each other.  But our estimate of silver is rather higher, in proportion to gold, than most nations give it; it is higher, especially, than in England, at the present moment.  The consequence is, that silver, which remains a legal currency with us, stays here, while the gold has gone abroad; verifying the universal truth, that, if two currencies be allowed to exist, of different values, that which is cheapest will fill up the whole circulation.  For as much gold as will suffice to pay here a debt of a given amount, we can buy in England more silver than would be necessary to pay the same debt here; and from this difference in the value of silver arises wholly or in a great measure the present apparent difference in exchange.  Spanish dollars sell now in England for four shillings and nine pence sterling per ounce, equal to one dollar and six cents.  By our standard the same ounce is worth one dollar and sixteen cents, being a difference of about nine per cent.  The true par of exchange, therefore, is nine per cent.  If a merchant here pay one hundred Spanish dollars for a bill on England, at nominal par, in sterling money, that is for a bill of L22 10s., the proceeds of this bill, when paid in England in the legal currency, will there purchase, at the present price of silver, one hundred and nine Spanish dollars.  Therefore, if the nominal advance on English bills do not exceed nine per cent, the real exchange is not against this country; in other words, it does not show that there is any pressing or particular occasion for the remittance of funds to England.

As little can be inferred from the occasional transfer of United States stock to England.  Considering the interest paid on our stocks, the entire stability of our credit, and the accumulation of capital in England, it is not at all wonderful that investments should occasionally be made in our funds.  As a sort of countervailing fact, it may be stated that English stocks are now actually held in this country, though probably not to any considerable amount.

I will now proceed, Sir, to state some objections of a more general nature to the course of Mr. Speaker’s observations.

He seems to me to argue the question as if all domestic industry were confined to the production of manufactured articles; as if the employment of our own capital and our own labor, in the occupations of commerce and navigation, were not as emphatically domestic industry as any other occupation.  Some other gentlemen, in the course of the debate, have spoken of the price paid for every foreign manufactured article as so much given for the encouragement of foreign labor, to the prejudice of our own.  But is not every such article the product of our own labor as truly as if we had manufactured it ourselves?  Our labor has earned it, and paid the price for it.  It is so much added to the stock of national wealth.  If the commodity were dollars, nobody would doubt the truth of this remark; and it is precisely as correct