support of a right divine, so as to place it beyond the reach of any right of popular reconsideration, together with a little collateral aid of bayonets and cannon. Mr. Brownson says, that "in giving us our institutions, Providence has solved the problem [of government] for us." Is not the same language equally applicable on the lips of the Austrian or the Russ? Ah, but there is one still higher authority in the earth, which may judge, reforin, and, if necessary, overthrow these "constitutional republics" of our friend, even perhaps outside of their own provided forms,--though the latter is a point which Mr. Brownson leaves in a judicious obscurity. The State is the elephant on which the world rests, and the tortoise supporting the elephant is "the Church." But what is the Church?" Unfortunately, that is a question for which, though made the very pivot of the whole discussion, we look in vain for any definite and intelligible answer. Mr. Brownson's "Church" is a still more vague and elastic idea than his "Constitutional Republic. In one place, indeed, he hints at it as the Divine Will " bodied and represented in an outward visible institution." The Priest has certainly something to do with it, since he tells us that one of the two alternative conditions necessary in order that resistance to civil government either can or ought to succeed, is that "the minister of religion bless their cause." And this authority claimed for "the Church" is stated in no weak or equivocal phrase: em "The right to resist civil government, nay, to subvert it, when necessary for human freedom, I admit and contend for, in the most unqualified terms; though I believe violent resistance and subversion are rarely, if ever, necessary or expedient. But, in my view, civil government is, properly speaking, only the subordinate department of government he people are subject to a higher law than that of the civil government, to a higher sovereign than the State. When this higher sovereign, -the real sovereign,-of which the State is but the minister, commands, it is our duty to resist the civil ruler, and to overthrow, if need be, the civil government This higher sovereign is, as we have seen, the Will of God, represented in the department superior to the State, by THE CHURCH. It belongs to the Church, then, as the representative of the highest authority on earth, to determine when esistance is proper, and to prescribe its form, and its extent. When this commands, it is our duty to obey." Well, if this were all Mr. Brownson said about his " Church," his meaning would, at least, be simple and intelligible enough, though few friends of liberty or of man would fail to heap upon such doctrine their heartiest execration. But unfortunately it is not--unfortunately, we mean, for the ability of his reader to extract from his pages any distinct conception or idea of his mean ing. Is it any one of the forms of Protestantism, or their united totality? No; for "in Protestant countries the Church has been perverted into a function of the State." Is it Rome? No; for "the Catholic Church" has "itself become corrupt and oppressive,"(though perhaps there might here seem to be shadowed forth the meaning, that "the Catholic Church" might be reformed so as to cease to be corrupt and oppressive, and then become again, what it has been once before, "the Church" of which we are in quest.) But in his second article (page 254) he sends the idea of " the Church" far and wide off to sea on an ocean of vague perplexity. He calls it "the public conscience; that is to say, the sense of right expressed in what we recognize as the highest and most sacred among us. "And this," he pursues, "by whatever name it goes, is our Church, our Divine Institution. This it is, whether it be called the pulpit, the press, the lyceum." Alas! what does the tortoise rest upon Mr. Brownson hints that "he could tell, an if he would:"-" There must be, beside the civil authority, a moral authority. This moral authority, organized, is the Church; but I will not now speak of it as organized." What were the torments of Tantalus to those Mr. Brownson thus inflicts on the reader honestly anxious, like ourselves, to understand the full scope and extent of his doctrine, so as fairly to judge both it and him? Here has he brought us up to the last link from which he suspends his whole chain, to which, like the ancient myth, he has attached the universe, yet does he give us no Jupiter's hand to hang it by. Like the tale of German diablerie, he throws up his ball of thread into the air, and climbs up to the sky by it-and there is an end of the matter. 