The following statistics of the exports from the state bordering on the Mississippi, we extract from the speech of Hon. Otis Hoyt, in the Assembly of 1852: There are on the Mississippi River, above the mouth of the St. Croix River, engaged in cutting logs, eleven saws-cutting 15,000,000 feet of sawed lumber annually, at $10 per thousand 50,000 feet... 10,000,000 feet of logs. .$150,000 On the St. Croix River, there are seventeen saws--cutting 26,000,000 feet, at $10.. The Chippewa River yields 20,000,000 feet of lumber, at $10... 1,000,000 feet of logs, at $5. Square timber, lath, shingles, &c. The Black River yields 15,000,000 feet of lumber, at $10..... 260,000 200,000 20,000 5,000 ties for easy access to the east and south, affording promise of great agricultural and commercial prosperity. Perhaps no state can enjoy so many advantages at so little expense. The towns in the interior are destined to a rapid growth, for the rail-road system will give to them nearly all the advantages heretofore enjoyed by the river and lake towns, and the farmers in every part of the state will have, at their own doors, 10,000 a ready market for their surplus products, It only remains an open question whether manufactures may be successfully introduced, so as to augment the resources and quicken into greater activity other industrial pursuits. It has been said that Wisconsin cannot become a manufacturing state, because there are no extensive coal beds to furnish motive power; but whether manufactures are dependent upon the supply and cost of coal, and whether wood and water may not afford a sufficient and economical substitute, are questions yet to be solved. 150,000 Logs, square timber, lath, shingles, &c.... 15,000 In concluding this article, we would say, that the undeveloped resources of Wisconsin have attracted the attention of capitalists and scientific men. The extent of her territory, and the fertility of the soil, ready, by the alternations of prairie and timber, for the labor of the husbandman, bid fair to make this one of the first agricultural states in the Union. Internal improvements are needed to bring into communication with the markets the interior counties; but all the lake shore on the east, and the river counties on the west, enjoy the best natural facili The construction of canals in the older states a few years ago increased the manufacturing facilities by furnishing a large water-power; and why may not Wisconsin, which abounds in natural water-falls and rapid streams, turn them to advantage to increase her resources and benefit her sons? ART. III.-FREE BANKING. PART III. THE use of state or government stocks as securities for a paper currency, involves the most important considerations. It opens up all the questions touching a public debt, to which we must in due course direct our attention. Our first proposition is, that the credit of a state is no fit foundation for a paper currency. The stocks of a state are only its promissory notes. Upon these, as securities, free banking bases a lower order or stratum of promissory notes, viz.: the notes or paper promises of banks, and again, for these are exchanged the notes or promises of private persons-thus giving us a descending series of credits, from the peo ple as a government, to the people as individuals. The result of such a scheme is obvious and irresistible. The whole fabric of the currency being built on credit accumulated on credit, the edifice gradually expands and enlarges, and finally becomes so large and overtowering, that it is borne down almost by its own superincumbent weight, crushing the whole community beneath its ruins. No prudent merchant would knowingly extend his confidence to the country dealer whose whole resources were built on similar frail foundations. He would feel that he was recklessly careless to sell out his property to individuals whose credit was built on the credit of a class of other individuals, who now found themselves in the vortex of in turn obtained their credit from some an excitement well nigh as maddening, other and still more distant individuals, We need not detail the result of that whose own wealth, in fine, was but a mere credit itself. excitement. The recoil is yet fresh in our minds. He who was the millionaire and capitalist of the spring-tide had hardly wherewith to get a breakfast in the succeeding winter, even though his pockets were crammed with thousands in bank paper. But it was not the millionaire alone or mostly who suffered by that panic. The laborer was the man upon whom that blighting bank revulsion fell most terribly. Well might it be said of all such paper manias, "that they are the most effectual of all the inventions to fertilize the rich man's field with the sweat of the poor man's brow. Ordinary tyranny, oppression and taxation-these bear lightly on the happiness of the community, compared with fraudulent currencies and the robberies committed by depreciated paper." To say nothing of the frailty of such a foundation for a currency, what must be the effect of the scheme on the whole system of values? Is it not plain that such a multiplication and overriding of credit on credit gives the whole paper money system an accelerated and accumulated energy, which grows with its every impulse. It is the elastic ball, whose velocity increases with every rebound, until the rapidity of its speed baffles the skill of those who set it in motion. Once started, the expansive system can never stop, but must go on increasing in power. Bear with us a moment, while we recall a few incidents in the history of our currency. During our Revolutionary struggle the Continental Congress issued about three hun- And now, if our state government do dred millions of paper money, in the not adopt prompt measures to arrest the shape of bills of credit, and such was the further increase of our paper currency, untoward result of that action, that in the scenes of 1837 will again be repeated. 