sacred. I wonder, however, that the barons, with such wishes, and with such influence over a sober, industrious people, should not have succeeded in preventing the adoption of " the measure." As to the Americans, it is no wonder at their adopting any kind of wickedness, if they were, after they became "sovereigns," as vicious and as ignorant as you in your famous speech represent them to have been. You tell us that your "highways were infested by thieves," and that your farm-houses were frequently despoiled;" that they were so ignorant as not to know a bank from a cave in the rocks.

Speaking of the North American bank, you say, "When that bank was re-chartered in 1787, the late Judge Breckenridge was a representative from Alleghany in the Legislature, whose sessions were then held in Philadelphia. He left home a determined enemy of the bank. He and his constituents had formed those horrible ideas of its wickedness which many now think, or affect to entertain, of the banks of the present day. Some imagined that it was composed of a band of banditti, who inhabited caves on the banks of the Delaware, from whence they sallied forth to rob hen-roosts, and to perpetrate other depredations on the lives and property of their quiet neighbours. From their supposed residence on the margin of the Delaware was derived, in the conception of these honest country people, the name of banks. The representative I have named pursued his slow and cautious course towards the city, inquiring, as he advanced, into the doings of this young monster. But Breckenridge was not a man to be long imposed upon; he remained but a short time in the infected city, when, maugre the instructions and fears of his constituents, he became one of the most powerful advocates for re-chartering the bank; and it was accordingly re-chartered."

I dare say Paine's beam of light, though shining some years before, had not then reached farther than the precincts of " Old Independent Hall,” or the judge would have known, if his constituents had not, that the North American bank was not a cave in the banks of the Delaware. I wonder whether the "sovereigns," when they heard this enlightened tale on the return of their representative, had penetration enough to find out that he had been "accommodated," not bribed, you know, friend Thomas, “but served in the same manner as Burden, Penrose, Dickey, and Co., were, when your favourite bank, which is now called the Bank of the United States, was chartered as a state bank. It is a deplorable thing, Sir, for you and me to consider, that, though all these years have elapsed there were representatives, in that case, as ignorant, with respect to the merits of your bank, as was Judge Breckenridge of the North American bank. Oh! how they did rail against it. I do not know whether they said that “it was a cave inhabited by a band of banditti who sallied forth to rob hen-roosts;" but I know that they said much worse things

of it; and I know that it deserved all and more than all that they said; and, Sir, when the time came, these representatives proceeded to the legislative halls, not, however, as in olden days, slowly and cautiously, but rather with precipitation, determined to tear anything to pieces that had any resemblance to a bank, and, most of all, to your bank, or to the bank in whose service you appear to be; but, Sir, they remained a short time ofly, a very short time, in the infected halls, when, maugre (that is a word not often used, friend Thomas,) why not say in spite of the instructions and fears of their constituents, they became the most powerful advocates for chartering the bank, and it was accordingly chartered.

Now, friend Thomas, think for a moment with me, what must be the end of these things? Reflect, and remember that "the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate, and fire shall consume the tabernacle of bribery." Think what a warning we had in the onset; how M'Ilvaine, the recorder of our city, and the other agent, whose name now escapes me, were both found dead in their beds, after having had their right hands full of bribes all the day long. If there be truth in the denunciations of the Almighty God against bribery, hypocrisy, usury, extortion, lying, and deceit; if it be true that "the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment;" if this be true, Sir, what an awful position does your once-favoured country now stand in! "Shall not the land tremble for what it has done, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein ?"

You seem very angry with some of your brother members of the Convention, who accuse your city of being "a bank-bound city of speculators, a gang of foul spirits, a city of merchants, whose counting-houses are their churches, whose money is their god, and whose ledgers are their bibles." And, to palliate these charges, you ask to be allowed, once for all, to observe, that the inhabitants of this same wicked city have thirty millions of dollars invested in your internal improvements.” Now, Sir, if you had been one of the accusers, instead of one of the charged, I would not have required you to have brought forward anything stronger than this to have supported your position. It is a city of foul spirits, according to your own showing, for none but foul spirits would contrive to get possession of the government by means of bribery and deception, and then privilege themselves to make paper into money, the payment of which in specie you yourself, in this very speech, scoff at. You say, "But the banks have stopped specic payment! Wicked ingrates! But have not the people? And have not the government?" Yes, Sir, I agree with you, that you all stopped together, absolutely bankrupted, unable as well as unwilling to pay any of the vast and enormous sums of money that you, as a nation, are indebted to the rest

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of the world. And yet they lent to the people thirty millions of dollars, did they? It is false. Sir, they never lent anything but bits of paper, which they called dollars, and thus cheated the wonderfully enlightened republicans. I earnestly hope that what you and I say on this occasion may be particularly noticed by others that, I trust, will read this letter. I am anxious that it should be so, for the sake of the innocent who are now in the meshes that have been set for them, as well as for the sake of those that are in danger by the allurements which are now held out by the name of what such as you call American securities," but what you know to be, for the most part, nothing at all, not even the shadow of a substance; and that there is not one among them that is entitled to a name that bears any resemblance to the word "security."

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Let Englishmen, let Frenchmen, or any other men that have " rities" in the United States of America, take care to shift the pivot with all possible activity; and those whose mouths may be watering at what may appear to them to be the luscious pickings now exhibited by the Jaudons in London under the name of stocks. If they touch that stock-stock! there is no stock, and therefore they cannot touch it—but if they have anything to do with the imaginary thing, they will surely repent of their folly.