66 patent absurdity, because there must always be this distinct and superior governor over the governed, and since such republics as ours have no other We have but a single page more at powers that be " than their constitudisposal in the present number; and tion, they are governed by those contherefore, passing over a crowd of stitutions as a something out of and other points in the articles before us above themselves, and the world has on which we had designed to remark, heretofore been under a total mistake we must confine ourselves to a brief in imagining them to be in any sense notice of one fundamental fallacy, self-governed. And it is because he which seems to have been the original thus shuts himself off from recourse to ignis faluus that misled our friend through such far and toilsome wandering, into the unfortunate result where we have found him arrived. It has been well said that "words are things"-often very mischievous ones. Mr. Brownson has singularly exemplified this truth, we think, in his dealing with the word "government in this entire discussion. Adopting it from the outset as his point de départ, he makes it for a very considerable part of his argument his main point d'appui. It seems to us a positive curiosity in dialectics, to witness the manner in which he subjects his thought to this word, investing it with an absolute sway over the whole direction of his reasoning-much as if a lion should place a mouse on his back, and with a bridle of spider's web allow himself to be guided or driven by it, as though by a fate, to his own sore perplexity, if not utter destruction. Government, he tells us, necessarily implies two distinct parties, a higher and a lower; and since nations must be governed, it must needs always be by a governor or governing power out of and above the nation itself. Ever after, considering this point as settled, and settled in a sense absolute and unqualified, he treats every hypothetical conclusion which he can bring up into an apparent conflict with it, as thereby satisfactorily and for ever disposed of, on the "quod absurdum est" principle. We should be at a loss from memory to enumerate how often this occurs in the course of these Articles. A people, for example, can have no right to alter its constitution in any other mode than through its own prescribed fo ms-(and of course, if its constitution happen to have no such prescribed forms, as was the case with the Rhode Is'and charter, it cannot have the right in any way)-because the governed and the governor would then be one instead of twain. Selfgovernment, politically or morally, is a the People as the rightful human source and foundation of governmental. authority-having burned his ships behind him as he landed on the margin of the shore of his subject--that he is forced on through a long tissue of arbitrary fictions, which we have no space to comment upon, full of a sadly wasted metaphysical subtlety, into his eventual refuge, as we have above seen, in the bosom of" The Church:"though unfortunately we have seen that "Church" itself, the moment we approached and deemed ourselves at the threshold of its sacred asylum, to vanish like the mirage of the desert, or the Fata Morgana of the wave--dissolving itself away into a "public conscience "--into a "moral authority of which I will not now speak as organized"-into "the pulpit, the press, the lyceum"-into everything-into nothing. We have taken no direct notice of Mr. Brownson's hostile criticisms of our own, the Democratic doctrine; of his earnest assaults upon the principle of the rule of the Majority; of his representations of its bad and degrading moral influence, alike on national and individual character. In the present Number we have not been able to command more room than the subject has already exhausted-and even for the insertion of the present remarks we find ourselves again compelled to postpone all notice of a whole little library of books which have accumulated on our table within the past two months. To this branch of the subject we will devote a future article, and venture to trust that it will be no very difficult task to establish at least an intelligible and coherent theory of government on that basis, and to show that most of our correspondent's charges against it have their origin either in mere verbal criticism, or the long exploded fallacies of conservative panic. MONTHLY FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL ARTICLE. THE business of the fall season is rapidly approaching its close, and money continues exceedingly abundant, with every symptom of being even still more plenteous. Both here and in Boston, the centre of the manufacturing interests, money is freely offered, on good security, at 3 and 4 per cent., with but little disposition to take it at that. These are exceedingly low rates for money when compared with the high rates paid in some former years; but, if we consider the small scope for its employment, where it will yield a larger return than that rate, the price does not appear so low. It is an undoubted fact that, in usual years and in regular business, the interest upon money is too high. That is, money cannot be hired at 6 and per cent. per annum, and employed so as to yield a much greater income. For short periods of time, when money is rapidly increasing in quantity, and its relative value to commodities gradually sinking, or, in other words, prices of goods rising, it will do to pay large rates for money, because the depreciation in the value of money would alone repay a -profit to the borrower, independent of the regular profits of business. In the rapid stages of the rise and fall of the French assignats, this process was marked in the course of a few weeks, ..and large fortunes