assigned for them ought also to be everywhere pretty much the same.  At any rate, no local cause is in itself to be regarded as sufficient, unless it can be shown that such local cause has a universal operation.  But who will undertake to contend that the absence of a protective system here is enough to prostrate both Great Britain and France,—­the nations which the same theory supposes to have been chiefly benefited by such deficiency?  The scheme of free trade is often denounced by its opponents as British free trade; but we respectfully suggest that if its operations lead to so serious a destruction of British interests as is now alleged, the phrase is at least a misnomer.  No! as the characteristics of the crisis are common to the United States, England, and France, so the causes of that crisis are to be sought in something which is also common to the United States, England, and France.

Now the one thing common to all these nations, and to all commercial nations, is the universal use of Credit, in the transactions of business.  We conceive, therefore, that the existing condition of things may be most correctly and comprehensively described as a suspension of credit, and the consequent pressure for payment of immense masses of outstanding debt.  This, we say, is the central fact, common to all the nations; and the solution of it, as a problem, is to be sought in some vice or disturbing element common to the general system, and not in any local incident or cause.

Credit has gained so enormous an extension within the last two centuries, that it may almost be pronounced the distinctive feature of modern times.  It existed, undoubtedly, in ancient days,—­for its correlative, Debt, existed; and we know, that, among the Jews, Moses enacted a sponging law, which was to be carried into effect every fifty years; that Solon, among the Greeks, began his administration with the Seisachtheia, or relief-laws, designed to rescue the poor borrowers from their overbearing creditors; and that the usurers were a numerous class at Rome, where also the Patrician houses were immense debtor-prisons.  But in ancient times, when the chief source of wealth (aside from conquest and confiscation by the State) was the labor of slaves, and the principal exchanges were effected either by direct barter or the coined metals, the system of credit could not have been very complicated or general.  As for the lending of money on interest, it appears to have been looked at askance by most of the ancients; and the prejudice against it continued, under the fostering care of the Church, far down into the Middle Ages.  With the emancipation of the towns, however, with the splendid development of the Italian republics, with the noble commercial triumphs of the cities of the Hansa, credit was recovered from the hands of the Jews, and began a career of rapid and beneficent expansion.  It was in an especial manner promoted by the magnificent prospects unfolded