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minishing profits. The productions of a country in such a situation will not command their fair price, for the same reason that agricultural countries with a small amount of currency, do not receive as great profits as countries abounding in currency. When prices have risen to an extreme height, the point to which reduction should be brought is that at which exportation will readily take place, and importation be checked. If reduced below that point, the sufferings of the community will be unnecessarily increased. A rigid economy is sometimes recommended as an effectual cure, by those who are led away by a false analogy between individuals and communities. If all the inhabitants continue to wear their old clothes, and abandon the comforts they have been accustomed to, mechanics, manufacturers, and laborers will be thrown out of employment. In that condition, they will in vain practise a rigid economy to alleviate their sufferings. The wealthy alone can bear this severe economy.

If a suspension of specie payments is sanctioned, but within proper bounds, to be allowed only for a limited period, and the banks restrained in their discounts, though there must still be much suffering in a community that has greatly overtraded, it will be mitigated. The late suspension in the state of New York was conducted on this principle, and was, no doubt, highly beneficial. No injustice was done to the foreign creditor. It is better that the greater part of the foreign debt should be paid at a future period, out of the productions of the country, than that a very small part should be paid at once, and the rest wiped off by bankruptcy. If banks go on paying specie till their coffers are exhausted and the community left without a currency, the suffering of the country will be increased ten-fold. Now, what would be the condition of the country if a specie sub-treasury should be in full operation in such a crisis? This plan is founded on a principle which, as it appears to us, is erroneous in theory, and can never be carried out in practice.

A few further remarks on the subject of a United States bank will close this article. We propose to consider it more particularly in reference to its influence in regulating the currency. It can do this by restraining the excessive issues of other banks. The circulating notes of banks are constantly falling into other banks, where they cease to act as part of the circulating medium, and are returned to the bank that issued them. If the issues of any one bank are excessive, its notes will thus be returned upon it in large quantities, and greater in amount than it will have of other banks on hand to return for them. Specie will be demanded for the surplus, and the bank will thus be compelled to restrain its issues. The power of a United States bank thus to check the issues of other banks is great, because its credit is great-because its notes command an extensive circulation, and are much less liable to be returned. If well conducted, it will thus, from its commanding position, exercise a constant control over the excessive issues of other banks. True, it may be said that only a comparatively small portion of the other banks may be thus brought into contact with it; but such as are brought into contact with it, being checked by it, will in their turn control others, until the whole mass will be brought under proper regulation and discipline.

This controlling power of a United States bank is not a mere theory, but is fully established by experience, and we have pointed out the mode of its operation for the purpose of tracing its regulating power to its true cause, and showing that it is not owing to any magical influence derived

from the fact of its being a United States institution. To produce these salutary effects, it must itself be regulated and kept within proper bounds. If a United States bank should hereafter be chartered without such restrictive regulations, we shall have no ample security against excessive circulation, with its concomitants, speculation and overtrading. If its own issues should be greatly excessive, it is manifest it will not be able to control the issues of other banks. The question has sometimes been mooted, whether the late overtrading and speculation in this country would have taken place, if a United States bank had been kept in operation. All opinion upon this subject must be more or less problematical. We have already adverted to causes, however, the operation of which would have led to overtrading, even with an exclusive specie currency; but we have every reason to believe that there would not have been such an excess of bank capital, and such utter exemption on the part of our banks from all restraints and harmonious combination, if the United States Bank had continued to be a United States institution.

Another important function of a United States bank is its furnishing a uniform currency. This is in a great measure indispensable, and cannot be otherwise procured, unless we abandon paper altogether. But the idea that the people of this country will abandon bank paper and resort to spe cie alone, is too visionary to be seriously thought of. Local state banks can give but a local currency; there may be occasional combinations in different sections that will give some relief, by generalizing and extending the credit of this local currency to a certain degree, such, for instance, as the regulation the New England banks have come under with the Suffolk Bank; but all these must be limited and temporary. We have adverted to the advantages of multiplying local banks, restricted as to profits in respect to the facilities they would furnish to trade: but to enjoy the full benefit of the banking system, you must combine with them a central bank, with the requisite number of branches, to serve the double purpose of checking the local banks, and furnishing a currency that can be used everywhere.