1787 every precaution was taken to Then the currency rose to the enormous guard against the occurrence of such amount of one hundred and forty-nine evils. "Now," said Oliver Ellsworth, millions. From this excessive expansion "is the favorable moment to shut and it sank in 1843 to fifty-eight millions, and bar the door against paper money." The in 1847 rose to one hundred and five milstates were positively prohibited by the lions, and now, in 1852, it has attained constitution from making anything but gold and silver a legal tender, and the federal government was denied the power of emitting bills of credit or establishing a national bank. To make their opinions still more explicit, the hard money men of 1789, in the very first revenue act of Congress, prohibited the payment of revenue dues and duties with anything but gold and silver. It was not long, however, before the ingenuity of interest overleaped all such restrictions. The convulsions of 1819, 1825 and 1837, each and singular, attest the rapid growth of our banking system. The most memorable of those revulsions was that of 1837. During the three preceding years our banking capital had increased ninety-one millions, and our banking circulation fifty-four millions. The loans rose from three hundred and twenty-five to five hundred and twenty-five millions, being an average annual expansion of about fifty millions of dollars. The effect of this inflation of credit was instantaneous and tremendous. Men who had laughed at the insane bubbles of the Mississippi and South Sea speculations, the height of one hundred and sixty millions. And this, too, at a time when a tide of gold is setting in from every shore, and when the receipts of coin from Cali fornia have in the aggregate reached two hundred millions. What stability can there be in the value of property or contracts? What steady employment can labor expect, when the artificial standard by which property contracts and labor are measured, is thus constantly and violently fluctuating? In other words, when your currency is periodically depreciated by an over-issue of paper. We deride and contemn the mean artifice of those monarchs who debased their coin and unsettled the standard of value in use among their own people. And yet this very thing we contemnthis monstrous power to violate all con tracts and prostrate labor, has been bestowed by the legislatures of republican government on moneyed corporations. Government dare not debase its coin, but banks are invested with the sovereign power to depreciate the currency at will. And as if to encourage them to perpetu ate the abuse, they are permitted to levy Now, while banks have this power, Free banking is one thing-free trade in the manufacture of paper-money is a very different affair. Free trade in the issue of paper-money has never succeeded any where. The more free the manufacture of paper-money, the more it is enlarged, and as the amount increases, the danger of revulsions becomes more imminent. It is true there cannot be an indefinite expansion of a currency which is convertible into coin. The liability of the paper to be returned home for coin tends, we know, to keep it at the same average. Nevertheless, the vibrations of an elastic currency are sometimes considerable before the check of the law of supply and demand can operate. Other causes may tend to sustain exchange, and thus to maintain an inflated paper issue. In 1837 we saw those causes at work, and the expansion reached an increase of nearly fifty per cent. on the whole amount of the currency, which was followed by contractions to less than the former circulation. Whilst we are busy in providing, lest a man should lose a one-dollar note, we have made no provision against a fluctuation which changes the value of his property one-half, reduces a claim he may have to receive one-half, or doubles the debt he may have to pay. The remedy of this evil has received too little attention from our modern legislators; and yet, it is of the first importance in a sound banking system, and should at once control our legislation. No banking statutes should be sanctioned which do not limit, by some fixed and proper standard, the extent of our paper circulation. This is the grievous evil, to the removal of which Ricardo addressed his clear and able intellect, and which finally resulted in the famous Bullion Act of Sir Robert Peel. It is therefore plain, that stocks in themselves are no proper securities against an inflated currency. The practical operation of the system is obvious. First come the issues of state stocks, created by the contraction of debts exceeding the revenue. Upon these are being converted into a sort of reservoir, built the banks; the credit of the state from which the faint and exhausted credit of individuals is refreshed and renewed. Speculation, which the previous want of capital so strongly prohibited, now springs up with an unnatural and redoubled power. The credit extended by the ramification of commerce, enhancing nobank to its friends spreads through every minal values, and giving large profits to the bold and daring adventurer. Prudent men are at length caught in the tide, and larger obligations and greater debts are contracted. Finally, however, payday will come round, as come it must. The note-payers find their means locked up in their speculations. Their profits are still too small to realize, and new loans must be contracted. The banks soon find themselves immeasurably expanded. Money becomes a little scarce, and there is a cry for more banks and more paper money. To establish new banks, new public debts and new stocks must be created. The old stocks have been absorbed, and the demand for them has carried their value to