ferring them to the volume of Mr. Irving, whose biography of this author is one of the most delightful and satisfactory which we have ever perused. The character of Goldsmith is defended, and cleared from every charge and stain of meanness, gross vanity and vulgarity, fixed upon it by the envious and fulsome pencil of Boswell. We conclude, therefore, with the concluding chapter of Mr. Irving, as it would be in vain to attempt a more complete and elegant eulogium upon his favorite author. "How comes it," says a recent and ingenious critic, "that in all the miry paths of life which he had trod, no speck ever sullied the robe of his modest and graceful muse. How amidst all that love of inferior company, which never to the last forsook him, did he keep his genius so free from every touch of vulgarity? 'throwing sledge,' to a stroll with his flute along the pastoral banks of the Inny. "The gentle spirit of his father walked with him through life, a pure and virtuous monitor; and in all the vicissitudes of his career, we find him ever more chastened in mind by the sweet and holy recollections of the home of his infancy. "It has been questioned whether he really had any religious feeling. Those who raise the question have never considered well his writings; his Vicar of Wakefield, and his pictures of the Village Pastor, present religion under its most endearing forms, and with a feeling that could only flow from the deep convictions of the heart. When his fair travelling companions at Paris urged him to read the Church Service on a Sunday, he replied that 'he was not worthy to do it.' He had seen in early life the sacred offices performed by his father and his brother, with a solemnity which had sanctified them in his memory; how could he presume to undertake such functions? His religion has been called in question by Johnson and Boswell: he certainly had not the gloomy hypochondriacal piety of the one, nor the babblingmouth piety of the other; but the spirit of Christian charity breathed forth in his wri "We answer that it was owing to the innate purity and goodness of his nature; there was nothing in it that assimilated to vice and vulgarity. Though his circumstances often compelled him to associate with the poor, they never could betray him into companionship with the depraved. His relish for humor and for the study of character, as we have before observed, brought him often into convivial company of a vulgar kind; but he discriminated be-tings and illustrated in his conduct, give tween their vulgarity and their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the whole those familiar features of life which form the staple of his most popular writings. "Much, too, of this intact purity of heart may be ascribed to the lessons of his infancy under the paternal roof; to the gentle, benevolent, elevated, unworldly maxims of his father, who 'passing rich with forty pounds a year, infused a spirit into his child which riches could not deprave nor poverty degrade. Much of his boyhood, too, had been passed in the household of his uncle, the amiable and generous Contarine; where he talked of literature with the good pastor, and practised music with his daughter, and delighted them both by his juvenile attempts at poetry. These early associations breathed a grace and refinement into his mind and tuned it up, after the rough sports on the green, or the frolics at the tavern. These led him to turn from the roaring glees of the club, to listen to the harp of his cousin Jane; and from the rustic triumph of us reason to believe he had the indwelling religion of the soul. "We have made sufficient comments in the preceding chapters on his conduct in elevated circles of literature and fashion. The fairy gifts which took him there, were not accompanied by the gifts and graces necessary to sustain him in that artificial sphere. He can neither play the learned sage with Johnson, nor the fine gentleman with Beauclerc: though he has a mind replete with wisdom and natural shrewdness, and a spirit free from vulgarity. The blunders of a fertile but hurried intellect, and the awkward display of the student assuming the man of fashion, fix on him a character for absurdity and vanity which, like the charge of lunacy, is hard to disprove, however weak the grounds of the charge and strong the facts in opposition to it. "In truth, he is never truly in his place in these learned and fashionable circles, which talk and live for display. the kind of society he craves. It is not His heart yearns for domestic life; it craves familiar, confiding intercourse, family firesides, the guileless and happy company of children; these bring out the heartiest and sweetest sympathies of his nature. ""Had it been his fate,' says the critic we have already quoted, 'to meet a woman who could have loved him, despite his faults, and respected him despite his foibles, we cannot but think that his life and his genius would have been concentrated, his craving self-love appeased, his pursuits more settled, his character more solid. nature like Goldsmith's, so affectionate, so confiding-so susceptible to simple, innocent enjoyments-so dependent on others for the sunshine of existence, does not flower if deprived of the atmosphere of home. A "The cravings of his heart in this respect are evident, we think, throughout his career; and if we have dwelt with more significancy than others, upon his intercourse with the beautiful Horneck family, it is because we fancied we could detect, amid his playful attentions to one of its members, a lurking sentiment of tenderness, kept down by a conscious poverty and a humiliating idea of personal defects. A hopeless feeling of this kind-the last a man would communicate to his friends might account for much of that fitfulness of conduct, and that gathering melancholy, remarked, but not comprehended by his associates, during the last year or two of his life; and may have been one of the troubles of the mind which aggravated his last illness, and only terminated with his death. "We shall conclude these desultory re marks, with a few which have been used by us on a former occasion. From the general tone of Goldsmith's biography, it is evident that his faults, at the worst, were but negative, while his merits were great and decided. He was no one's enemy but his own; his errors, in the main, inflicted evil on none but himself, and were so blended with humorous, and even affecting circumstances, as to disarm anger and conciliate kindness. Where eminent talent is united to spotless virtue, we are awed and dazzled into admiration, but our admiration is apt to be cold and reverential; while there is something in the harmless infirmities of a good and great, but erring individual, that pleads touchingly to our nature; and we turn more kindly towards the object of our idolatry, when we find that, like ourselves, he is mortal and is frail. The epithet so often heard, and in such kindly tones, of 'poor Goldsmith,' speaks volumes. Few, who consider the real compound of admirable and whimsical qualities which form his character, would wish to prune away its eccentricities, trim its luxuriance, and clip it down to the decent formalities of rigid virtue. 