affairs of the world, and gave rise to a great system of credit in trade and commerce, which has continued ever since; and though it has been, from its abuse, productive of the most widely extended and serious evils, yet the writer has no doubt it has been one of the main causes which has produced the immense increase in the arts and sciences, and in the general trade of the world, rendering the progress of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries almost beyond human calculation.

It is not within the limits of this short essay to go into a history of the credit system, generally, and to record the abuses which grew out of it, in the South Sea Bubble in England, and the Mississippi Scheme in France, which produced ruin far and wide-nor to show the immense losses which have been sustained by the abuses of the banking system of late date both in England and in the United States.

Nor is it attempted to deny that there is in the system itself great liabilities and temptations to fraud-these are freely admitted. But this is not the question we have before us. We may however, in relation to the evils of the credit and banking system, be permitted to remark that all human institutions possess the power of evil in just the same proportion as they are endowed with the power of doing good. The steam-engine multiplies power to an immense extent, and the danger of evil from its use is great er or less in proportion to that power; while its advantages are also, up to a certain extent, commensurate with its force. Nay, the opposite qualities exist in nature; the very air we breath is necessary to the sustainment of human life, and yet, gales of wind, hurricanes, and tornadoes produce the most extended devastations. The electric fluid is closely connected with all material substances, and is useful in the purification of the atmosphere. Yet when exhibited in too great quantities, and too suddenly, as in thunder-storms, it destroys everything within its reach. But it is useless to enumerate, for the maxim is trite that every human institution may be abused, and, as we have said, the banking and credit systems have been most grossly abused-but they have become the great levers of trade and commerce, and we risk nothing in declaring that, until some plan is discovered (if indeed such discovery can be made) to multiply with

equal facility and convenience a safer representative of commodities and of value whereby to effect exchanges, nothing can supersede these systems in trade and commerce. As well may be anticipated that railroads and steam propulsion will be abolished, and mankind agree to go back to the old system in use before their discovery, as to believe that banks and the credit system will be laid aside, and the precious metals become again the only medium of effecting exchanges.

It may therefore be laid down, as we have said, that all trade and commerce have now, as their settled basis, a great system of confidence and credit, and therefore the inquiry is a proper one: in what degree the precious metals are necessary to sustain in the best manner, and with the greatest advantages to nations and individuals, the immense exchanges of the now multiplied products of human requirement.

We shall, in the attempt to explain ourselves upon this subject, offer some simple views of the operations of the credit system in effecting exchanges, in which perfect safety predominates, without any active intervention of specie.

Let us then suppose twenty persons, more or less, of whom the first owes a sum of money to the second, the second to the third, the third to the fourth, and so on to the twentieth, who also owes the sum to the first-and if the supposed sum be one thousand dollars, it is evident that in this case one thousand dollars paid from the first to the second, and so in rotation to the twentieth, an amount of indebtedness will be discharged twenty times greater than the sum used to discharge it, and the money returned to the original possessor-and if specie be the only medium used to liquidate the debt, its amount must be twenty times ascer tained, or counted, and probably be as often removed from one place to the other, incurring a great amount of labor and expenditure of time and money. But if the one thousand dollars be safely deposited in a bank, a small piece of paper operates precisely in the same manner as would the specie, without expense and with equal safety, and without the removal of one dollar of the specie from the bank. This latter may not occur in every case, but it will in many; and the bank being enabled to make a calculation of how much specie will, on the average, be demanded by its depositors, may make loans of a certain portion of

their money, and thus afford additional facilities to those who wish to borrow, and in this way increase the amount of business, which can be safely transacted upon any given amount of money. Or, upon the credit system, the first may draw his bill of exchange upon the twentieth, and pay such bill to the second, the second to the third, the third to the fourth, and so on to the twentieth. This latter operation is not so common in this country because we have few private bankers, but in England, where there are many, it is a daily practice.

Are not the beneficial effects of the banking and credit system here made very manifest, and is it not here shown that specie plays a very subordinate part in the great operations of trade in large cities? Nay, but it is the same thing in the debts due from one part of the United States to another, and to every foreign country. One merchant in New York is indebted to another in New Orleans, or in London, while with others the case is exactly the reverse, hence arises what is called exchange, and the merchant in New York who has a debtor either in New Orleans or London, sells his draft to the merchant or merchants who is his debtor in either or both places, and thus the debt is cancelled without the intervention of specie, rendering the transmission of specie only necessary to pay any balance of indebtedness.

