fluence, and aided in her decay. In 1797 the French entered Venice, and her fall was complete. She was no longer an independ.nt state. Still

"A dying glory smiles

O'er the far times when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles."

After the battle of Marengo, Milan and Venice were formed into the CisAlpine Republic, and in 1805 were styled the Kingdom of Italy. In 1815 Venice became a part of Austria, to which empire she is now attached. Venice still exists, and everything about her bears marks of the position she once occupied.

"States fall-arts fade, but nature doth not decay,

Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,

The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy."

England, ancient as she appears to us, is hardly half the age of Venice at the time of her fall. But in natural advantages, Venice is not to be compared with England. The changes which took place in the trade of the world, by the discovery of America, and by the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, gave the Atlantic coast a great advantage over the Mediterranean shores. England, too, has a more extended territory, a soil capable of producing the necessaries, and many of the luxuries of life, and her whole domain is stored with the valuable minerals of tin, and coal, and iron. She has great natural powers of production, exceeding those of any country so limited in territory, except Ireland. The development of her agricultural, mineral, and manufacturing resources has gone forward hand in hand with the extension of her commerce. Napoleon, with real Roman spirit, charaeterized her as a nation of shop-keepers; and so in truth she is. And this fact is at the same time the source and evidence of her power. Under her direction, commerce has entered upon a new theater. The new world and the mariner's compass prepared the way for an important era of commercial power.

Venice was at the height of her glory when commerce was the trade carried on between countries new to each other. Her mariners groped their way from island to island, and from headland to headland. But the sixteenth century opened a new field. Every island and point of the mainland was near to every other part of the globe, or at least were easily accessible to it. Under the influence, and in the presence of this knowledge, England has established her power. The limits of that power are hardly less than the limits of the world itself. Her growth has been at some periods rapid, and always certain and enduring.

"Far as the breeze can bear the billow's foam,
Survey her empire and behold her home."

In 1790 Great Britain had 15,015 vessels, registering 1,460,000 tons. In 1837, Great Britain had 26,037 vessels, registering 2,791,018 tons. At the latter period her commercial marine was ten times that of Venice at the meridian of her existence, and at this moment it is at least twelve times as great.

There is no nation in which commerce is so truly the animating spirit as in Great Britain. It is felt everywhere. It not only builds and sails her vessels, but it increases her manufactures and agriculture, warms and cools debates in Parliament, decides questions of war and peace, controls the di

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39

plomacy of England, and modifies that of the world. Had the taunting remark of Napoleon concerning England been false, his triumphs would have been universal and complete. Her commercial experience, wealth and power alone saved Europe in the bloody and protracted contest with the French Emperor. No mere warlike nation, without the support of commerce, could have withstood the master attacks of that chieftain-warrior of the human race. The wealth which England had derived from commerce, enabled the allies to overthrow Napoleon.

There are two, and only two, great commercial nations now in existence— England and the United States. They rule the world. There are other great nations, but none which exercise so general an influence. Russia has great power, but that power is limited. She is warlike, not commercial. Wherever she can bring her power to act directly upon any question or people, as in the Hungarian controversy, she is almost resistless. But so trifling is her commerce, that her wealth is drawn off by other people, and it may well be doubted whether the Ural Mountains are not as beneficial to England as to Russia.

We need not detail the commercial elements either of British or American power. In one word we may say that the commercial spirit is opposed to despotism, and though England is far from being a free country, her government is much less despotic than in the times of Edward II., or Henry VIII. And further, that non-commercial nations have had, and will continue to have, great difficulty in establishing and maintaining freedom.

But neither the United States nor Great Britain engages in war, unless it be for some commercial advantage. The nobility and statesmen of the one country, and the statesmen and leading men of the other, are controled in their views by commercial considerations, if they are not themselves commercial men. The English rhymster expressed some truth when he said:

"The Duke of Norfolk deals in salt,
The Douglas in red herrings,

And guerdoned swords and titled land
Are powerless to the notes of hand,
Of Rothchilds and the Barings."

No pen is sufficiently accurate to detail the influence of the commercial spirit in the formation either of Great Britain or the United States. Who can tell how much of the success, of either in the mechanic arts, in inventions, in improvements, or in manufactures, is owing to this spirit? In this country it is all-pervading, and all-powerful.