We have heard of South Sea Bubbles, Mississippi Bubbles, and many other villanous plans of wholesale robbery; but we never heard of anything of the kind that has been a hundredth part so dreadful in its consequences as will be the great bubble that is about to burst in the United States.

This advice, friend Cope, I give, free of charge, to these strangers. I think it is my special duty to warn them to be careful; not of those who live in caves and sally forth to rob hen-roosts,—this, Sir, is the preparatory school, but of those who live in edifices of marble, and have systematized a plan or plans to rob all the world; sometimes by force, when strong enough, and sometimes by trick, such as sending agents to every quarter of the globe to borrow money, and to sell "American stock." All this, of my own knowledge, I speak; I care not what may be said in reply; but still I choose, in support of what I say, to call in others to bear witness, and I always take care to bring the first men in the country forward for that purpose. There is your friend Ritner, late Governor, the man that you always supported, and would frown down any man that for a moment disputed his testimony: allow me, then, to refer you to his annual message, made in 1836, in which you will find these words11

“The other great malady of the times is, that desire which is now so ravenous of acquiring wealth without labour. *** A gambling spirit

of speculation is abroad: the basis of it is, a desire to obtain wealth at the expense of others, and without an equivalent. The speculation of the present day, whether in stock, in coal-lands, or in town-lots, is, in reality, nothing but the sale of a mere hope of greater success and profit than the seller had realized at the time of sale. If the eye be kept upon one of these transactions, from the commencement of the excitement till the final prostration of the concern, it will be found to be a regular series of deception, disappointment, and distress. No adequate value in labour or productiveness being generally transmitted from dupe to dupe, he in whose hands the gilded deception finally rests must prove its emptiness, and pay the whole amount of all previous profits. It is thus that, with a regularity which might almost be graduated to mathematical exactness, the various stages of a speculation are passed through, till the final 'depression' arrives with unavoidable and hopeless ruin. The great secret of the game is, for each to hold the ball just long enough to enable him to strike his neighbour with the greatest possible severity, and not so long as to incur upon himself the forfeit."

Do you think, Sir, it is not the greatest of all folly and impudence for a nation to be for ever boasting of its superior form of government, when its chief magistrates are every day obliged to acknowledge facts like these? Then, speaking of the State debt, Governor Ritner says:

"Twelve months ago the whole State debt, which in 1825, when the internal improvement system commenced, was one million eight hundred thousand dollars, had, by annual increases, grown to the sum of twentyfour millions two hundred and fifty-five thousand three hundred dollars and thirty-two cents ;" and some think it has augmented to thirty-two millions or more. And then, speaking of the use of the internal improvements, he says : "In some quarters of the State, those parts of them which had been completed were producing a revenue scarcely sufficient to warrant the hope that they would ever cease to be a public burden; in others, isolated portions, which had been commenced in opposition to every dictate of prudence or policy, and had been prosecuted without system or unity, seem to be abandoned to premature decay."

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Pennsylvania has six hundred and one-quarter miles of completed canal, and one hundred and twenty of finished railroad, making an aggregate of seven hundred and twenty and one-quarter miles; yet such has been the ruinous and detached system pursued in their construction, that only four hundred and fifty-five miles of this whole length is now to any useful extent in operation. The Susquehanna division, from Duncan's Island to Northumberland, thirty-nine miles; the whole of the West branch, seventy-three and a quarter miles; the West branch, seventy-two miles; the Beaver division, twenty-four and three-quarter miles; the French Creek division, twenty-two and a quarter; and the

French Creek Feeder twenty-three miles; forming a length of canal of two hundred and fifty-four and a quarter miles, as will appear by the report of the canal commissioners, scarcely pay their lock-keepers, though a great portion of them have been completed for years. . . . This is a sad proof of the selfishness of sectional jealousy and of log-rolling legislation.... The North branch canal, of which seventy-three and a quarter miles have been for years completed, but upon which the tolls scarcely pay the expense of collecting, to say nothing of interest and repairs."

There, Sir; I have gently lifted the veil, so that the foreigners who have been tempted by exorbitant interest to lend their money to that gang of "speculators," who have, as Governor Wolf said, "in defiance of the people's seal of reprobation," taken possession of the government, and call themselves Pennsylvania Legislatures-I have lifted the veil, Sir, so that these foreigners may have a peep at the manner in which their money has been divided among these legislatures, and that they may have some idea as to what must be the final result. Do the foreigners know what this Governor means by "log-rolling legislation?" They are queer words for a Governor to make use of, but, when understood, will be found to be very appropriate. Perhaps, to make the matter sure, I may as well give their meaning; and, to save myself the trouble, I take the following from a newspaper of your city, called the Pennsylvania :

"At Harrisburg it is called log-rolling. Anywhere else it would be called bribery and corruption. On the frontiers of this country, when land is to be cleared, the trees are cut down, rolled together, and burnt. This, which cannot be done by one man, is effected by the joint efforts of the neighbourhood; and thus, by mutual aid, all the lands in the settlement are in their turn cleared and cultivated. The term by which this necessary act of fraternity is known has been applied, in practical legislation, to combinations of members who league together and carry a set of measures, each of which if judged of alone would stand no chance of success. Vote for my bill, and I will vote for yours; or when, as often happens, these political brokers are afraid to trust each other, they put the whole into one general bill, which with closed eyes they swallow. A great deal of skill is shown in admitting just such a sufficient number of sections as will carry the bill, and no more. If the friends of a good and particularly a popular measure can be induced to join the unholy alliance, so much the better. The title of the bill is sure to make this known, while all the doubtful or unpopular objects are included under the comprehensive words, and for other purposes.' Such is log-rolling, an art, it will be admitted, of great power when skilfully exercised."