It is therefore clear, that the vast majority of mercantile transactions, both individual and national, are paid without the intervention of the precious metalsthe whole being upheld by a system of mercantile confidence and credit, without which trade and commerce, to any great extent, cannot be carried on. The whole course of trade, commerce, and finance, is so simple, that we feel really unwilling to offer any further explanations of what is well known to every merchant's clerk-and yet, strange to say, attempts are constantly made to throw a mystery around these very simple and plain operations; and men who know much better, are continually pretending that it is a great thing to be a financier, and to understand the management of concerns of that nature, be they of an individual or of a nation.

We freely admit, that there is often great difficulty in the management of both, where there are not competent means to do so. A mercantile house may overtrade, and not have sufficient means

of credit or capital to meet its engagements, and may be put to great straits to sustain itself. So a secretary of the treasury or a finance minister, may not provide a sufficient revenue to meet the expenditures of the country, and may have the same difficulty from the same source; but with the means at hand, in either case, the credit system is so well regulated that no difficulty can occur.

Punctuality, accuracy, and means, are all that are necessary to make a good financier; no one should attempt the duties without a knowledge of his subject, and with such knowledge he will have fewer obstacles in his way, than in almost any other pursuit. Losses will sometimes occur in finance, as in every other vocation, but both individually and nationally, so far as this country is concerned, these losses have more often arisen from want of principle in those who administer them, than from any inherent defect in the system when properly applied.

Food, clothing, and habitation, being the real desiderata in civilized life, and specie partially the medium through which they are exchanged, it surely will not require many examples to prove our postulate, that where there is the greatest amount of such of these commodities as are exchanged with foreign nations, there will there be the greatest amount of spe cie. Great Britain usually creates and exchanges the greatest amount of manufactures, &c. Consequently Great Britain has usually the greatest amount of specie in proportion to her population. But her crops occasionally fall much short of her consumption, and when this happens to such an extent, as to exceed the amount of what she has to sell, the balance is paid in specie. Such is the case at this moment, when, from the famine in Ireland, caused by the failure of the potato crop, and the scarcity of grain in Europe, specie is flowing into this country, because our superabundance of grain enables us to supply her need of that indispensable commodity. We fortunately now manufacture so much clothing, &c., for ourselves, that she cannot pay us in those articles, and therefore the rate of exchange is sufficiently against her to make it profitable to import specie, and hence it flows in upon us, in accordance with the law of trade to which we refer.

To show that the amount of specie in

Europe and America is no proof of the amount of property or value in these countries, or indeed in any other, at any specified period, we need only refer to the tables published in our last number, which show the stock of specie in 1810 to have been £380,000,000 sterling; whereas, in 1830, it was ten per cent. less, say £345,640,780 sterling. Yet who can doubt that the amount in value in Europe and America was vastly greater in 1830 than in 1810.

We promised, in the last number of the Review, to show how the receipts and disbursements of the public funds may be safely conducted, without the use of the precious metals or the intervention of bank notes, and we propose now to redeem that promise.

First, then, we state the case as it really is, viz: We say that the credit and debit side of the account ought to be so nearly equal, that any balance which may remain in the treasury after the public debts of the year are paid, should be only such as is deemed requisite for a case of emergency, say two, three, or if need be, four millions. Let the receipts then, from whatever sources, exceed the disbursements in that amount. These receipts may be rendered very nearly certain in their amount, and they are always certain in their payment. A certain number of persons are debtors and a certain number creditors. Let Congress then authorize a limited issue of revenue bills, bearing no interest, sufficient to pay the public creditors; let a branch mint be established in New York, and let these

revenue bills or specie be alone receivable for the public dues; let them be redeemable in specie at the mints in Philadelphia, New Orleans, and New York, which will always keep them at a par value, and then always taking care that the revenue shall exceed the amount issued, and the government will be their own guaranty for the safety of their receipts-and as in the case stated in the fore part of this article, they may pass into as many hands as may be, they will eventually perform the part of a bill exchange drawn by the government upon the debtor, who will pay the creditor.

