we that a perfect wisdom will regulate its own expansions and contractions-the effects of which upon the currency are multiplied in an indefinite degree by the very uniformity with which its vast power compels all the rest to follow in the gigantic wake of its example? So far as it will go, the operation of the Independent Treasury must prove precisely the kind of regulation' required. The principal fallacy of our paper currency has been its professed convertibility. Five dollars in paper have represented themselves as convertible into specie on immediate presentation, when but one dollar has in truth been held in reserve in the vaults of the bank to discharge that function for them all. But in the season of general prosperity and confidence -precisely when the gradual restraint is required-no one dreams of enforcing this convertibility. The unreflecting confidence of the public becomes the only measure of the extent to which the inflation may be carried, and convertibility comes into play as a reality, only when the mischief has reached a point of excess to which it then applies a severe and sudden check, attended with a rapid reaction, of which we have too often experienced the distressing and fatal effects to leave it necessary for us to dwell farther on them. The misfortune has been that we have had no actual circulation of specie in the currency, with the exception of a trifling amount of mere fractional change. There has been no large dealer, omnipresent throughout all parts of the Union, who, by conducting all his transactions of collection and disbursement in actual specie, has kept a certain quantity always afloat in the round of circulation-familiarizing the people to its use, and holding it up constantly before their eyes, and before the institutions that supply their paper currency, as the one fixed standard of value from which the latter can never allow itself to deviate, without a depreciation immediately detected, and immediately corrected. This is the function which the Independent Treasury will perform as a regulator of the currency. What true friend of legitimate banking can object to it? It is plain that no redundancy of revenue could arise under such a system, to cause an undue accumulation of specie in the vaults of the public Treasury; and that a sum no larger than from five to seven millions of dollars-a small fraction of the specie added to the supply of the country by the Democratic policy of which this measure is the consummation-would be absorbed by the fiscal action of the Govern ment. For our own part we only regret the unnecessary graduation which has been applied to the introduction of this great reform-so as to make it three years before it can come fully into play. The measure may be, and doubtless is, susceptible of some improvements which experience will indicate. But we are profoundly assured that it will never be repealed; nor do we not believe that even in the case of the unimaginable possibility of the success of the Whigs in the present struggle, they either could or would dare to repeal it. THE STREAMLET. BY THE AUTHOR OF THE YEMASSEE," &c. I. ONCE more in the old places !—and I glow II. The voices of the forest and the stream, And murmuring flights of wind, that through the grove Come fitfully, like fancies in a dream, And speak of wild and most unearthly love Such love, as hope prefigures to the boy, III. There gleams the opening path, and there, below, Glimmers the streamlet sparkling through green leaves; I catch the distant pattering of its flow, In sudden murmurs, ere mine eye perceives, Complaining, as it takes its tiny leaps, To the scooped basin where it sings and sleeps. IV. It was my father taught me, when a boy, That heeded not the moments, as they flew, V. And, sitting by its marge, my father said, That streamlet had a language for his ear, VI. Yet, surely was there nothing but the flow Of idle waters, ever more the same- VII. An hundred streams like this the country knows, VIII. Where, then, the mystery of its voice, and whence? Denied to me, which yet my father knew? Change had not touched its waters,-'twas that morn As small as in the hour when he was born. IX. He too, like me, had from its yellow bed X. His grave is in the forest, and he sleeps Far from the groves he loved-his voice no more Is in mine ear; yet through my memory creeps Its echo, and the wild and solemn lore He taught me, when we walk'd beside that brook, Comes back, as now within its waves I look. The shadow'd thought-not desolate nor lone ;— Faint are the images that near me stand, Yet are they images of things well known: XII. No longer am I desolate, beside These green and sacred borders: in my ear, So glad the gathering years, a rich and green-eyed spring. XIII. And my old sire, he err'd not sure! I feel As if I were a listener to the spell Of one whose voice is power! My senses reel! XIV. I tremble with a joy-my heart is still, As, swelling up, the accents break the air; 66 XV. The accents gather to familiar sounds, And wake anew a lost and well-loved tone, XVI. I have been when thy father dreamed of thee, Whose tones so oft thy father's feet beguiled; XVII. "When thou shall be forgotten, I shall be, And to the race that shall succeed thee on, "I will repeat my counsel, as to thee, And like thy footsteps, now, shall theirs be won, From the thick gathering-from the crowded street XVIII. "And I shall soothe their spirits, as I now Soothe that of him, their sire; my streams shall be While my soft voice shall whisper, sweetly free, XIX. "Go forth, fair boy, and happy be thy years, Forget not soon the lessons, long our theme, XX. Look on these waters when thy mood is sad, Fly to these groves, when close pursued by power ; XXI. "I keep affections pure-I save the heart From Earth's pollutions;-treasured in my wave Is healing, and the pow'r to make depart Bad passions, those worse tyrants; and to save XXII. "Oh, when the world has wrong'd thee, seek me then, Though, hapless, from thy better self estranged; Fly to these waters, from the stripes of men, And gazing in them shall thy heart be changed; Though years have risen between, and stripe and scorn, W. G. S. |