Chapter VI: Truth and Love (1)

The Divine Attributes, the base of all true Art.

Art must be based upon a study of Nature, upon a clear and comprehensive knowledge of natural laws. No man was ever yet a _great_ poet without being at the same time a profound philosopher, for Poetry is the blossom and fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, and human emotions. The poet must have the ability to observe things as they really are, in order to depict them with accuracy, unchanged by any passion in the mind of the describer, whether the things to be depicted are actually present to the senses, or have a place only in the memory.

Nature may be regarded either as the home of man, and consequently associated with all the phases of his existence; or as an assemblage of symbols, manifesting the thoughts of the Creator. In accordance with the first view, the poet may give it its place in the different scenes of human life, animated with our passions, sympathizing with us, and expressing our feelings; in the second, he must try to interpret this divine language, to seize the idea gleaming through the veil of the material envelope, for there is an established harmony between material nature and intellectual. Every thought has its reflection in a visible object which repeats it like an echo, reflects it like a mirror, rendering it sensible first to the senses by the visible image, then to the thought by the thought.

Genius is the instinct of discovering some more of the words in this divine language of universal analogies, the key of which God alone possesses, but some portions of whose stores he sometimes deigns to unclose for man. Therefore in earlier times the Prophet, an inspired poet; and the poet, an uninspired prophet--were both considered holy. They are now looked upon as insane or useless; and indeed, this is but a logical consequence of the so-called _utilitarian_ views. If only the material and palpable part of nature which may be calculated, percented, turned into gold, or made to minister to sensual pleasures, is to be regarded with interest; if the lessons of the harvest, with its 'good seed and tares,' and the angels, its reapers; the teachings of the sparrow and the Divine Love which watched over them; the grass and the lilies of the field clothed in splendor by their Creator, are to awaken neither hope nor fear--then men are right in despising those who preserve a deep reverence for moral beauty; the idea of God in his creation; and respect the language of images, the mysterious relations between the visible and invisible worlds. Is it asked what does this language prove? The answer is, God and Immortality! Alas! they are worth nothing on 'Change!

Yet let him who would study his own happiness and well-being, follow the advice given in the Good Book:

'Look upon the rainbow, and bless Him that made it, _for it is very
beautiful_.

'It encompasseth the heavens about with the circle of its glory;
the hands of the Most High have displayed it.'

As creation is symbolic, and the province of the poet is humbly to imitate the works of the Great Artist, we must expect to find him also make use of symbolic language, imagery.

Metaphor (metapherô) is the application of a physical fact to the moral order; the association of an external material fact to one internal and intellectual. As this association is not reflective, but spontaneous, and is found pervading the infancy of languages; as it is intuitively and generally understood; it must take place in accordance with a mental law which establishes natural relations of analogy between the moral world and the physical. To become perceptible, thought must be imaged, reflected upon a sensuous form; the definition by an image is generally the most clear and complete. We may have clear enough ideas of some invisible truth in our own minds, but if we would convey our conception to another, we cannot give it to him by a pure idea, for then we would still be in the internal world of intellect; we must go out from this internal world, we must seek a sign in the physical world that he can see and contemplate; we select some phenomenon which can be easily observed, and in accordance with the law of analogy of which we have just spoken, we associate our thought with it, and in this manner we can clearly communicate the thought we have conceived.

Almost all the ideas we have of the moral world are expressed through metaphors: thus we say the _movements_ or _emotions_ of the soul; the _clearness_ or _coloring_ of a style; the _heat_ or _warmth_ of a discourse; the _hardness_ or _softness_ of the heart, &c., &c. Language _expresses_ the invisible thought of the soul; in accordance with the etymology of the word (exprimere) it _presses_ them from the soul, from the realm of internal thought, to transport them to the visible sphere. But the etymology itself is nothing but a metaphor, for the immaterial facts of the soul always remain in their own region inaccessible to the senses, and the instinctive facts of the organism always remain in the visible world, so that there can be no actual passage from one to the other, for an immaterial fact cannot be changed into a material one:--association, simultaneousness, correlation may obtain between them, but nothing more.

Saint Thomas Aquinas asserts 'that in our present state of degradation the intellect comprehends nothing without an image.' Language is in reality the association of material facts to facts of the will, heart, and intellect. Apparently insufficient to give a full idea of material things alone, it would seem almost impossible that it should ever be able to express the facts of the invisible world; but the human spirit, in accordance with the mental law impressed upon it by the Hand Divine, seizes the analogies of the _moral_ phenomena with the phenomena of _nature_, and, seeing physical facts used as symbols by the Creator to convey ethical, also instinctively uses them to express the facts of the moral world; and thus is born the _human Word_ which, invisibly ploughing the waves of the unseen air, can convey the most subtile thought, the most evanescent shade of feeling, the wildest, darkest, and deepest emotion. Language is man's expression of the finite, with its infinite meanings modified by the extent of his intelligence and his power of expression. It is truly a universal possession, but every man gifts it with his own individualities, his own idiosyncrasies. The style, one might almost say, is the man.