The benefits flowing from a United States bank, by aiding the govern ment in collecting and disbursing the revenue, in negotiating loans, and in all its moneyed operations, more especially in time of war or other great calamity, have been often dwelt upon, and our time will not permit us to enlarge upon them here. The experience of these benefits, or rather of the want of them, led the party who conducted the last war to change their views in regard to such an institution, and converted enemies into warm friends.

In times of depression consequent upon overtrading and a redundant currency, an active and enterprising people will recover in two or three years from the effects of an unfavorable balance of trade. If they should still labor under difficulties, they will arise only from a deranged curren cy. Such is our present condition. If our currency were only in a sound state, we should now be prosperous. The national government, co-operating with the exertions of the people, and aided by a bank of its own, could soon renovate the currency. The great pressure under which we have been laboring, need not have lasted over three years. If the na tional government had been aided by a United States bank well regulated, and had co-operated with it, imparting to it its own credit and resources, all our difficulties would long since have vanished.

We may conclude with remarking that the use of paper currency is, and must continue to be, the fixed and settled policy of this country. Its cheapness, its facilities, its flexibility to accommodate itself to the wants of the community and the habits of the people, formed in the course of a half century, forbid entirely all attempts to make a change in this particular. Any party, or any set of men, who should endeavor to exclude a paper currency, must totally fail. We should, then, endeavor to improve, not abolish the system. That it is capable of regulation, so as to avoid in a great measure, its disadvantages, and to secure all its benefits, we have no doubt. The best efforts of the best talents of our country should be devoted to this all-important object.

ART. III.-WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

COMPARISON OF THE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES OF THE UNITED STATES AND

SEVERAL COUNTRIES WITH WHICH THEY HAVE COMMERCIAL INTERCOURse.

In every country in which commercial transactions are extensively carried on, the importance of having weights and measures determined by some fixed standard is obvious to every rational mind. The confusion and inconvenience attending the use of weights and measures of the same denomination, but of different magnitudes, was early remarked; and there is hardly a country in which efforts have not been made to reduce them to a uniform system. Numerous acts of legislatures have been instituted, having this object in view, and directing the use of the same weights and measures, under very severe penalties. But, owing to the inveteracy of ancient and local customs, and the difficulty of enforcing new regulations, the statutes have generally had a very limited influence, and the greatest diversity has continued to prevail, except in lineal measures, the standards of which must have been fixed upon at the earliest period, and appear to have consisted principally of the parts of the human body. For example, the cubit, or length of the arm from the elbow to the tip of the longest finger; the foot; the ulna, arm, or yard; the span; the digit, or finger; the fathom, or space from the extremity of one hand to that of the other, when they are both extended in opposite directions; the pace, &c. Large spaces were estimated by measures formed out of multiples of the smaller ones; and sometimes in day's journeys. But as the size of different parts of the human body vary in different individuals, it became necessary to select some durable article-as a metallic rod of the length of an ordinary cubit, foot, &c., and to make it a standard with which all other cubits, feet, &c., used in mensuration should correspond. These standards have always been preserved with the greatest care. At Rome they were kept in the temple of Jupiter; and among the Jews, their custody was intrusted to the family of Aaron.

But lineal measures can only be used to determine the magnitude of solid bodies; the magnitude of bodies in a liquid or fluid state, has to be determined by what are called measures of capacity. It is probable that, in the infancy of society, shells, or other hollow instruments afforded by nature, were used as standards. But the inaccuracy of the conclusions drawn from

referring to them must soon have become obvious; and it early occurred, that to obtain an accurate measure of liquids, nothing more was necessary than to constitute an artificial one, the dimensions, and consequently the capacity, of which should be determined by the lineal measures previously adopted.