an inflated and fictitious height. The idea of large premiums on six per cent. loans soon fascinates the legislature, and new improvements are devised, and new schemes are projected, and great systems debts contracted. Extravagant Thus it is that a huge debt is created, of railways and canals are set on foot. an expanded currency created, and heavy taxation originated, which must ultimately result in pecuniary disaster of the severest character. have not here sketched the outline of her Let us look at New-York and see if we recent banking career. tion of 1846, her finances were the subIn the convenject of grave and anxious debate. In the records of that convention, the reports Chatfield and others, all bear on two and speeches of Hoffman, Cambreleng, great subjects-the public debt and the currency. They were, in fact, the great objects which the convention had assembled to arrange. After a most searching discussion, the able views of Mr. Hoffman were adopted. He contended that liest moment, and with the least possible the state debt should be paid at the earcharge of interest. "If we want," said go on with these debts and taxation. he, "a great charnel-house of pauperism, Go on and borrow money to squander it all inflated currency and an endless public over the state again in internal improve- debt. And will the pay-day never come ments. * * * It was the accursed round? Are these "Dædalian wings" power of taxation which made pauper- of paper money always to bear us aloft? ism, produced crime, misery and distress in all countries, and he looked to his children as a parent, when he said that he desired not to see their limbs fettered, or their bodies withered, by any accursed debtor system, by whomsoever begun." These stocks must one day be paid or renewed. Interest on interest will accumulate. In seventeen years the debt will be doubled. Taxation must grow oppressive, and the wages of labor, the rewards of agriculture, and the returns of commerce will dwindle and droop. Speculation will cease and "hard times" will become household words. Once stricken with panic the whole fabric of credit will totter, and the flimsy free banks, whose foundations are paper, will fall around us "Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the banks In Valombrosa." In accordance with such ideas, the VIIth article of the New-York Constitution was adopted by a large vote. That article contemplated the entire payment of the state debt by the year 1862, and positively prohibited the Legislature from contracting any debt, except in the extraordinary events of war, invasion, &c., unless the law authorizing such debt at the same moment provided for its liquida- There is really no limit to the system, tion, in 18 years, by direct annual taxa- but its own destruction. Its great curse tion. And, as if to guard still further is its constant tendency to excess. What against abuse, all such laws were required then is worse adapted to the peculiar exito receive the sanction of a direct vote of gencies of Louisiana than such a plan? It the people. With these restraints and has no merit for our state, whose greatchecks, it was hoped that that great state est aim should be to set her currency would avoid all the calamities of an enor- and credit on the soundest basis, so that mous public debt. But alas! the same foreign capital will be invited to us, and convention which adopted these re- thus the limited means, now possessed, straints, also adopted the free banking be left free to the pursuit of more active clause, making the stocks of the state enterprise and commerce. And here the basis and security of the currency. The same instrument which prohibited the creation of a new debt, made it the interest of the all potent moneyed power to have an unending and illimitable state debt. What was the consequence? Why, state stocks soon got scarce and high. New banks were wanted, and bankers began to seek new sources of security. we will say-because it is true for us, as it is true for all-that no scheme of finance-no new plan of getting rich fast-no quick road to prosperity, will avail us aught. There is one way and only one, and that is stern and rigid economy-economy personal, municipal and state. These royal roads to wealth will always lead to the slough of despond. Let us get up from our apathy-call not Only six years after the adjournment on Hercules-but help ourselves, in the of the convention a large majority of the only way, by which true men ever help legislature passed the Canal Enlarge- themselves-economy, perseverance and ment Bill-an act which, violating the industry. These are better than all the spirit and letter of the VIIth article of captivating schemes of finance. Withthe Constitution, creates a new debt of out them neither banks nor credits can $7,000,000, and authorizes banking on de- help us. posit of the scrip or certificates of the The history of free banking in Newdebt. It is true that an enlightened judi- York demonstrates not merely that a ciary decided the bill unconstitutional, public debt is necessary to the existence but the machinery of party has been of the institution, but also and principalbrought to bear on the subject, and the ly demonstrates that free banking geneVIIth article has been evaded, and the rates a tendency to create debt and to inbill will now succeed, and the labors of dulge in unwise and extravagant improvethe convention to free the state from ments. Where it exists, all conservative "the accursed debtor system," be utterly and restraining tendencies (which are and forever lost. feeble enough at best) are taken from Now, what is true of New-York will the legislature, and a proclivity is enbe ten-fold more true of Louisiana. If gendered to borrow money and saddle we have free banking, we will have an posterity with a load of debt, from which |