Thus the imagery of language finds its base in the very essence of our being. The poet is one gifted to seize upon these hidden analogies, to read these mystic symbols, and, through the force of his own imagination, to reveal them to his brethren in truth and love.

The imagination has two distinct functions. It combines, and by combination creates new forms; it penetrates, analyzes, and realizes truths _discoverable by no other faculty_.

An imagination of high power of combination seizes and associates at the _same moment all_ the important ideas of its work or poem, so that while it is working with any one of them, it is at the same instant working with and modifying them all in their several relations to it. It never once loses sight of their bearings upon each other--as the volition moves through every part of the body of a snake at the same moment, uncoiling some of its involute rings at the very instant it is coiling others. This faculty is inconceivable, admirable, almost divine; yet no less an operation is necessary for the production of any great work, for by the definition of unity of membership above given, not only certain couples or groups of parts, but _all_ the parts of a noble work must be separately imperfect; each must imply and ask for all the rest; the glory of every one of them must consist in its relation to the rest; neither while so much as _one_ is wanting can _any_ be right. This faculty is indeed something that looks as if its possessor were made in the Divine image!

'The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew;--
The conscious stone to beauty grew.'

EMERSON.

By the power of the combining imagination various ideas are chosen from an infinite mass, ideas which are separately imperfect, but which shall together be perfect, and of whose unity therefore the idea must be formed at the very moment they are seized, as it is only in that unity that their appropriateness consists, and therefore only the conception of that unity can prompt the preference. Therefore he alone can conceive and compose who sees the _whole_ at once before him.

Shakspeare is the great example of this marvellous power. Not only is every word which falls from the lips of his various characters true to his first conception of them, so true that we always know how they will act under any given circumstances, and we could substitute no other words than the words used by them without contradicting our first impression of them; but every character with which they come in contact is not only ever true to itself, but is precisely of the nature best fitted to develop the traits, vices, or virtues of the main figure. So perfect and complete is this lifelike unity, that we can scarcely think of one of his leading characters without recalling all those with whom it is associated. If we name Juliet, for instance, not only is her idea inseparable from that of Romeo, but the whole train of Montagues and Capulets, Mercutio, Tybalt, the garrulous nurse, the lean apothecary, the lonely friar, sweep by. What an exquisite trait of the poetic temperament, tenderness, and human sympathies of this same lonely friar is given us in his exclamation:

'Here comes the lady: O, so light a foot
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint.'

It also explains to us that it was the good friar's unconscious affection for Juliet, the pure sympathies of a lonely but loving heart, which so imprudently induced him to unite the unfortunate young lovers. The men and women of Shakspeare live and love, and we cannot think of them without at the same time thinking of those with whom they lived and whom they loved. Indeed, when we can wrest any character in a drama from those which surround it, and study it apart, the unity of the _whole_ is but apparent, never vital. Simplicity, harmony, life, power, truth, and love, are all to be found in any high work of the _associative_ imagination.

We now proceed to characterize the _penetrative_ imagination, 'which analyzes and realizes truths discoverable by no other faculty.' Of this faculty Shakspeare is also master. Ruskin, from whom we continue to quote, says: It never stops at crusts or ashes, or outward images of any kind, but ploughing them all aside, plunges at once into the very central fiery heart; its function and gift are the getting at the root; its nature and dignity depend on its holding things always _by the heart_. Take its hand from off the beating of that, and it will prophesy no longer; it looks not into the eyes, it judges not by the voice, it describes not by outward features; all that it affirms, judges, or describes, it affirms from _within_. There is _no reasoning_ in it; it works not by algebra nor by integral calculus; it is a piercing Pholas-like mind's tongue that works and tastes into the very rock-heart; no matter what be the subject submitted to it, substance or spirit, all is alike divided asunder, joint and marrow; whatever utmost truth, life, principle it has laid bare, and that which has no truth, life, nor principle, is dissipated into its original smoke at a touch. The whispers at men's ears it lifts into visible angels. Vials that have lain sealed in the sea a thousand years it unseals, and brings out of them genii.

Every great conception of Art is held and treated by this faculty. Every character touched by men like Æschylus, Homer, Dante, or Shakspeare, is by them held by the _heart_; and every circumstance or sentence of their being, speaking, or seeming, is seized by a process from _within_, and is referred to that inner secret spring of which the hold is never lost for a moment; so that every sentence, as it has been thought out from the heart, opens a way down to the heart, and leads us to the very centre of life. Hence there is in every word set down by the Imagination an awful undercurrent of meaning--an evidence and shadow upon it of the deep places out of which it has come.

In this it utterly differs from the Fancy, with which it is often confounded.

Fancy sees the outside, and is able to give a portrait of the outside, clear, brilliant, and full of detail. The Imagination sees the heart and inner nature, and makes them felt; but in the clear seeing of things beneath, is often impatient of detailed interpretation, being sometimes obscure, mysterious, and abrupt. Fancy, as she stays at the externals, never feels. She is one of the hardest hearted of the intellectual faculties; or, rather, one of the most purely and simply intellectual. She cannot be made serious; no edge tools but she will play with; while the Imagination cannot but be serious--she sees too far, too darkly, too solemnly, too earnestly, to smile often! There is something in the heart of everything, if we can reach it, at which we shall not be inclined to laugh. Those who have the deepest sympathies are those who pierce deepest, and those who have so pierced and seen the melancholy deeps of things, are filled with the most intense passion and gentleness of sympathy. The power of an imagination may almost be tested by its accompanying degree of tenderness; thus there is no tenderness like Dante's, nor any seriousness like his--such seriousness that he is quite incapable of perceiving that which is commonplace or ridiculous.