were made by borrowing the money. For instance, if an individual was possessed of 1,000 francs in gold, and the government notes were at 10 per cent. discount, he could borrow 1,100 francs of paper on pledge of his gold; the rapid increase in the quantity of paper money quickly depreciated its value, and in the succeeding week if he returned the 1,100 francs and received the gold the latter would be worth 1,500 paper francs. Hence he had the use of the money and made 400 francs by the change in the value of paper. In this country, from 1830 to 1837, the same August, 1831 process went on in a much slower manner, and as the paper money was constantly convertible into coin, the depreciation evinced itself only in a general rise in prices. If a person owned a piece of property he could mortgage it for a certain sum of money and pay a liberal interest. In a short time the rise in the value of the property would suffice to discharge the mortgage, although the money borrowed on it might not have yielded the interest in the employment to which it was applied. In this manner, money would command a high rate of interest, and the borrower, deceived by the gradual operation of the system, supposed that money borrowed was actually worth the high rate of interest paid. The instant, however, that the upward tending ceased and prices began to fall, ruin overtook the borrowers. Farmers who had mortgaged their farms did not feel the weight of the obligation while wheat was rising from 1 to $2 per bushel. They could afford to pay 6 per cent. for the money under such circumstances; but when affairs turned and prices fell, which result was inevitable, foreclosure stared them in the face. In the southern States, near $50,000,000 were borrowed in Europe at 6 per cent. and reloaned to planters at 7 to 9 per cent. to employ in the culture of cotton. This application of the money took place in a short time, and raised the price of slaves and land as well as of supplies. The cost of producing cotton was thus immeasurably enhanced, but, backed by the inflation in England, the price of the cotton was continually advancing, so that the operation was, notwithstanding, apparently profitable. This effect of prices may be seen in the following statement of the imports of American cotton into Liverpool and the price of Upland there in August of three years: Import of American Here we perceive that, up to 1835, the money value of the cotton nearly doubled, notwithstanding that the quantity of cotton increased 30 per cent., and as the plantations in operation in 1831 were established at low prices, the profit was large; an immense quantity of money was borrowed and applied to cotton from 1835 to 1839, and prices of negroes, lands, and supplies rose immensely, while the revolution in England again reduced prices in 1840 to a rate lower than in 1835. If the cotton sent to England in 1840 had sold at the prices of 1835, which it should have done to repay the immense cost and high rate of interest paid for the money invested in it, it would have bro ught $101,629,687, making a difference of near $60,000,000 in the money value, to which may be added $20,000,000 for five years' interest on the borrowed capital. The result was bankruptcy of the individuals and of all the banks engaged in the operation. In 1843, 63,000,000 lbs. more cotton were given to England and $3,500 000 less money received than in 1840. At the east and in the north and west nearly the same state of affairs exists. In New England above two-thirds of all the farms are mortgaged and nearly every farm in that section is for sale. The best farms in the country will not yield 5 per cent. interest on the capital employed and keep the capital good. This arises mainly from the low prices of the farm produce affording small profits. In all other employments the same low range of profits exists, and, of course, capital cannot be exempt from the general rule. The present tariff has, however, interposed to confer on the class of corporate manufactures exclusive privileges and large profits, and many of those establishments are now declaring 10 per cent. dividends, being large profits derived from the low rates at which they obtain supplies and the small wages paid to the operators, while they are protected by the arbitrary operation of law from the competition of foreign cotton. The following table indicates the extent to which the present tariff checks the import of English cottons into this country : YARDS EXPORTED OF PLAIN AND PRINTED COTTONS FROM GREAT BRITAIN, SIX All classes and all interests in the United States are laboring under the same evils produced by the same cause, viz., an overaction and revulsion in the application of capital, yet of all these interests the manufacturing alone has received privileges at the hands of government, and those are conferred at the expense of the others. The operation has been to make profits small and money less valuable in all occupations except in its application to corporate manufactories, and it would gradually be withdrawn from other pursuits and invested in manufactures, if there was any security that the monstrous injustice could be perpetuated, or if