves strictly to manufacturing. These few individuals, by investing credit, where others must invest real capital, are always winning, while others are losing; for one per cent. on their nominal capital yields them a higher actual profit, than the others are receiving, when they are making a profit of some ten or twelve per cent. These last derive no advantage from the policy which enriches the others. The only possible advantage, they can hope for, is in the increased amount of bank accommodations they may obtain. But this hope is fallacious. The bankers are also manufacturers, importers, stockholders in rail-road and other corporations, and general speculators. They need all the possible accommodations of the banks for themselves; and it will not be denied, that the amount of discounts or accommodations to others than the officers, directors, and heavy stockholders of the banks, are, and for a long time have been, exceedingly small. This is the reason why there has been such a rage to multiply the number of banks. Moreover, by means of the favorable state of exchange, and the large government deposites, the banks are able to circulate their paper to an almost unlimited extent; and this enhances prices, so that our market is all but monopolized by the foreign producer, or manufacturer. Under the operation of the policy, which it is now proposed to revive, we imported largely the very necessaries of life, notwithstanding the protection of high duties, and our vast agricultural resources. The rise in prices then more than neutralizes any supposed bank facilities the manufacturer

would obtain. What interest, then, have they, who are engaged in manufacturing only, to call for a favorable state of the exchange, and for larger government deposites? Do they imagine, the Messrs. Lawrence, for instance, were they simply manufacturers, would demand distribution and encourage State loans? Or if they were simply merchants, that they would demand high duties? We think better of the business capacities and general sagacity of these gentlemen, than to suppose they would be guilty of such egregious folly. They would not, as some of their dupes are doing, labor day and night for their own ruin.

We cannot enlarge on this point. But we submit to the mass of our business men, if they have duly considered the great diversity there is between their interest, and that of the few individuals they follow. Have they considered, that the policy, which is most favorable to these few, must be the very policy most injurious to those who are manufacturers and nothing else, or merchants and nothing else? We beg them to pause, and consider even for their own sake. Why should they war against their own interest?

We have many more, and even weighty objections to this distribution act, but our limits compel us to draw our remarks to a close. In whatever light we view it, it is absurd or iniquitous. To give away five millions of dollars, annually, from the revenue, when we are obliged to resort to a public loan of twelve millions to meet our current expenses; to cut off one of the principal sources of revenue, at a time when our foreign relations are threatening, and increased expenditures are demanded to provide for the defences of the country; to increase the tariff of duties to protect home manufactures by diminishing imports, and pledging the whole public domain as a basis of foreign loans to be realized in the shape of increased imports; to revive credit, and render it stable and uniform by adopting a policy for swelling bank circulation to an almost unlimited extent; to keep the government pure by augmenting its fiscal transactions, and paving the way for a surplus revenue,

to serve as the basis of banking operations; to promote the independence and dignity of the States by making them pensioners on the federal treasury; to enhance the dignity and worth of the federal government by converting it into a mere tax-collector for the benefit of a few rapacious business men, and gamblers in State stocks; to promote the morals and happiness of the people by facilitating the means of wild speculation and general extravagance; and the purity, and freedom of elections, by appropriating some five millions of dollars annually, as a corruption fund, with which to bribe directly or indirectly electors, may be wise, liberal, and patriotic statesmanship, in the estimation of whig politicians, and worthy to cover their party with glory; but if the immense majority of the American people do not treat it with the indignant scorn and contempt it so richly merits, the progress of corruption must have been fearfully rapid for a few years past, and altogether more so than we had supposed. If the American people permit the authors of such a barefaced, such an absurd, and such an iniquitous policy, to hold a place in what is regarded reputable society; if they go further, and sustain them in this policy, they will deserve the scorn and derision of the whole world. In such a case, let them never again speak of their intelligence and virtue, their freedom and independence, their capacity for self-government; but sink into the infamous slavery, for which their base hearts and craven spirits and stultified intellects fit them.

We

But we think we know the American people. cannot praise them. They have suffered themselves to be most wofully deluded; they have disappointed and grieved the hearts, and almost destroyed the faith of the friends of popular government; but they are not clean gone in iniquity; they have not quite lost their old spirit, their old devotion to justice and freedom. There is a spark of Seventy-Six in their hearts yet; there is some of the old indomitable courage left, that will brave all but the fires of hell for freedom; and, thank God, there is still ground for hope. The deep

indignation with which the Republican party to a man has received this measure, the terrible defeat which the whig party has experienced in nearly all the States, which have held elections since its passage, revive our hopes, and show us that the people will yet be true to themselves; that they will prove themselves worthy descendants of those who fought for independence on Bunker's Hill, at Saratoga, or Yorktown. Whiggism indeed came into power and place; but the extra session, it was so eager to call, disclosed its character, and already is it prostrate. Alas! poor whiggism! Thy day was short. It was written long ago, the wicked shall not live out half their days, and thou hast proved the truth of inspiration. Go to thy long home. few may be found to bear the pall, and weep over thy ashes; but the heart of humanity bounds with joy at thy departure, and wisdom and virtue assume again their dominion in the affairs of the Republic.

A

We conclude, by calling, in the name of the constitution, upon the Republican party in all the States, where it has the majority in the legislature, to reject the bribe proffered, to refuse, with the stern integrity now demanded of them, to become, by accepting the portion offered to them, parties to the gross infraction of the constitution, which every man of the party believes has been practised. Now is a fair opportunity for republicans, democrats, the late administration party, to prove the virtue which they have always professed. They have been called "spoilsmen;" let them show by their conduct, the charge was a base slander. Let them show now, that reverence for the constitution, a sense of justice, of honor, and integrity, can outweigh in their bosoms the few thousand dollars offered them. The rejection of their respective shares by the republican States will defeat the measure. The whigs dare not persist in it against the protest, the stern indignant protest of a majority of the States in the Union. Nor is this all. The moral effect on the whole Union would be grand and salutary. A great party, standing on principle, and scorning the proffers of wealth to corrupt

them, would be a sublime spectacle, worthy of the true Republican party; and needed, in these days of degeneracy, to revive the hopes of good men in the purity. and permanence of popular governments. The party owe this to the constitution; they owe it to their own consistency; they owe it to the integrity of their principles; they owe it as a stern and indignant rebuke to whig corruption and corruptionists; they owe it to their country; they owe it to the cause of popular government; they owe it to Christian morals, and to oppressed humanity, sighing everywhere for deliverance. Do we count too much on them, when we say they will do it? Do we trust them too far, when we say they will scorn to accept the bribe? Now is the crisis with them. Let them now take their stand boldly and firmly on principle, stake everything on principle; and their triumph is not only sure, but they will redeem their country, and bless the race. More we need not say. The democratic party, the true Republican party of the country, will not now be wanting in what is due to itself, and the just and glorious cause it repre

sents.

EDITOR.

ART. V.-LITERARY NOTICES AND CRITICISMS.

Monaldi: A Tale. Boston: Little and Brown. 1841. 12mo. pp. 253. This is a Tale by Mr. Washington Allston, who stands unquestionably at the head of American artists, and is precisely what a student of his paintings would expect; neither more nor less. It indicates a mind highly cultivated, of considerable native richness, of great sensibility, but of no uncommon boldness or vigor of thought.

We are too ignorant of works of art to be able to speak of them with much confidence in our own judgment. We profess to have some sensibility to such works, but we do not know how to speak of them in the language of connoisseurs. We can judge nothing of the skill or machinery of the artist, any further than the effect his works produce upon us. Mr. Allston's pictures, while they affect us not