Imagination, being at the heart of things, poises herself there, and is still, calm, and brooding; but Fancy, remaining on the outside of things, cannot see them all at once, but runs hither and thither, and round about, to see more and more, bounding merrily from point to point, glittering here and there, but necessarily always settling, if she settle at all, on a _point_ only, and never embracing the whole. From these simple points she can strike out analogies and catch resemblances, which are true so far as the point from which she looks is concerned, but would be false, could she see through to the other side. This, however, she does not care to do--the point of contact is enough for, her; and even if there be a great gap between two things, she will spring from one to the other like an electric spark, and glitter the most brightly in her leaping. Fancy loves to follow long chains of circumstance from link to link; but the Imagination grasps a link in the middle that implies all the rest, and settles there.

'Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
[Imagination.

The tufted crowtoe and pale jessamine,
[Nugatory.

The white pink and the pansy streaked with jet,
[Fancy.

The glowing violet,
[Imagination.

The musk rose and the well attired woodbine,
[Fancy, vulgar.

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
[Imagination.

And every flower that sad embroidery wears.
[Mixed.

MILTON.

'Oh, Proserpina,
For the flowers now that frighted thou lett'st fall
From Dis's wagon. Daffodils
That come before the swallow dare, and take
The winds of March with beauty. Violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids.'

Here the Imagination goes into the inmost soul of every flower, after having touched them all with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of Proserpine's; and, gilding them all with celestial gathering, never stops on their spots or their bodily shape; while Milton sticks in the stains upon them, and puts us off with that unhappy streak of jet in the very flower that without this bit of paper staining would have been the most precious to us of all.

'There is pansies--that's for thoughts.'

Can the tender insight of the Imagination be more fully manifested than in the grief of Constance?

'And, father cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
If that be true, I shall see my boy again;
For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker sorrow eat my bud,
And chase the native beauty from his cheek;
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit;
And so he'll die; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore, never--never--
Shall I behold my pretty Arthur more.

* * * * *

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

* * * * *

O lord, my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort and my sorrow's cure.'

This is the impassioned but simple eloquence of Nature, and Nature's child: Shakspeare.

In these examples the reader will not fail to remark that the Imagination seems to gain much of its power from its love for and sympathy with the objects described. Not only are the objects with which it presents us _truthfully_ rendered, but always _lovingly_ treated.

With the Greeks, the Graces were also the _Charities_ or _Loves_. It is the love for living things and the sympathy felt in them that induce the poet to give life and feeling to the plant, as Shelley to the 'Sensitive Plant;' as Shakspeare, when he speaks to us through the sweet voices of Ophelia and Perdita; as Wordsworth, in his poems to the Daisy, Daffodil, and Celandine; as Burns in his Mountain Daisy. As a proof of the power of the Imagination, through its _Truth,_ and _Love_, to invest the lowest of God's creatures with interest, we offer the reader one of these simple songs of the heart.

TO A MOUSE.

_On turning her up in her nest with the plough, November, 1785._

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hastie,
Wi' bickering brattle!

I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion
An' fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icher in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin' wi' the lave
An' never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'!
An' naething, now, to big anew ane,
O' foppage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin',
Baith snell and keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin' fast,
An' cozie here beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
Nor house nor hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble
An' cranreuch cold!

But, mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy.

Still thou art blest, compared with _me!_
The _present_ only toucheth thee:
But och! I _backward_ cast my e'e,
On prospects drear;
An' _forward_, though I canna see,
I guess and fear!

Poor Burns! Seventy years and more have passed since that cold November morning on which he sang this simple and tender song, yet it is as fresh in its rustic pathos, bathed in the quickening dews of the poet's heart, as if it had sprung from the soul but an hour since: and fresh it will still be long after the fragile hand now tracing this tribute to the heart of love from which it flowed shall have been cold in an unknown grave!

Such poems are worth folios of the erudite and stilted pages which are now so rapidly pouring their scoria around us. Men seem ashamed now to be simply natural. Either they have ceased to love, or to believe in the dignity of loving. The great barrier to all real greatness in this present age of ours is the fear of ridicule, and the low and shallow love of jest and jeer, so that if there be in any noble work a flaw or failing, or unclipped vulnerable part where sarcasm may stick or stay, it is caught at, pointed at, buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung into, as a recent wound is by flies, and nothing is ever taken seriously or as it was meant, but always perverted and misunderstood. While this spirit lasts, there can be no hope of the achievement of high things, for men will not open the secrets of their hearts to us, if we intend to desecrate the holy, or to broil themselves upon a fire of thorns.