The determination of the gravity or weight of different bodies supposes the invention of the balance. Nothing is known of the steps which led to the introduction; but it was used in the remotest antiquity. It seems probable that, at first, cubes of some common lineal measure, as a foot, or the fraction of a foot, formed of copper, iron, or some other metal, were used as standards of weight. When the standard was selected, if it was desired to ascertain the specific gravity or weight of every given article, all that was necessary was to put it into one of the scales of the balance; and as many cubes, or parts of cubes, on the other, as might be necessary to counterpoise it,

Weights, however, have been frequently derived from grains of corn. Hence in this, and in some countries of Europe, the lowest denomination of weight is a grain; and 32 of those grains are directed, by the ancient statute called Compositio Mensurarum, to compose a pennyweight, whereof 20 make an ounce, 12 ounces a pound, &c.*

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES OF GREAT BRITAIN,

Agreeably to the Act of Uniformity, which took effect 1st January, 1826, with the alterations and modifications that have taken place subsequent to that period.

MEASURES OF LENGTH.-History informs us that, in England, a new, or rather a revival, standard of lineal measure was introduced by Henry I., who ordered that the ulna or ancient ell, which corresponds to the modern yard, should be made of the exact length of his own arm, and that the other measures of length should be based upon it. This standard has been maintained, without any sensible variation, and is the identical yard used in the United States, and is declared, by the Act 5 Geo. IV., cap. 74, to be the standard of lineal measure in Great Britain. The clause in the act is as follows:

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"From and after the 1st day of May, 1825, (subsequently extended "to the 1st of January, 1826,) the straight line or the distance between "the centres of the two points in the gold studs in the straight brass rod, "now in the custody of the clerk of the house of commons, whereon the "words and figures STANDARD YARD, 1760,' are engraved, shall be the original and genuine standard of that measure of length or lineal exten"sion called a yard; and the same straight line or distance between the "centres of the said two points in the said gold studs in the said brass "rod, the brass being at the temperature of 62 degrees by Fahrenheit's "thermometer, shall be and is hereby denominated the 'IMPERIAL YARD,’ "and shall be and is hereby declared to be the unit or only standard mea"sure of extension, wherefrom or whereby all other measures of extension "whatsoever, whether the same be lineal, superficial, or solid, shall be "derived, computed, and ascertained; and that all measures of length shall

* M'Culloch's Dictionary of Commerce-Weights and Measures.

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"be taken in parts or multiples or certain proportions of the said standard yard; and that one-third part of the said standard yard shall be a foot, "and the twelfth part of such foot shall be an inch; and that the pole or perch in length shall contain five and a half such yards, the furlong 220 "such yards, and the mile 1760 such yards.'

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As the standards adopted in most countries have been in a great degree arbitrary, it has long been the opinion of scientific men, that, to construct a more perfect system of weights and measures, some natural and unchange. able basis should be adopted. The standards that have been usually proposed for this object have been some aliquot part of the quadrant of the meridian, or the length of a pendulum vibrating seconds in some given latitude. Hence, the latter has been adopted in the imperial standard yard of Great Britain, which, when compared with a pendulum vibrating seconds of mean time in the latitude of London, in a vacuum, at the level of the sea, is in the proportion of 36 inches to 39.1393 inches.

Since the passing of this act, however, some very elaborate and scientific experiments of Mr. Francis Baily have shown that errors of sufficient moment to be taken into the account, in an inquiry of this kind, render the above proportion inaccurate.

The following standard yards, made with great accuracy, give the annexed results::

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The inch is the shortest lineal measure to which a name is given; but subdivisions are used for many purposes. By mechanics it is commonly divided into eighths. By the officers of the revenue, and by men of science, it is divided into tenths, hundredths, &c. Formerly it was made to consist of twelve parts, called lines, but these have very properly fallen into disuse.

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1 Chain,..

1 Furlong,..

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..24 .11

..4...1

1 Statute Mile,..

1 League,.....

201.16436560...7920...660...220 110 40 10 1

1609.31492480 63360 5280 1760 880 320 80 81 4827.94477440190080 15840 5280 2640 960 240 24 3 | 1

Besides the above, there are the palm, which equals 3 inches; the hand, 4 inches; the span, 9 inches; the nail, 24 inches; the link, 7 or one-hundredth of a chain; and the quarter, 4 nails or 9 inches.

inches,

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