208 LNov. 17, 
Carey. ] 
the highest condition of the masses of the people in point of morals, 
religion, intelligence, social ease, and comfort.’’ ‘‘The industry of a 
nation is an interest so vital as to be equaled only by its internal liber- 
ties and its independence of foreign control. As the tendency of full em- 
ployment is to exclude crime, the benefits of that high integrity which is 
the best cement of society, may be expected to reward a nation in which 
occupation is the most varied and labor best remunerated.” 
Last to be noticed, although not latest in its presentation to the world, 
is Mr. Colwell’s highly valuable work on money and its substitutes, credit 
and its institutions, entitled, “‘ Ways and Means of Payment: a full ana- 
lysis of the credit system, with its various modes of adjustment.’’ Its essen- 
tial object is that of laying the axe to the root of that pestilent heresy 
which teaches that prices are wholly dependent on the supply of money ; 
and that, to use the words of Hume, the only effect of an increase in the 
abundance of the precious metals is that of ‘‘ obliging every one to pay a 
greater number of those little white or yellow pieces than they had been 
accustomed to do.’? The whole question of prices is here discussed with 
a care characteristic of its author; and his readers, however they may 
chance to differ from him in regard to details, can scarcely fail to agree 
with him in the belief he has here expressed, that ‘‘among the innumera- 
ble influences which go to determine the general range of prices, the 
quantity of money or currency is found to be one of the least effective.”’ 
Truth, however, as is well known, travels but very slowly through the 
world, centuries having elapsed since demonstration of the fact that the 
earth revolved around the sun, and four-fifths ef the human race yet re- 
maining convinced that the sun itis that moves, and not the earth. So 
has it been, and so is it like to be, in the present case, the most eminent 
European economists still continuing to teach precisely what had been 
taught by Hume, and statesmen abroad and at home still constructing 
banking and currency laws under the belief that in the ‘ quantity of 
money or currency”? had been found one of the most effective causes of 
changes of price. Mr. Colwell’s work was published in 1859, since which 
date so much light has been thrown on the subject as to make it serious 
sause for regret that his other engagements, and his failing health, should 
have prevented a re-examination of the case by aid of recent facts, all of 
which have tended to prove conclusively the accuracy of the views pre- 
sented in the very instructive volume to which reference has now been 
made. 
A word more and I shall have done. Of all the men with whom I have 
at any time been associated there has been none in whom the high-minded 
gentleman, the enlightened economist, the active and earnest friend to 
those who stood in need of friendship, and the sincere Christian, have 
been more happily blended than in the one whose loss we all so much re- 
gret, and of whose life and works I here have made so brief, and, as I 
fear, so inadequate a presentation. 