As the poet is full of love for all that God has made, because his imagination enables him to seize it by the heart, he would in this love fain gift the inanimate things of creation with life, that he might find in them that happiness which pertains to the living; hence the constant _personification_ of all that is in his pages. He personifies, he individualizes, he gifts creation with life and passion, not willingly considering any creature as subordinate to any purpose quite out of itself, for then some of the pleasure he feels in its beauty is lost, for his sense of its happiness is in that case destroyed, as its emanation of inherent life is no longer pure. Thus the bending trunk, waving to and fro in the wind above the waterfall, is beautiful because it seems happy, though it is, indeed, perfectly useless to us. The same trunk, hewn down and thrown across the stream, has lost its beauty. It serves as a bridge--_it has become useful_, it lives no longer _for itself_, and its pleasant beauty is gone, or that which it still retains is purely typical, dependent on its lines and colors, not on its functions. Saw it into planks, and though now fitted to become permanently _useful_, its whole beauty is lost forever, or is to be regained only in part, when decay and ruin shall have withdrawn it again from _use_, and left it to receive from the hand of Nature the velvet moss and varied lichen, which may again suggest ideas of inherent happiness, and tint its mouldering sides with hues of life. For the Imagination, unperverted, is essentially _loving_, and abhors all utility based on the pain or destruction of any creature. It takes delight in such ministering of objects to each other as is consistent with the essence and energy of both, as in the clothing of the rock by the herbage, and the feeding of the herbage by the stream.

We have seen that the soul rejects exaggeration or falsehood in Art, and indeed all high Art, that which men will not suffer to perish, has no food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is forever looking under masks and burning up mists; no fairness of form, no majesty of seeming will satisfy it; the first condition of its existence is incapability of being deceived; and though it may dwell upon and substantiate the fictions of fancy, yet its peculiar operation is to trace to their farthest limits the _true laws_ and likelihoods even of such fictitious creations.

As to its love, that is not only seen in its wish and struggle to quicken all with the warm throb of happy life, but is also clearly manifested in the lingering over its creations with clinging fondness, 'hating nothing that it maketh,' pruning, elaborating, and laboring to gift with beauty the works of its patient hands, finishing every line in love, that it too may feel its creations to be 'good.' For Love not only gives wings, but also vital heat and life, to Genius.

Thus we again arrive at the fact that the two Divine attributes of Truth and Love, in their finite form indeed, but still 'images,' are absolutely necessary for the creation of any true work of Art. No work can be great without their manifestation; unless they have brooded with their silvery wings over its progress to perfection; and in exact proportion to their manifestation will be its greatness. On these two attributes in God repose in holy trust the universes He hath made; and that which typifies or suggests His faithfulness and love to the soul created to enjoy Him, must be a source, not only of Beauty, but of Delight.

'For He made all things in wisdom; and Truth is perpetual and
immortal.'

'For Thou _lovest_ all things that are, and hatest none of the
things Thou hast made; for Thou didst not appoint or make anything,
hating it.'

We make no attempt to give an enumeration of the attributes on which Beauty is based; we would rather induce the reader to examine his Maker's great Book of Symbols for himself. We hope we have turned his attention to the fact that every Letter in this sacred Language is full of meaning; enough to induce him to investigate the glorious mysteries of the '_Open Secret_.'

Whatever may be the decisions of the men of the senses, or the men of the schools, let him fearlessly condemn any work in which he cannot find wrought into its very heart suggestions or manifestations of the Divine attributes, or an earnest effort on the part of its author, naive and unconscious as it may be, to imitate the Spirit of the Great Artist.

We have placed the Rosetta stone of Art, with its threefold inscriptions in Sculpture, Painting and Music, with their union or _resumé_ in Poetry, before him; we have given him the key to some of its wondrous hieroglyphics; let him study the remaining letters of this mystical alphabet for himself! These inscriptions are indeed trilingual, phonetic, and sacred, yet the simple and loving soul may decipher them without the genius of Champollion; their meaning is written within it. It will readily learn to connect the sign with the thing signified, and under the fleeting forms of rhythmed time and measured space, learn to detect the immutable principles which are to be its glory and joy for eternity!

CURRENCY AND THE NATIONAL FINANCES.

1. _History of the Bank of England, its Times and Traditions, from 1694 to 1844._ By JOHN FRANCIS. First American Edition. _With Notes, Additions, and an Appendix, including Statistics of the Bank to the close of the year 1861._ By J. SMITH HOMANS, Author of the 'Cyclopædia of Commerce and Commercial Navigation.' New York. 8vo, pp.476.

2. _Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury to the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, in relation to the Issue of an Additional Amount of United States Treasury Notes._

3. _Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances of the United States for the Year ending June 30, 1862._

4. _The Tariff Question considered in regard to the Policy of England and the Interests of the United States. With Statistical and Comparative Tables._ By ERASTES B. BIGELOW. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 4to, pp. 103 and 242.

5. _The Bankers' Magazine and Statistical Register._ New York, monthly, 1861-2. Edited by J. SMITH HOMANS, jr.

