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