by 205,417,708 any means money could be extracted from equivalent pursuits, but the great distress which has overtaken the latter, particularly in New-England, defeats the wish to realise. No one embarks in a losing business, or invests in unproductive property. For the past 15 years agriculture in New-England has declined pari passu with the advancement of manufactures; the increase of the latter has in no degree stayed the ruin which was brought upon the comparatively sterile soil of New-England, by the opening of the supplies from the great West, through the rapid settlement of those sections and the extension of works of public improvement.. These events have gradually wrought out the ruin of the New England farms; but that result has been hastened by two concurring causes, one was the rapid rise of provisions through the paper inflation, which induced the farmers to mortgage their lands, in order to obtain the means of extending their operations with the view to take advantage of those prices. Those prices were, however, not permanent, and the subsiding tide of paper left them with heavy mortgages and low prices to contend against the overwhelming tide of Western produce, arrested on its way to market by the interdict on foreign commerce. The consequence is, that all descriptions of supplies and labor are lower in the neighborhood of the manufacturers than ever before, while they by legislative enactment have had conferred upon them the exclusive markets for their goods. With the increasing poverty of the farmers both the necessity and the desire to procure labor in the manufactories increases. Hence the reduction in the price of labor diminishes as the supply is enhanced. The wealthy corporate manufacturers by those means are gradually accumulating in their hands the power of exercising that grinding oppression, which is so well known in Lancashire, England. The independence of manufacturing oppression, which was the result of the agricultural prosperity of the friends and families of the operatives, is fast fading away with their increasing poverty. The dependence upon manufacturers is each day increasing, and with it the whole section of country rapidly approaches the condition of England. The only remedy for this state of affairs is a large foreign outlet for western produce, by which the money prices may be relatively raised so as again to afford the New-England farmer a profit on his labor. This result is to be arrived at only through the utmost encouragement to foreign commerce by removing all obstacles in the way of the enterprise of individuals. The quantity of money now in the country is sufficient for its wants, if properly distributed. But it remains in cumbrous masses on the sea-board, vainly seeking investment. In the concerns of a country like this, when the retail channels of trade are filled with a specie currency, to facilitate the daily transactions among the masses of the people, no more is wanted. The great operations of trade are never conducted with money. They are simply an interchange of coinmodities effected between sections of the country by means of bills of exchange. The commodities on which these bills are based, are the products of in lustry, and their interchange does not require the intervention of money. It is only when those products are sold on long credit that the money of banks is required by dealers to stand in the place of the buyer, and in making those advances the banks make their profit. But when as now, such sales take place but seldom, and with the transfer of property the account is closed, there is no such demand, and whenever money has accumulated in anticipation of the revival of that demand, it must continue cheap and plenty until absorbed in permanent employments. This process has been gradually going on for the last three months, and a large amount of sound stock has been taken out of the market at rates which yield scarcely 5 per cent. interest. There is, however, a growing confidence that all the States will, sooner or later, resume the payment of their dividends. This was decidedly apparent in London at the date of our last advices, and evinced itself, partially, in the success of the Illinois commissioners, who went out to procure the means of completing the canal of that State. In our number for June last, we described the nature of the proposition, which was, that the bond holders should subscribe $1,600,000, or 32 per cent. of the amount thus held, on condition that the canal and its lands should be placed in the hands of three trustees, two appointed by the stockholders, and one by the governor of the State, to be applied to the discharge of the new loan, principal and interest, and then of the old canal debt. This proposition was not strictly complied with, but 12 per cent. was subscribed to commence operations on the favorable report of an agent to be selected by three gentlemen nominated by the landholders. Three gentlemen of Boston, Mass., Messrs. Abbott Lawrence, William Sturgis and T. W. Ward were delegated to appoint the agent. Ex-Governor Davis, of Massachusetts, was selected, and is now on his way to Illinois, in order to investigate the af |