The Bank of England was created during the urgent necessities of national finance. It was a concession of a valuable privilege to a few rich men, in consideration of their loaning the capital to the treasury. 'The estimates of Government expenditure in the year 1694 were enormous,' says Macaulay, in his fourth volume. King William asked to have the army increased to ninety-four thousand, at an annual expense of about two and a half millions sterling--a small sum compared with what it costs in the year 1862 to maintain an army of equal numbers.

At the period of the charter of the bank, the minds of men were on the rack to conceive new sources of revenue with which to meet the increased expenditures of the nation. The land tax was renewed at four shillings in the pound, and yielded a revenue of two millions. A poll tax was established. Stamp duties, which had prevailed in the time of Charles II had been allowed to expire, but were now revived, and have ever since been among the most prolific sources of income, yielding to the British Government in the year 1862 no less than £8,400,000 sterling. Hackney coaches were taxed, notwithstanding the outcries of the coachmen and the resistance of their wives, who assembled around Westminster Hall and mobbed the members. A new duty on salt was imposed, and finally resort was had to the lottery, whereby one million sterling was raised. All these resources were not sufficient for the growing wants of the Government, and the plan of the Bank of England was devised to furnish immediate relief to the finances. Montague brought the measure forward in Parliament, and 'he succeeded,' as Macaulay remarks, 'not only in supplying the wants of the state for twelve months, but in creating a great institution, which, after the lapse of more than a century and a half, continues to flourish, and which he lived to see the stronghold, through all vicissitudes, of the Whig party, and the bulwark, in dangerous times, of the Protestant succession.'

The birth of the bank and the birth of the English national debt were both in King William's time. In 1691, when England was at war with France, the national debt unfunded was £3,130,000, at an annual interest of £232,000. In 1697, at the Peace of Ryswick, this debt had swollen to £14,522,000. At the Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, it had reached £34,000,000. The war with Spain in 1718 brought it up to forty millions sterling. And here it might have rested, had the advice of Shakspeare been followed:

'Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.'

But England went to war with Spain 'on the right of search.' From 1691 to this time the debt had increased on an average about a million sterling per year. As early as 1745 the credit of the bank was so identified with that of the state, that during the invasion of the Pretender, whose forces were at Derby, only one hundred and twenty miles from London, the creditors of the bank flocked in crowds to its counter to obtain specie for its notes. The merchants intervened and signed an agreement to make the bank's notes receivable in all business transactions.

The war of the Austrian succession followed in 1742, and at the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, 'forever to be maintained,' the English were saddled with a debt of £75,000,000.

'Peace hath her victories,
No less renowned than war.'

It was early in the last century that the abuse of paper money gave a lasting and unfavorable impression against such issues. The scheme of John Law and the South Sea Bubble about the same time broke and scattered their fragments over both England and France. It was in the latter scheme or folly that Pope lost a large portion of his earnings, from which we may infer that his temper was not improved. He wrote, in his Third Epistle, dedicated to Lord Bathurst:

'Statesman and patriot ply alike the stocks;
Peeress and butler share alike the box;
And judges job, and bishops bite the town,
And mighty dukes pack cards for half a crown.'

In the same 'Moral Essay' he alludes to paper money in the following lines:

'Blest paper credit! last and best supply!
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!
Gold imp'd by thee, can compass hardest things,
Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings;
A single leaf shall waft an army o'er,
Or ship off senates to a distant shore;
A leaf, like Sibyl's, scatter to and fro
Our fates and fortunes, as the winds shall blow:
Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen,
And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.'

These are among the earliest tirades against paper money; which, like many other good things, is condemned because its power has been abused and prostituted.

England's enormous debt, which should have warned the Georges against further war, was not contracted without severe sacrifices. The legal rate of interest at the opening of the funding system was six per cent. In 1714 it was reduced to five per cent. Loans during the early wars of the eighteenth century were raised on annuities for lives on very high terms, fourteen per cent. being granted for single lives, twelve per cent. for two lives, and ten per cent. for three lives. But so far was England from being awake to the enormous debt she was creating by her expensive wars, that the seventy-five millions existing in 1748 became £132,000,000 at the close of the Seven Years' War in 1763. This volume was enlarged at the end of the American Revolution to £231,000,000. During all this time the bank was the lever with which these enormous sums were raised; but the end was not yet.

The French war with Napoleon became more exhaustive, and within twenty years from the peace with America to the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, the debt went up from £231,000,000 to £537,000,000 sterling. From this period to 1815 the debt accumulated annually, until it reached its maximum, or eight hundred and sixty-one millions sterling.

During these severe changes, reverses, extravagance, and extraordinary governmental expenditure, the bank was considered the prop of national finance. The French Revolution and its consequent war with England led to many heavy outlays by the British Government. In 1795 the bank desired the chancellor of the exchequer to make his arrangements for the year without 'any further assistance' from the bank. This was again urged in 1796, and the bank appealed again to Mr. Pitt.

