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means so sudden or so marked as in England. Ship-loads of trained operatives are now imported every month from Liverpool and Glasgow, the agents of our manufacturers being sent out for the express purpose of engaging them to remove to America.* A vague impression already exists among the working classes in this country, that their condition, if not absolutely deteriorating, is by no means so prosperous as it would be but for the prodigious influx of foreign laborers. Hence the attempts to resuscitate the "Native American party" by a secret organization, ostensibly directed towards a change of the naturalization laws and against the influence of the Pope. We fear nothing from the political or sectarian machinations of these immigrants; and did no other danger threaten us from this source, a great combination, now extending to every corner of the land, would never have been organized against them. But their coming directly tends to lessen the gains of our operatives, and must eventually establish the same standard of wages on both sides of the Atlantic. Those who would be injuriously affected by this result should seek to avert it, not by attempting to exclude foreigners from political office, or by raising an outcry against them as adherents of an idolatrous church, but by advocating a return to the "American policy" of fostering native industry by laying high duties on foreign importations.

Mr. Lalor apprehends that the effect of the augmentation of gold and the depreciation of the currency will not be beneficial, as we have hitherto supposed, but that it presents "an interminable vista of confusion, uncertainty, and suffering," which threaten the security of the whole social fabric. These evils he considers as the necessary consequence of a vast extension of the "money-capital" of England, which is already redundant in amount, and any large increase of which, he thinks, must lead to the wildest and most disas

* We copy the following from the Boston Daily Advertiser of August 15, 1854, as an indication of the extent to which this business of importing trained operatives is now carried on: "NOTICE TO MANUFACTURERS. - The undersigned will contract to bring factory operatives from Glasgow and Manchester, by their Liverpool packets, to Boston. "ENOCH TRAIN & Co., 37 and 38 Lewis Wharf."

trous speculations. We do not share his alarms, and think that the error of the reasoning which leads to them can easily be exposed.

What Mr. Lalor calls "money-capital" is not gold and silver coin and bullion exclusively, nor even the whole currency, specie and paper, of which such coin is only the basis; but it is the vastly larger amount of floating capital which supplies the loan-market, seeking investment. It is the aggregate "purchasing power" of the community, which forms the basis of all commercial and industrial calculations, and immensely exceeds the aggregate of coin and bank-bills, because the same specific sum of coin, or bank-bills, or both, may be used to effect half a dozen payments in the same day; and the purchases made on credit, in any one day, may as much exceed the aggregate of payments on that day, as the total payments exceed the specific coin or bills with which they are effected. The magic power of credit swells "the purchasing power" of any highly commercial community to an incalculable extent. Whenever a capitalist, or the holder of actual property in a material shape, parts with it for the purpose, not of consumption, but of investment, he receives in exchange "a purchasing power," which he can reserve, and exercise at any future time at his own discretion. He deposits this sum for a time in a bank, where it will be available to him, at any time, as a bank credit. Many persons having such credits, payments may at any time be effected by a mere transfer of them on the bank-books. The bank, finding an average of such credits always remaining with it, can lend out the specie and bank-bills which were the original foundation of them, and still pay any of its depositors who call for payment, from the fresh sums brought in by other depositors, or by an entry on its books. The bank can even go further; it can lend a certain amount of its own bills to a merchant who has made no deposit with it, trusting that such loan will be repaid before the bills with which it was effected come back upon the bank for payment. The merchant receiving such a loan can employ a portion of it in making payments, and allow the remaining portion to lie on deposit in the bank; and on the strength of these deposits — wholly

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fictitious in character, be it observed-the bank may proceed to make fresh loans. Thus, on a very narrow basis, rises, story above story, a tall fabric of credit, till its top pierces the clouds. The security of the structure is in inverse proportion to its height. If public confidence be shaken, a general desire to realize property, as it is termed, or to convert mere evidences of debt into coin or other actual possessions, ensues, and then a failure of the architecture in any part causes the whole edifice to topple into ruin.

