the whole financial community.  About six thousand miles of new railways were constructed in the United States in 1872, of which it may be estimated that at least seven-eighths were in advance of the national requirements.  Not a few of those now unfinished or just completed will, like the New York and Oswego Midland, be forced into bankruptcy, and it will be long before all the ruins left by the crisis will be cleared away.  A shock has been given to the entire railway interest of the country, the full effect of which has not yet been felt; and those who expect the prices of railway securities to rule as high, for a considerable period to come, as they did before the panic, are likely to be disappointed.  After all panics we have had more or less wearisome stagnation and depression, growing out of impoverishment and distrust of new ventures; and this last one will hardly prove an exception to the rule.  The mercantile interest, too, will probably continue for some time to suffer in consequence of the monetary derangements resulting from it and the want of adequate banking—­or rather currency—­facilities for bringing forward cotton and general produce from the West and South for shipment; and here and there houses that have so far withstood the strain will break down under it.  But in a rapidly growing country, with inexhaustible resources, like this, recovery from such disasters is, fortunately, far quicker than among the less progressive nations of Europe.

One eminently satisfactory feature of the panic in securities was, that it did not extend to United States bonds, greenbacks or National bank-notes.  Bonds were of course depressed in sympathy with the scarcity of money and the demoralization prevailing in the general stock market, but there was not the slightest loss of confidence in them among holders, nor any pressure to sell, except to relieve urgent necessities among the banks and others having need of currency.  The paper money of the country proved itself the most valuable kind of property that any one could possess; whereas under like circumstances, in former times, when banks under the State laws could practically issue as many notes as they chose, much of it would have been left worthless and the remainder depreciated.  But our currency system is defective in one essential particular:  it is not elastic.  It is, so to speak, hide-bound at seven hundred and ten millions of paper, exclusive of fractional currency, three hundred and fifty-six millions of which are legal-tender notes, and three hundred and fifty-four millions National bank-notes.  The safety-valve of a country’s circulating medium is its elasticity, and the sooner Congress authorizes free National banking on the present basis of ninety per cent. of currency to the par of United States bonds deposited with the Treasury, or devises some other means of affording relief, the better for the interests of the nation.  The law requiring the banks in the large cities to keep always on hand