'The only reply from Mr. Pitt was a request for a further
accommodation, on the credit of the consolidated fund, which the
court refused to sanction, until they had received satisfaction on
the topic of the treasury bills, and requested Mr. Pitt to enter
into a full explanation on this subject, which was not even touched
upon in his letter. This resolution being communicated, Mr. Pitt
wrote to the governor and deputy-governor on the 12th August, that
'they might depend upon measures being immediately taken for the
payment of one million, and a further payment, to the amount of one
million, being made in September, October, and November, in such
proportions as might be found convenient. But, as fresh bills might
arrive, he was under the necessity of requesting a latitude to an
amount not exceeding one million.' About the same period the court
'desired the governor and deputy-governor would express their
earnest desire that some other means might be adopted for the
future payment of bills of exchange drawn on the treasury.' (_Vide_
'History Bank of England,' pp. 114, 115.)

The circumstances of the nation and of the bank were known to the capitalists and to the people. Hence various causes of uneasiness and distress. The bank loaned the public treasury seven and a half millions in the years 1794, 1795, 1796, and the more they loaned to the exchequer, the less they could loan to the people. Thus followed a diminution of gold in the bank, and hoarding by the people. Gold was exported more freely to the Continent, and reduced accommodation was given to the merchants. Finally, on the 26th February, 1797, the king's council passed an order for the suspension of cash payments.

The bank was on the eve of suspension in the year 1847. On the 25th of October the cabinet authorized a violation of the charter, thereby acknowledging the inability of the bank to maintain specie payments. This order of Lord John Russell inspired fresh confidence, and the bank immediately recovered strength, and reduced the rate of interest from 8 per cent. in October to 7 per cent. in November, to 6 and 5 per cent. in December, to 4 per cent. in January, and to 3-1/2 in June following. The distress and revulsion of 1847 were consequent upon the over-trading and railway mania of 1844, 1845, and 1846, and the failure of crops in Ireland and England in 1847.

The distress of England in 1847 was scarcely over when France was more severely affected than at any period since the Continental War. Louis Philippe abdicated in February, 1848, when consols closed at 88-7/8. By the close of the week they fell to 83, upon the formation of a provisional government. The political dissensions and commercial revulsion led to a large withdrawal of gold from the Bank of France, and finally the Government authorized, in March, the suspension of the bank, which was followed by the suspension of the Bank of Belgium and by the _Société Generale_.

Again, in 1857, the Bank of England was on the verge of suspension. Lord Palmerston and the then cabinet issued an order, November 12, authorizing the bank, if they thought it advisable, again to violate the charter; but it was found at the last moment unnecessary.

November was the critical period of the year 1857. The _Times_ of November 12, 1857, contained these announcements:

1. Bank charter suspended.

2. Interest in London, 10 per cent.

3. " in Hamburg, 10 per cent.

4. " in Paris, 8-1/2 per cent.

5. " in New York, 25 per cent.

6. Suspension of cash payments generally by all banks in the United States.

7. Two banks stopped in Glasgow, and one in Liverpool, and a great bill panic in London.

8. Commercial credit and transactions almost suspended in the country.

9. Bullion in the bank, £7,170,000.

10. Reserve notes in the bank, £975,000.

11. Bank liabilities, £40,875,000.

'One gentleman, during the heat of the excitement at Glasgow, went
into the Union Bank and presented a check for £500. The teller
asked him if he wished gold. 'Gold!' replied he, 'no; give me
notes, and let the fools who are frightened get the gold,' Another
gentleman rushed into the same bank in a great state of excitement,
with a check for £1,400. On being asked if he wished gold he
replied, 'Yes.' 'Well,' said the teller, 'there is £1,000 in that
bag and £400 in this one.' The gentleman was so flurried by the
readiness with which the demand was granted that he lifted up the
bag with the £400 only, and walked off, leaving the £1,000 on the
counter. The teller, on discovering the bag, laid it aside for the
time. Late in the day the gentleman returned to the bank in great
distress, stating he had lost the bag with the £1,000, and could
not tell whether he dropped it in the crowd or left it behind him
on leaving the bank. 'Oh, you left it on the counter,' said the
teller, quietly, 'and if you call to-morrow you will get your
£1,000.' (_Vide_ 'History Bank of England,' p. 429.)

The facts and statistics from the year 1844 to 1860 relating to the bank are superadded to the English work by the American editor. Of the important phases of this period the editor gives a slight sketch in the following paragraphs. The prominent financial movements in England, France, and the United States are given in the subsequent pages of the volume.

'The sixteen years which followed the last charter of the bank have
been pregnant with important events of a financial character; the
most important, perhaps, during the whole history of the
institution. The bank has twice, during this short period, been on
the brink of suspension, and was relieved only by the interference
of Government. The second instance occurred after new gold, to the
extent of one hundred millions sterling, or more, had been poured
into Western Europe from California and Australia. The Bank of
France had, during the same period, suspended specie payment. Two
financial revulsions have occurred in the United States, when, with
few exceptions, the banks of the whole country suspended specie
payments. The production of gold and silver throughout the world,
which, up to 1844, was annually about ten or twelve millions
sterling, had recently advanced from twenty-five to thirty millions
sterling per annum, thus stimulating industry and production
largely throughout Europe and America. Sir Robert Peel, the author
of the new charter of the bank, has left the world's stage, after
witnessing the failure of the charter to fully accomplish the end
promised; Europe and America, Asia and Europe, have been knit
together by a wire cord, and capital is now subscribed to