In a highly prosperous commercial community, like the English, the savings from income which form yearly accessions to capital are already excessive. They are estimated by some writers as high as fifty millions of pounds sterling per annum. A large portion of such savings are made by persons not in active business, who, having no employment of their own for such additional capital, wish only to invest it, or to lend it to others. Thus the loan-market becomes overstocked, the rate of interest falls, and rather than accept as little as two per cent. in safe investments, lenders are tempted by the offer of higher rates to expose their capital to great risks. Thus comes on a period of expansion and of all sorts of wild speculation, sure to be followed by failures, loss of confidence, and general agitation and distress. The state of trade, says Lord Overstone (formerly Mr. Jones Loyd), "revolves apparently in an established cycle. First we find it in a state of quiescence-next improvement-growing confidence― prosperity-excitement-over-trading-convulsion-pressure stagnation-distress-ending again in quiescence."

Mr. Lalor augurs evil from the present immense influx of gold, because, he argues, "only a small fractional proportion of that amount of new gold will be drawn into the currency," and the remainder will be new money-capital, thus enlarging the stock of it, which is already too great, and augmenting tenfold the tendency to rash speculations, and the consequent liability to reaction, commercial convulsions, and distress. The remedy which he proposes is, that government should increase the weight of taxation, so as to lessen the power of making savings from income, and should employ the surplus thus brought into the public treasury in making permanent loans to

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encourage agriculture, colonization, and emigration, loans having an effect to convert capital into income, while the new gold tends only to augment capital. In other words, he would thus change floating into fixed capital, it being the augmentation of the former only which increases the fever of speculation and menaces commerce with a constant succession of convulsions and disasters.

Even if we agreed with Mr. Lalor as to the nature of the evil to be apprehended, we should hesitate about adopting as remedies a great increase of taxation, and the conversion of the public funds into long loans to individuals. But the evil of a too rapid growth of capital, and the government coming in to dissipate it, by lending it to persons who will employ it in the drainage of land, or in ferrying away additional ship-loads of emigrants from the English shores, are alike chimerical. The new gold would form but an insignificant accession, at any rate, to the money-capital of England. The yearly savings from income in that country, as has been mentioned, have been estimated at fifty millions sterling; the new gold amounts only to twenty or thirty millions a year, which is to be distributed over the whole world, England receiving only her proportional share of it. Moreover, as habits of luxury and expense increase with every accession to capital, it would be only the savings from this fractional part of twenty-five millions a year which would form a permanent addition to capital. But further, we directly deny Mr. Lalor's fundamental proposition, that only a small fractional part of the new gold will be drawn into the currency. Except an insignificant portion retained for consumption in the form of trinkets, plate, and other manufactures of gold, the whole will go into the currency, not being available in any other way. Practically, we know that nine tenths either goes to the mint as soon as it is washed out of the earth, or is cast into stamped bars which perform all the purposes of coin. And this addi tion to the currency being only a nominal addition,—two millions of dollars, for instance, performing just the same functions that one million did before, the increase of the actual wealth, or capital, of the whole world must be very trifling. The addition being nominal, moreover, its great

extent forms no cause for apprehension. True, the increase of gold, affecting the specie basis on which all monetary systems rest, will affect successively, and in the same ratio, bank-bills, bank-credits, bills of exchange, and all other substitutes for money, which form the successive strata of the whole system. Mercantile transactions will then be represented in larger denominations of money; men will talk of millions, where they now talk of thousands; and this change of phraseology, except for the holders of obligations to pay which have a long time to mature, will be the whole extent of the evil. Mr. Lalor seems to think that there may be such a thing as the depreciation of capital, apart from the depreciation of money, and proceeding from "a general glut" of production, and consequently of wealth. He thus evinces a general confusion of ideas upon the subject, which he can unravel only by analyzing his notion of wealth, and seeing whether it is possible that there should be too much of it in the community.

But we must break off the discussion of a subject which would as easily transcend the limits of a volume as of an article. Though we have spoken freely of the errors of the three works under review, we can safely commend all of them, as written with ability and in a good spirit, and as throwing more or less light upon three great questions which, at the present day, much exceed in importance and interest all other problems in economical science.

ART. XII.-CRITICAL NOTICES.

1.- A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians. Revised and abridged from his larger Work. By SIR J. GARDNER WILKINSON, D. C. L., F. R. S. Illustrated with five hundred wood-cuts. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1854. 2 vols. 24mo. pp. 419, 436.

THE "larger work," too costly for general circulation, did more than all other English books toward erecting Egyptology into a distinct department of knowledge, and bringing into use its contributions to

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