Our first contest with Great Britain had its rise in our growing commercial spirit, and the policy of the mother country to retain in her own hands the advantages of our rising trade. The Revolution had in view the freedom and the increase of American commerce. The formation of the Constitution and the Union rested, in a great degree, upon the commercial spirit, which sought, under the shadow of a national banner, a protection which should be effectual in every sea. If we had had no love for commerce, the Union could not have been formed; and if to-day we were destitute of the commercial spirit, the Union might cease to exist. It is not just to say that there is not a deep and sacred love for the Union, independent of any selfish, pecuniary considerations. We are attached to the Union as the work of our fathers; as the bond of brotherhood under which we have prospered and grown to a great people. We know no nationality but the United States of

America; and though difference of sentiment may exist, though the voice of discord may occasionally be heard, the great majority of the American people regard the blessings which flow from the Union as incomparably greater than any which can come from its dissolution.

But commerce has made dissolution physically impossible. Its province is that of peace, of unity. It is a harmonizer of national difficulties. Its influence is more potential than that of Peace Congresses or World's Conventions. What would be the influence of either upon the maddened, feverish systems of great antagonists? But propose hostilities to the United States and Great Britain, and the statesmen, the farmers, the merchants, and the manufacturers, begin to count the cost of such a contest to the seven million tons of shipping, and the interests thereupon dependent. Subjects are too wise to allow even kings to indulge in so expensive an amusement.

Notwithstanding our ancient hostility to Great Britain, such are the commercial relations of the two countries, that we find it extremely difficult to allow ourselves the luxury of being even good haters of Her Majesty's subjects and dominions. Can Great Britain make war upon the United States? By no means. Commerce must take to her from our Southern States a supply of cotton for her manufactories; and commerce again must distribute the product of those manufactories over the world. Ten millions of British people depend for bread upon the success of the carrying trade from the plantation to the factory, and from the factory to the consumer. Suspend this trade for five years, and the British laborers starve-the British treasury is exhausted-the British debt is repudiated-the British government is overthrown. Can you get better security for the peace of the two countries than commerce thus furnishes you? If commerce, then, be such a bond of union between two discordant, belligerent, antagonist, rival nations, what is, and ever must be, its influence over the different States and different sections of this Republic? And what, too, is the force of that commerce which has grown up in entire freedom in this nation? A commerce which is equally important to every section-a commerce which knows no North, no South, no East, no West-but only a great people, one and indivisible. It may be fortunate, nay, it is fortunate, that in times of excitement, in moments of passion, in seasons of jealousy and disappointment, when men of either section might forget the more solemn obligations which bind them to the Union, that the great commercial interest and spirit exist, to counsel with men's selfish propensities even, and lead them to pause in a career which can only result in personal disgrace, in national ruin, and in the fulfillment of those bitter and malignant prophecies with which the defenders of despotism have through long years beguiled their followers.

The spirit of commerce is

"That sacred pledge,
Which once partaken blunts the sabre's edge,
Makes even contending tribes in peace unite,
And hated hosts seem brethren to the sight."

Art. II.-MONEY:

ITS HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY, AND ITS USE AND

PART 1.

ABUSE.*

OF THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF MONEY.

"MONEY," says Dr. Adam Smith, "is the great wheel of circulation and distribution, the great instrument of commerce." Torrens compares money to "a highroad or navigable river, which, by facilitating exchanges and perfecting the divisions of employment, increases to an incalculable extent the mass of wealth." Thomas Carlyle calls money "the master-organ-the soul's seat-the pineal gland of the body social." Henry Noel Humphreys describes money as one of the inventions that has had the greatest effect upon the destiny of man, influencing the course and form of his progressive civilization more, perhaps, than 66 other." any Money," writes John Stuart Mill, is the medium through which the incomes of the different members of the community are distributed to them, and the measure by which they estimate their possessions."

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Turning from political economists, from philosophers, and from numismatists, to poets, hear Thomas Hood sing,-Hood, with laughter always on his lip, and with seriousness ever in his soul,—

Gold! gold! gold! gold!

Bright and yellow, hard and cold,

Molten, graven, hammer'd, and roll'd;

Heavy to get and light to hold;

Hoarded, barter'd, bought and sold,

Stolen, borrow'd, squander'd, doled:

Spurn'd by the young, but hugg'd by the old

To the very verge of the churchyard-mold;
Price of many a crime untold;

Gold! gold! gold! gold!