'Put a girdle round about the earth,'

whereby London may speak to San Francisco (the prospective
commercial centre of the world) in less than '_forty minutes_.'
During the same short space of sixteen years the suspended States
of this Union (five at least) have resumed payment of their
obligations; two violent wars, with sundry revolutions, have
occurred in Europe; the ancient city of the Cortez has been
conquered by the 'hordes of the North,' and magnanimously given up
by the captors to the possession of their weaker enemy, and
millions were paid to the latter for portions of their territory;
the northwest passage of the American continent has been
discovered; steam has accomplished wonders between Europe and
America, and between Europe and their distant colonies of Asia,
Africa, and Australia; Ireland has been on the verge of
starvation,[6] when 600,000 of her people died from hunger alone
and its effects, and her population was reduced two millions by
emigration and privation; England's minister has been expelled from
the capital of the United States; speculation has been rife in
Europe and America, and its inevitable effects, revulsion and
bankruptcy, have followed in its train; the railway and the
telegraph have brought remote regions together; China, with her
four hundred millions of people, has been conquered by the united
forces of the English and the French.

'The Bank of England, instead of pursuing one even course, with a
view to permanent commercial interests, has unfortunately, and, we
fear, from selfish and individual views, fostered speculation by
reducing her rate of discount to 2 per cent., and soon after, but
too late, discovered the error, and forced her borrowers to pay
from 6 to 10 per cent.

'We propose to give the leading events of each year, from 1844 to
1861, referring the reader to authorities where more copious
information can be gained by those who wish to study the invariable
connection between commerce and money.

'The bank shares in the depressed period of 1847-8 fell to 180,
after having reached, in the flattering times of 1844-'5, 215 per
share, or 115 per cent. advance. Consols, at the same depressed
period, fell to 78-3/4, when starvation stared Ireland in its face,
and the bank simultaneously sought protection from the Cabinet.'

Attention has been recently directed in this country to the premium on gold, or to the alleged fall in the value of bank paper and Government notes. Although the premium on gold as an article of merchandise has reached a high rate during the present year, it will be seen, on reference to the reliable tables in the History of the Bank of England, that a great difference occurred during the suspension of the bank in 1797 to 1819. Gold at one time (1812) reached £5 8_s._, a difference of 30 per cent. The annexed table shows the changes from 1809 to 1821.

YEARS |Price of |Difference| Nominal |Amount in |Gold. |from Mint | Taxes. |Gold | |prices. | |Currency. ------------------------|------------|----------|----------|---------- | £ s. d. |per cent. | £ | £ | | | | 1809, | 4 9 10 | 16-1/3 |71,887,000|60,145,000 1810, | 4 5 0 | 9-1/10 |74,815,000|68,106,000 1811, | 4 17 1 | 24-1/2 |73,621,000|55,583,000 1812, | 5 1 4 | 30 |73,707,000|51,595,000 Sept. to Dec. 1812, | 5 8 0 | 38-1/2 | ... | ... 1813, | 5 6 2 | 36-1/10 |81,745,000|52,236,000 Nov. 1812, to Mch. 1813 | 5 10 0 | 41 | ... | ... 1814, | 5 1 8 | 30-1/3 |83,726,000|58,333,000 1815, | 4 12 9 | 18-8/9 |88,394,000|66,698,000 1816, | 4 0 0 | 2-1/2 |78,909,000|72,062,000 Oct. to Dec. 1816 | 3 18 6 | under 1 | ... | ... 1817, | 4 0 0 | 2-1/2 |58,757,000|57,259,000 1818, | 4 1 5 | 5 |59,391,000|56,025,000 1819, 4th Feb. | 4 3 0 | 6-1/3 |58,288,000|54,597,000 1820, | 3 17 10-1/2| par. |59,812,000|59,812,000 1821, | 3 17 10-1/2| par. |61,000,000|61,000,000

The increased volume of Government and bank paper afloat in the United States since the 1st January, 1862, is conceded to be only temporary. The Government is engaged in crushing the greatest rebellion known to history; in doing this, the national expenditures are six or seven fold what they ever were before, in a time of peace. During the four years 1813 to 1816, when war raged with England, the whole expenses of the Government were $108,537,000. During the Mexican war, when the disbursements of the treasury were much heavier, the average annual expenses of the Government were about 35 to 48 millions. It will be well to recur to these tabular details for future history. They are presented as follows, for the whole period of the General Government.

