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Wisconsin - State Agricultural Society. 
and the capacity of oar mines for the past eight years have not 
averaged $50,000,000 gold. Now, if some mathematician can cipher 
our specie redemption and specie basis from all this, and show us a 
“remainder,” he will have earned a greater renown than the dis¬ 
coverer of a world. 
Should we deem ourselves competent to laugh at the economic 
discussions of such standard and eminent writers on political econ¬ 
omy, as Dr. Adam Smith, M. Say, Ricardo, and others, we cannot 
afford to confront and defy the practical history of Eugland and 
France. The lessons taught us hy these nations ought to be worthy 
of notice, at least. 
England, during her continental wars, and her herculean strug¬ 
gles with the giant Napoleon, all covering the period from 1798 to 
1823, maintained her supremacy on land and sea by paper money, 
and only by 'paper money ! So disastrous was the shipment of gold 
that she actually, by law, compelled the Bank of England to sus¬ 
pend, and this suspension was kept up for twenty-five years. 
During the eight years previous to specie redemption, she paid 
$610,000,000 of her debt, or $80,000,000 per annum. During the 
ten years next following, she paid $245,000,000, or $24,000,000 per 
annum, and during the next ten years she increased her debt 
$30,000,000, and it has, under a specie-resumption basis, ever since 
continued to increase, and finally has been practically repudiated, 
by funding the whole into annuity bonds, to run forever, at 3 per 
cent. No wonder that Wm. Cobbett denounced specie resumption 
as repudiation, which has thus far proven true, in the very letter of 
the law. 
So much for English precedence, and now a word of France. 
That government has recently passed through one of the most 
disastrous wars known to modern times. Her armies and her very 
citizens were pinned to their own soil by their enemy’s bayonets, 
and to obtain release she was compelled to relinquish two of her 
most prosperous and wealthy provinces, and in addition to paying , 
her own war-debt, almost equaling that of ours, she was compelled, 
with hostile bayonets at her breast, to pay twelve hundred millions 
of dollars in specie to her enemy. She has done all this, and in 
about one-half the time that has elapsed since the closing out of our 
rebellion. France is nearly out of debt, her laborers are all busy, 
and of course happy ; her workshops resound with the din of pros- 
