mankind.  We doubt whether any of the great forms of evil incident to our imperfect civilization—­the slave-trade, debauchery, pauperism—­cause more individual anguish or more public detriment than these incessant revolutions in the value and tenure of property.  Those afflict limited classes alone, but these every class; they relax and pervert the whole moral regimen of society; and if, as it is sometimes alleged, the present age is more profoundly steeped in materialism than any before,—­if its enterprise is not simply more bold, but more reckless and prodigal,—­if the monitions of conscience have lost their force in practical affairs, and the dictates of religion and honor alike their sanctity, it is because of the uncertain principle, the gambling spirit, the feverish eagerness, and the insane extravagance, which beset the ways of traffic.  Living in a world in which days of golden and delusive dreams are rapidly succeeded by nights of monstrous nightmares and miseries, society loses its grasp upon the realities of life, and goes staggering blindly on towards a fatal degeneracy and dissolution.

[Footnote B:  Yet this is not to be lightly estimated.  Seaman, in his Progress of Nations says the direct losses by paper money, within the last century and a half, have equalled $2,000,000,000.]

The question, then, is, whether this melancholy march of things should be allowed to proceed, or whether we should strive to do better.  Our good sense, our moral sense, our progressive instincts, conspire with our interests in proclaiming that we ought to do better; but how shall we do better?  “Why,” reply the great Democratic doctors,—­Mr. Buchanan, the President, and Mr. Benton, the Nestor of the people,—­“suppress the issue of small bank-notes!” Well, that nostrum is not to be despised; there would be some advantages in such a measure; it would, to a certain extent, operate as a check upon the issues of the banks; it would enlarge the specie basis, by confining the note circulation to the larger dealers, and so exempt the poorer and laboring classes from the chances of bank failures and suspensions.  But if these gentlemen suppose that the extrusion of small notes would be in any degree a remedy for overtrading, or moderate in any degree the disastrous fluctuations of which everybody complains, they have read the history of commerce only in the most superficial manner.  Speculations, overtrading, panics, money convulsions, occur in countries where small notes are not tolerated, just as they do in countries where they are; and they occur in both without our being able to trace them always to the state of the currency.  The truth is, indeed, that nearly all the great catastrophes of trade have occurred in times and places when and where there were no small notes.  Every one has heard of the tulip-mania of Holland,—­when the Dutchmen, nobles, farmers, mechanics, sailors, maid-servants, and even chimney-sweeps and old-clothes-women, dabbled in bulbs,—­when