EXPENDITURES _of the United States, exclusive of Payments on account of the Public Debt._

Years 1789-1792, Washington, $3,797,000
" 1793-1796, " 12,083,000
" 1797-1800, John Adams, 21,338,000
" 1800-1804, Jefferson, 17,174,000
" 1805-1808, " 23,927,000
" 1809-1812, Madison, 36,147,000
" 1813-1816, " 108,537,000
" 1817-1821, Monroe, 58,698,000
" 1821-1824, " 45,665,000
" 1825-1828, John Quincy Adams, 49,313,000
" 1829-1832, Jackson, 56,249,000
" 1833-1836, " 87,130,000
" 1837-1840, Van Buren, 112,188,000
" 1841-1844, Harrison and Tyler, 81,216,000
" 1846-1848, Polk, 146,924,000
" 1849-1852, Taylor and Fillmore, 194,647,000
" 1853-1856, Pierce, 211,099,000
" 1857-1860, Buchanan, 262,974,000

During the past fiscal year, 1862-3 and the year 1863-4, the Government expenditures are estimated at ten hundred millions of dollars. These heavy disbursements cannot be carried on merely by the ordinary bank paper and the gold and silver of the country. Instead of sixty-five millions of dollars, the average annual expenditures of the Government during the last administration, these now involve the sum of five hundred millions annually. Hence the obvious obligation on the part of the Government of putting in circulation the most reliable currency, and of avoiding those of local banks, which do not possess the confidence of the people at a distance. This can be done only by maintaining a currency of Government paper which every holder will have full confidence in, and in which no loss can be sustained.

There is here no conflict or competition between the Government and the State banks. The latter have the benefit of their legitimate circulation in their own respective localities; while the national treasury furnishes to the troops and to the creditors of the nation a circulation of treasury notes which must possess confidence as long as the Government lasts.

The policy of the English Government in this respect was a wise one. At the adoption of the last charter of the bank (1844) the Government allowed the country banks to maintain from that time forward the circulation then outstanding, which was not to be increased; and as fast as the banks failed or were wound up voluntarily, their circulation was retired and the vacuum became filled by the notes of the Bank of England. The latter was forbidden by its new charter to exceed certain prescribed limits in its issues. They could issue to the amount of their capital, £14,000,000, and beyond that to the extent of gold in the vaults. Thus the bank circulation of England, Scotland, and Ireland is less now than in 1844, when the new principle was established, viz.:

BANK CIRCULATION.

Bank of England. Country Banks. Ireland. Scotland. TOTAL.

1844, £22,015,000 £7,797,000 £7,716,000 £3,804,000 £41,325,000 1862, 20,190,000 5,680,000 5,519,000 4,053,000 35,442,000

Had this principle been adopted in the United States at the same period, the excesses and extravagance of 1856-'7 might have been obviated, as well as the revulsion of the latter year, and the distress which followed.

Let us recur to the eventful history of the bank. Although a private institution, owned and controlled by private capital, its large profits accruing for the benefit of its own shareholders, yet it became so closely interwoven with the commerce, manufactures, trade, and the public finances of the nation, that it may be considered as in reality a national institution. At its inception its whole capital was swallowed by the treasury. This was a part of the contract of charter. Its subsequent accumulations of capital, from £1,200,000, have likewise been absorbed by the Government, until now the bank reports the Government debt to them to be £11,015,100, and the Government securities held, to be £11,064,000. Without the aid of the bank, the national treasury could not, probably, have made the enormous disbursements which were actually made between the commencement of the American Revolution in 1776, and the termination of the continental war of 1815. The bank here furnished, almost alone, 'the sinews of war.'

During this eventful period there were large numbers of provincial banks of issue created in England and Ireland. These were managed mainly with a view to private profit, while the public interests have suffered severely from the frequent expansions and contractions of the volume of the currency through such private management, and from the numerous failures of these concerns. The evils of this system were for many years the subject of discussion in Parliament and among prominent journals. In 1826 the Edinburgh _Review_ expressed the opinion that

'So long, therefore, as any individual, or association of
individuals, may issue notes of a low value, to be used in the
common transactions of life, without lodging any security for their
ultimate payment, so long is it _certain_ that those panics which
must necessarily occur every now and then, and against which no
effectual precaution can be devised, must occasion the destruction
of a greater or smaller number of banking establishments, and by
consequence a ruinous fluctuation in the supply and value of
money.' (_Edinburgh Review_, February, 1826.)

This was a period of great speculation in England. In the year 1823 no less than 532 companies were chartered, with a nominal capital of 441 millions sterling. These speculations were fostered by the increasing volume of bank paper. The evil increased, and was allowed to exist until the year 1844, when a stop was put to the further increase of the volume of bank circulation, and to the further incorporation of joint stock banks.

We learn one lesson here, which may have a good effect upon us if we will bear it in mind in our future legislation, and take warning from the experiences of our contemporaries. We allude to the obvious necessity in a country like ours, and, indeed, in any country, of maintaining a national moneyed institution as a check upon the vacillation, expansions, and contractions which mark the policy of small banks of issue. This national institution, while free from individual profit, and without power to grant individual favors, should create and perform the functions of a national currency, and execute all the details required by or for the national treasury. Its chief utility would be as a check upon the excess to which all joint stock banks are liable--a sort of controlling and conservative power to prevent that mischief which our past experience shows has been the result of paper money when issued merely for private gain.

The advantage, the convenience, we may say the _necessity_, of a national circulation of paper money, are fully demonstrated by our own past history, and by the history of European nations. This circulation should be dictated by the wants of the National Government, and convertible, at the will of the holder, into specie. With these obvious restraints it would accomplish its ends and aims.