VI. 



WHAT CAUSES UNLIKENESS IN 

 ORGANISMS ? 



PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. 



SHALL the nation pay its debts, or swindle its 

 creditors? Congress meets this morning; and the 

 chief question before it is national honesty or nation- 

 al fraud. Even if there were an international Con-' 

 gress, it would not have power to make ninety-two 

 cents in silver equal to an hundred in gold, unless 

 all the boards of trade of the commercial cities and 

 every man who sells bullion in competition with coin 

 were to agree also to make a fraction of a dollar 

 equal to the whole. No one Congress, no one mod- 

 ern nation, can fix the relative value of silver and 

 gold coins. What Congress ought to do is an im- 

 portant question, but a necessary previous inquiry is 

 whether it can do any thing effective for the relief 

 of the debtor class. A man who has honest debts 

 has commonly been in need of paying them. Who 

 has power to reverse the law of supply and demand ? 

 Unless we can repeal the multiplication-table, we can- 

 not take the burden off the debtor class. 



141 