'Let not his frailties be remembered,' said Johnson; 'he was a very great man.' But for our part, we rather say 'Let them be remembered, since their tendency is to endear; and we question whether he himself would not feel gratified in hearing his reader, after dwelling with admiration on the proofs of his greatness, close the volume with the kind-hearted phrase, so fondly and familiarly ejaculated, of 'POOR , GOLDSMITH." ECONOMY OF BANKING, CREDIT, AND CURRENCY. In a previous number* we reviewed the system of banking in operation in the State of New York, so far as it aimed to provide security for the redemption of bank issues of paper money, and suggested the application of that principle to the finances of the federal government. Since the publication of that article, the topics presented in it have been variously discussed in different sections of the country, and a disposition has been evinced to take into consideration the propriety of adopting the system there presented. It is not our present purpose to present anew the subject, treated in our former number, either to develope more fully its practical bearings or to urge the importance of its adoption. To that class of minds who are ready to adopt well considered plans of improving those systems that exist among us, however imperfect or disjointed they may appear to be, the presentation of a plan so simple and obviously effective, carries with it a force of conviction to which the most elaborate analysis and the most fervent advocacy can add nothing. But there are those who have thought much, if not profoundly, on the subject of credit and banking, who deem any improvement engrafted upon the present system, as hurtful to the precise extent, that as an improvement it ought to be deemed valuable, inasmuch as it tends to postpone the period of its radical overthrow. For those with whom radicalism is a passion and not a mere misdirection of the logical faculty, who strew their way from the cradle to the ve, with wrecks, beginning with the toys and play-things of infancy, and ending with constitutions, no argument can supply the defects of nature or education. But happily much of the radicalism of the day is merely a logical distemper, and to grave, * American Review, February, 1849, under title of "A plan for improving the national finances." which reason may address itself with a fair hope of being heard. That The mathematical condition of mind, peculiar to this age, exhibits itself in a tendency to reduce all systems to a series of simple and demonstrable propositions. which constitutes an excellence in mechanics, the habitual direction of the attention to the simple and comprehensive powers from which the more refined and complicated movements are devolved, frequently misdirects the mind in the study of economic science. In the one, that which is complex is derived, by variously combining powers and movements, simple in themselves, and in reality, only complex in the sense that the mind cannot, at a single instant of time, grasp the separate and combined operation of each, while in the other, complexity is the result of an infinite number and variety of forces, operating upon the production of every result. In mechanical science the mind begins with a simple proposition, and proceeds constructively to the production of the highest results, while in the uncertain sciences of which political economy may be reckoned, the foremost, this method is impracticable, indeed, impossible. Beside the wheel, the lever and the wedge, the machine society reckons among its primary powers many moral forces, not to be guaged and coupled by arbitrary will, but acting with a certain self-direction, without the range of human control, and frequently of human observation. The spirit of the age has pronounced against forms and complexities. It does not place man in the presence of the productions of a vast genius, superior to human, and command his study and admiration, but takes him to a vast engine room, and placing in his hand a lever, tells him that with it, the course of all things under the sun is controlled. It tells him that institutions and religions are instruments of his invention, and subjects of his control, and surely he should understand the tools with which he works, or throw them aside and invest others within his comprehension. It denies to him no attribute of power, save the origination of his own species, and a certain minor authority which nature, as his house-keeper, garnishing and fitting his terrestrial abode for his comfort and pleasure, exercises within this his home and workshop. Since Lucifer fell, such presumptuous beings as the modern philosophers have not existed. The approach to a philosophic comprehension of the science of political economy, lies through a state of mind as different from this as wisdom is from ignorance. There are certain great principles to be borne in mind-all economic systems have certain moral tendencies which it is as legitimately their office to exert, as to effect those physical and immediate results which are the apparent objects of their institution. Therefore, to adapt a system to the moral nature of man, is as essential as it is to construct it on such principles as to improve his physical condition. If it were otherwise, the argument so often used to vindicate tyranny that its subjects are better provided for in physical necessities and comforts, would be unanswerable. Again, let it be remembered that when experience has demonstrated the utility of a certain expedient, a fact has been ascertained which must have its place and weight in science, and if it is inapplicable or untrue to any theory of the subject, the theory gives way and not the fact. For certain expedients are as natural and as necessary by adaptation to the condition of man as the faculties he possesses; they indicate the laws of his state. of rational man with man, it is necessarily the great principle governing that intercourse, which has for its end the production by his industry of those things of which his nature has need for its susten ance. Credit is the great law of industrial intercourse. It is the result of the moral nature of man bearing upon his physical labors, and gives to his labors a moral tone, distinguishing them from and dignifying them above the labors of inferior and irrational beings. It binds society together in mutual confidence