All that the government have a right to demand, is safety and facility in the collection and disbursement of the public moneys; and surely nothing can be safer than their own obligations or specie. To demand specie for the liquidation of an account, which is like the bills payable and bills receivable account in a merchant's ledger, is an arbitrary exercise of power that never should be submitted to by the people, because, as we have shown, specie pays under the credit system, with which the people are well contented, debts to a much greater amount than its actual value; and it is a robbery of so much of the material of trade from the trading community to exact it in the payment of dues which, in reality, are nothing, since those who administer the government are nothing but trustees charged with effecting the exchanges in value which take place between the public debtor and the public creditor.

THE compiler of this work has been conversant, for many years, with Dictionaries and the making of Dictionaries. About twenty years since he edited "Johnson's Dictionary, as improved by Todd," &c. While executing this task, he formed the plan of his small work, entitled, "A Comprehensive Pronouncing

and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language," but before completing this latter work, he was induced to make the octavo abridgement of Dr. Webster's American Dictionary of the English language. Last of all, he has come before the public with the work, the title of which we have given. The remarks

which have occurred to us upon the work, we offer without preface under the following heads :

1. Pronunciation. This subject the compiler has painfully elaborated, and the results are placed at the command of the reader. He has not merely given the results of his own investigations and inquiries, by indicating what he supposes to be the usage of those esteemed as authorities; nor has he, where authorities are divided, and, as it were, equally balanced, given the two or three methods, with the authority on which each depends; but he has collected and attached to every important word, every method of pronouncing it that has ever been recommended by a writer, whether great or small, conceited or well-informed, judicious or affected. In this way he has gathered more curious information on this subject than can be found in any other work; which will be highly es teemed by all literary antiquarians, students of the "curiosities" of English pronunciation, and hunters after odd ways of affected utterance. We doubt the propriety or the good taste, however, of attaching this variety to a dictionary designed for common use; a dictionary which, from its size and pretensions, is intended to answer questions directly and briefly to the popular mind, rather than to be a thesaurus of the materials from which opposite usages may be defended, and nice questions may be laboriously adjusted. What is wanted in such a dictionary is the good usage of educated and sensible people in England and America-not the ultra and impracticable affectations of the salon, not the stiff and studied overdoing of the actor, or the professed doctor of pronunciation, not the refined nor the coarse cockneyisms of the cit, nor again the negligent and vulgar provincialisms of Old or New England; but the actual use of the intelligent and refined who speak the English language. Greater deference is to be yielded to English usage, under certain circumstances, than to the American, but not to such an extent as is sometimes claimed; least of all is that which is not the English usage of the truly intelligent and judicious to be insisted on, because it is observed by the affected Englishman. To do this, as was done by Walker, and as is done to a limited extent by Worcester, is to commit the mistake of the importer of the latest fashion, who gives the coat, the cravat, the hat or the boots,

of the London dandy, rather than those of the English gentleman. If we are to err in either direction, we had rather err from provincial ignorance than from mistakes of affected imitators. Let our errors be those of well-meaning but simple rustics, rather than those of the travelled fool. Mr. Worcester is in the main reliable, though with a little leaning to affectation and overdoing.

2. New Words.-Mr. Worcester informs us that, "to the words found in Todd's edition of Johnson's dictionary, nearly 27,000 more have been added." We are not surprised to learn this. We should not have been surprised, if we might trust the impression received from a simple inspection of single pages, if he had told us that he had added 50,000. On some of these pages, we are obliged to look with care in order to pick out, here and there, the familiar and wellknown words of ordinary conversation and writing. A foreigner who had obtained a tolerable knowledge of the English language, would be appalled by an inspection of these formidable lines of new words, if he were told that they all yet remained to be mastered. Mr. W. has of course made many valuable additions. The wonderful progress of the physical sciences, with the arts depending on them, since Johnson's day, has called into being, of necessity, thousands of new words. These words, as far as they have passed into the vocabulary of educated men, and occur, however rarely, in books, not technical and purely scientific, ought to be defined. With the progress of thought and the wide extension of general intelligence, with the new creation of hosts of writers of peculiar education, habits of thought, sources of illustration, &c., as well as from that liberty of creation taken by, and allowed to, men of commanding genius, hundreds of new words, neither technical nor scientific, have made for themselves a room and a place in the language. These all should be added. But to give a glossary or catalogue of all the words that have ever been used by those who are claimed as writers of English, or even by those who are acknowledged as English writers, is a liberty a little larger than the largest that should be allowed. Mr. Worcester has followed the largest liberty in this respect, with an ultraism that is quite equal to the spirit of the age. An English word in his view, is a word actually used, and even once, by an English