Atlantic Monthly | Page 8

ourselves with the expectation that it will prove a satisfactory remedy, in any sense, for the periodical disease of the currency; for its benefits, though probable, must be limited.[E] It is a remedy which merely plays round the extremities of the disorder, without invading the seat of it at all.
[Footnote E: It is very curious, that, while our leaders are in favor of exorcising small notes, many of the French and English Liberals are calling for an issue of them!]
We have endeavored, in the foregoing remarks, to point out (for our limits do not allow us to expound) two things: first, that in the universal modern use of credit as the medium of exchanges,--which credit refers to a standard in itself fluctuating,--there is a liability to certain critical derangements, when the machinery will be thrown out of gear, if we may so speak, or when credit will dissolve in a vain longing for cash; and, second, that in the paper-money substitutes which men have devised as a provision against the consequences of this liability, they have enormously aggravated, instead of counteracting or alleviating the danger. But if these views be correct, the questions to be determined by society are also two, namely: whether it be possible to get rid of these aggravations; and whether credit itself may not be so organized as to be self-sufficient and self-supporting, whatever the vagaries of the standard. The suppression of small notes might have a perceptible effect in lessening the aggravations of paper, but it would not touch the more fundamental point, as to a stable organization of credit. Yet it is in this direction, we are persuaded, that all reformatory efforts must turn. Credit is the new principle of trade,--the nexus of modern society; but it has scarcely yet been properly considered. While it has been shamefully _exploited_, as the French say, it has never been scientifically constituted.
Neither will it be, under the influence of the old methods,--not until legislators and politicians give over the business of tampering with the currency,--till they give over the vain hope of "hedging the cuckoo," to use Locke's figure,--and the principle of FREEDOM be allowed to adjust this, as it has already adjusted equally important matters. Let the governments adhere to their task of supplying a pure standard of the precious metals, and of exacting it in the discharge of what is due to them, if they please; but let them leave to the good sense, the sagacity, and the self-interest of Commerce, under the guardianship of just and equal laws, the task of using and regulating its own tokens of credit. Our past experiments in the way of providing an artificial currency are flagrant and undeniable failures; but as it is still possible to deduce from them, as we believe, ample proof of the principle, that the security, the economy, and the regularity of the circulation have improved just in the degree in which the entire money business has been opened to the healthful influences of unobstructed trade,--so we infer that a still larger liberty would insure a still more wholesome action of the system. The currency is rightly named _the circulation_, and, like the great movements of blood in the human body, depends upon a free inspiration of the air.
Under a larger freedom, we should expect Credit to be organized on a basis of MUTUAL RESPONSIBILITY AND GUARANTY, which would afford a stable and beautiful support to the great systolic and disastolic movements of trade; that it would reduce all paper emissions to their legitimate character as mere mercantile tokens, and liberate humanity from the fearful debaucheries of a factitious money; and that Commerce, which has been compelled hitherto to sit in the markets of the world, like a courtesan at the gaming-table, with hot eye and panting chest and painted cheeks, would be regenerated and improved, until it should become, what it was meant to be, a beneficent goddess, pouring out to all the nations from her horns of plenty the grateful harvests of the earth.

THE BUSTS OF GOETHE AND SCHILLER.
This is GOETHE, with a forehead Like the fabled front of Jove; In its massive lines the tokens More of majesty than love.
This is SCHILLER, in whose features, With their passionate calm regard, We behold the true ideal Of the high heroic Bard,
Whom the inward world of feeling And the outward world of sense To the endless labor summon, And the endless recompense.
These are they, sublime and silent, From whose living lips have rung Words to be remembered ever In the noble German tongue:
Thoughts whose inspiration, kindling Into loftiest speech or song, Still through all the listening ages Pours its torrent swift and strong.
As to-day in sculptured marble Side by side the Poets stand, So they stood in life's great struggle, Side by side