and dependence, thus harmonizing in the common objects to which all legitimate institutions tend. We hear of friends and enemies of a credit system; but it surely cannot be that there are any who desire the extirpation of confidence from the human bosom. It is not against the principle of credit that any sane man wars; but that which has been technically called the credit system, is sometimes the object of his aversion. Essentially, the credit system consists of a series of restrictions to the natural and unrestricted application of the principle, or rather instinct of confidence, settled by long experience. Whether these limits are always set with due regard to the best interest of society, is a question for experimental solution, defying theoretic analysis. There is a reason running through this subject, ascertaining by fixed laws every result, but the question to be settled is whether the human mind possesses sufficient ubiquity to comprehend it. For the present we must be content to study this faintly illumined science by the aid of certain fixed facts, like beacon lights, set hither and thither to guide the Of this nature is credit, morally the pla-mariner. And if we think more perfectly cing of faith and confidence by one in another, and physically the transfer of one's possessions to another on the faith of a promise of a compensating return for them. Without exercising it man has never existed and can never exist. It is the first law developed in infancy, and draws after it the social affections which have their origin in confidence, first exhibited toward them to whom we are the objects of care and solicitude, and with the perfecting of the reason drawing within its influence a widening range of objects. Mingling every where in the intercourse to illuminate the subject, we must not go about and extinguish the imperfect lights we already have, until by their aid we have set durable landmarks. Starting from the idea of credit as a moral instinct, we follow man into society and find the idea practically employed by a necessity inherent in his relations with other beings. He comes into the world naked and destitute-is sustained by affection until the faculty of laboring for himself is developed-thence-forward he is thrown upon his own resources. He possesses as yet only the faculty of labor, but is without the means of employing that faculty. His instincts and his wants impel him to production. The question here arises of what does he stand in need and how shall that want be supplied? Man is in a peculiar though not altogether exclusive sense, as has been said, a tool using animal. Most inferior animals to a certain extent require material with which and upon which to exert those instincts which tend to sustain and perpetuate the life of their species; but the wants of man in this respect are as much greater as his nature is more exalted than theirs. That which has already been produced out of the abundant stores of nature, and remains unconsumed, in the various forms in which labor has prepared it for future use, forms the store out of which he is to draw the means of employing his industrial power. This resource is capital, under which name may be also included those natural objects and productions which are the subjects of property. Out of it, the laborer is nourished until the fruit of his labor is realized to him. Out of it he is furnished with land to till and implements of husbandry, or with material tools and implements with which he can exercise his skill as an artizan. As yet the naked laborer has produced nothing, and accordingly has nothing with which to produce. Capital is in the hands of those who have produced it, and how can he hope to obtain it without an equivalent to offer for it, from those who have labored hard enough to get it to know the value of keeping it. Until the expedients of humane and civilized society are adopted, he has but a single resource, and that is to sell his labor to another, and become a bondman. It is an instructive though a well known fact, that the modern commercial system was ushered into being about the same time with that liberty and civilization, which distinguishes the present as the enlightened age of the world. It would be more difficult than profitable to endeavor to ascertain which led forward the other; it is enough to know that without the other neither could subsist. For much of the liberty and civilization we enjoy, we are indebted to those causes which give dignity to labor. Among barbarous tribes labor is the service of a bond man reluctantly yielded to avoid hunger and the thong-with freemen it is the struggle of a free spirit to raise its physical independence to the level of its moral. The difference between the two lies not in the men, but in the institutions of the society in which they live. By assuring to the individual the products of his labor, and furnishing him with capital to employ it, we most effectually secure his physical and with it his moral liberty. By the aid of credit, one of its predominant ideas, modern civilization secures this happy result, not perfectly indeed, but to a degree, establishing on a sure foundation the soundness of the principle involved. The study of economic philosophy is directed to the best mode of applying capital to labor, so as to insure its highest productiveness. Capital contains within itself no power of increase, apart from labor both are equally helpless, but combined they become productive. The capitalist desires that his capital may be produetive, as heartily as the laborer, that his labors may be crowned by production. Their interests are common, and in a well ordered community their efforts tend to the same objects. Then let the senseless cry about a strife between capital and labor, as between natural enemies, apply itself to a simple fable teaching the importance of every useful me member of living society to every other, and be silent. To accomplish the common purpose of the capitalist and the laborer, it is only necessary that the capitalist, or he who has more capital than he either can employ, or than he chooses to employ in connection with his own labors, should loan the laborer so much of his capital as the latter may stand in need of, upon the faith of a promise to restore it again to the lender, with a certain proportion of the profits produced with it, by way of compensation for its use. This is credit representing the confidence of the lender in the borrower. Need it be asked-can any other result take place? Not unless the instincts of humanity are crushed, and men roam apart through a wilderness world, devouring one another like wild beasts. So far we have the imperfect credit system of a scattered primitive society. Complexities are begotten in multitudes. It is true, in |