398 THE CURRENCY DUEL. 



Not that attempts have not been made at various times in the United 

 States to imitate the restrictive policy of this country in the regulation 

 of the trade in money, but owing to the determined resistance of the 

 people such measures have invariably proved abortive. Of the spirit 

 with which these senseless inroads upon the common transactions of life 

 are met by the people of that country the following anecdote will afford 

 a specimen. The legislature of Pennsylvania, a few years since, passed 

 a law that no paper money of any other state or country should pass 

 current within the bounds of that state j a short-sighted measure, in- 

 tended to force the circulation of provincial money, but the true opera- 

 tion of which went to cut off Pennsylvania from all the advantages of a 

 foreign trade. The tavern keepers were particularly injured by this 

 law, for travellers from other states, in their ignorance of such a regu- 

 lation, were seldom provided with provincial paper, and found that 

 money of universal circulation in the other divisions of the Union, was 

 unaccountably forbidden in Pennsylvania. The tavern keepers were 

 therefore compelled to continue to receive and pay the paper money of 

 other states, and upon one occasion a young traveller from Philadelphia, 

 upon departing in the morning from an inn near that city, tendered in 

 payment of his bill a five-dollar note of the State Bank of Pennsylvania, 

 for which the tavern keeper offered him in change three dollars of an 

 excellent bank in the State of New York. " I cannot take that money," 

 said the young Philadelphian, " it is against the law." " Oh, but we 

 tar and feather every body that obeys that law," was thereply of the 

 tavern keeper, whereupon the young Philadelphian pocketed the change, 

 and wound him on his way. 



In conclusion, we repeat our conviction, that to liberate from its 

 shackles the trade in money is the one only remedy for the present misery, 

 and the thousand times more awful condition of the nation which must 

 inevitably result from the continuance of our present restrictive policy. 

 Reform and the utmost practicable extent of retrenchment will give no 

 relief to our thousands of famishing labourers and mechanics, nor save 

 our merchants, manufacturers, and farmers from sinking into ruin. The 

 early demolition of our aristocratical system will inevitably follow ; and 

 the downfall of the monarchy itself will result from the continuance of a 

 condition of national anguish, from which men will see no remedy but 

 in the reduction of our establishments to the republican level 