Good or bad a thousand-fold!

How widely its agencies vary,

To save-to ruin-to curse-to bless

As even its minted coins express,—

Now stamp'd with the image of Good Queen Bess,

And now of a Bloody Mary."

With similar thoughts, though in a different strain, wrote the devout

Herbert, more than two centuries ago,—

"Money, thou bane of bliss and source of woe,

Whence comest thou, that thou art so fresh and fine?

I know thy parentage is base and low :

Man found thee poor and dirty in a mine.

Sure thou didst so little contribute

To this great kingdom, which thou now hast got,

That he was fain, when thou wast destitute,

To dig thee out of thy dark cave and grot.

We are indebted to an esteemed correspondent, residing in London, for the following copy of a lecture delivered before the Young Men's Christian Association, in Exeter Hall, January 22, 1850, (JOHN MACGREGOR, Esq., M. P. for Glasgow, in the Chair,) by the Rev. SAMUEL MARTIN. It is at once able and interesting; but its great length compels us to divide it into two parts. The first part, now published, gives a very comprehensive sketch of the History and Philosophy of Money; the second part relates to the "Use and Abuse of Money," which we shall endeavor to find room for in our next number, and which will be read, we have no hesitation in saying, with equal interest.

Then forcing thee, by fire he made thee bright:
Nay, thou hast got the face of man; for we
Have with our stamp and seal transferr'd our right:
Thou art the man, and man but dross to thee.
Man calleth thee his wealth, who made thee rich;
And while he digs out thee, falls in the ditch."

All the utterances we have quoted are but the echoes of voices which address us through the Holy Scriptures. The Bible saith, "Money answereth all things;" "Money is a defense ;" "The love of money is the root of all evil."

According to these representations, money is an instrument of peculiar and extended power; exerting an influence on production, on exchange, on the manners and morals of society, on the outer and inner life of mankind. Moreover, in giving money this position, philosophers, poets, political economists, and inspired men, agree.

But for testimony to the power of money I need not go to books. Out of the mouths of men proceeds sufficient evidence. I hear politicians call money "the sinews of war ;" and they mean, too, the sinews for other conflicts than the struggles of flesh and blood. And to come nearer this audience-did my ears betray me when I heard a young man translating the word by which I have designated the topic of this lecture, and, using the language common to thousands, say not, "I am going to hear a lecture on money"—but, "I am going to hear a lecture on THE MAIN CHANCE?"

We have shown the importance of our theme by words of poetry, philosophy, and Scripture; but if destitute of such support, we could have sanctioned the selection of our topic by that free and easy phraseology of men which, because it pours out the abundance of the heart, exhibits the relation of the subject of this lecture to the hopes and fears, to the joys and sorrows, of the great mass of mankind.

Being, then, in contact with this wide subject, MONEY, what shall we attempt? We shall try to utter a few true words on the HISTORY and PHILOSOPHY, on the USE and ABUSE of Money: we shall do this with the intent of arousing to the study of this topic those who have not read and thought upon it, of encouraging in the study those who have entered on the investigation, and of ministering both a stimulus for the use and an antidote for the abuse of an instrument so manifestly and preeminently potent alike for good and for evil.

We begin with the HISTORY of money. A good sketch of the history of metalic money may be gathered from the Bible. Metals, the utility of which is second only to food, were early discovered and employed. According to Moses, metals came into use in the seventh generation from Adam. But it is not until 1700 years have elapsed that we read of metals as a medium of exchange. In the Book of Genesis, Abraham is said to have been rich in cattle, in "silver and in gold." We read the words "bought with money" as words used in Abraham's day, and are informed of the patriarch's receiving a present of "a thousand pieces of silver." But following these incidental notices of metalic money is a record of an act of exchange, in which the precious metals were the medium. We read, "And Abraham weighed

to Ephron the silver . . . . four hundred shekels of silver CURRENT with the MERCHANT." This is the earliest record of exchange. But in the same book similar transactions are recorded. A lad is sold for twenty pieces of silver. Money is mentioned as the property of women; a field is bought for one hundred pieces of money; and corn is sold for money; and we meet