borrow from the commercial world, and where this ability does not exist, it is idle to ex pect the banks to lend. We may illustrate thus ; BANKS OF THE UNITED STATES IN JANUARY OF EACH YEAR, SHOWING THEIR MEANS AND Stocks... .28,380,050.. 22,858.570.. 20,356,070.. 21,486,834.. 20,158,351.. 26,498,054 Real Estate....... 22,826,807.. 22,520.863.. 22,177,270.. 19,099,000.. 21,219,865.. 20,530,751 Miscellaneous.. 13,343,599.. 12,153,693.. 10,072,466.. 7,913,591.. 12,206,112.. 8,229,682 Specie funds.. 6,578,535.. 6,729,980.. 6,786,026.. 8,386,478.. 13,259,780.. 10,489,822 ..33,515,806.. 49,898,269.. 44,241,242.. 42,012.095.. 35.132,516.. 46,369,755 Specic....... Total investm'ts, $104,644,797..114,161,375..103,633,074.. 98,897,998.. 102,406,624..112,118,078 Capital....... ....... .228,861,948..210,872,056..206.045,969..196,894,309..203,070,622..204,838,175 Balance to lend..$124,217,151.. 96,710,681..102,412,895.. 97,996,311..100,663,998.. 92,720,097 Nett circulation... 45,256,991.. 63.495,173.. 77.567,951.. 92,638,004.. 92,407,299..112,078,375 Deposites..... 56,168,623.. 84,550,785.. 88,820,646.. 96,913,070.. 91,792,533..103,226,177 Total cir. and dep. 101,425 614..148,045,955..166,388,597..189,551,076.-184,199,832..215.304,552 Loans.... 254,544,937..264,905,814..288,617,131..312,114,404..310,282,945..344,476,582 Thus their disposable bank capital, or the actual money of the bankers to lend, has diminished $31,497,054 since 1843, through bankruptcy, yet the remaining banks have borrowed of the public about 114 per cent. more means, and have loaned to customers more by $89,931,645; or as follows: 1843. 1848. Increase. Borrowed by banks, circulation and deposits, $101,425,614..$215,304,552..$113,878,941 Loaned by banks, and discounts, 254,544,937...344,476,582...$89,931,645 Excess borrowed by banks,...... -$23,947,296 The banks have borrowed near $24,000,000 more of the public than they have loaned to it. This mostly invested in specie to the amount of $13,000,000, and by the operation of the New-York and Ohio banking laws, considerable quantities of circulation have been put out on security of stocks for the use of the owners, who have discounted nothing to merchants. The chief means of the banks are derived from deposites, or money deposited with them for safe keeping by merchants. This last item constitutes the most important one, because they are loaned to the banks without interest, and payable on demand in specie, and are of greater or less magnitude, according to the general state of business. It is the employment of these funds which constitutes the real and only utility of commercial banking, and it operates in this way: All persons in business are required both to buy and sell. As a general thing the purchases are made in larger quantities, and less often than sales. It results, therefore, that the money they constantly receive for sales must accumu late until they are ready to apply it to purchases. For every one to allow this money to lie idle in a drawer until his notes matured, would be useless. Hence all dealers deposit these sums in banks to be repaid when wanted, and the institutions can loan these accumulated deposits to those who are in need of money. Now it happens in a country like ours that the funds of one class of dealers are accumulating in banks at the time when the purchases of another class are required to be made; hence, the banks by lending the savings of one class to meet the wants of another, keep the capital of the country active and well employed. Thus the city merchants sell goods to country dealers on credit, and they also buy on credit. Their own obligations fall due in the Spring and Fall, and if the amounts due them are promptly and regularly paid, they meet their own obligations, and their deposits in banks increase. In the Fall the new crops of grain, Rice, Tobacco and Cotton are ready for market, and at that time the dealers in those articles require all their funds to make purchases, and they apply to the banks for discount. Now it is at once seen that if the country has paid up well for the goods it has purchased, the city dealers have made large deposites, and the banks have abundant funds to lend to exporters and produce dealers. If, on the other hand, the country, through low prices of produce and small ex ports, has not been able to pay up well, the city merchants so far from making large deposits to be lent to other dealers, cannot, without difficulty, meet their own engagements, and are themselves borrowers in competition with the exporters; pressure must result. This is the state of things that now exists. The small exports and low prices of produce of the past year are the causes of the high prices of money now. The quantities and value of produce which will have reached the seaboard this season by the closing of the navigation, will be less than last year, while the value of goods sent into the interior will be greater. There are no periodical returns of the quantity of goods sent over the Erie canal into the interior by which the comparative exports of this city may be tested, but the quantity sent west from Philadelphia over the Columbia Railroad, and from the Delaware, through the Canal to the Chesapeake, have been as follows: MERCHANDISE SHIPPED WESTWARD FROM JAN. 1 TO SEPT. 20. It appears that under these six heads there have passed over two avenues of trade into consumption an aggregate of 12,000,000 lbs. more this year than last, but that the chief increase has been in dry goods and groceries. The increase in these two items has been over 14,000,000 lbs. or 25 per cent. in quantity. The imported and domestic goods sent into the interior from New-York and Boston are probably equally as large in comparison, while the quantity of produce sent down, in which consists the means of payment, has been less than last year. Instead of payments from the country having been promptly and fully made, enabling the city merchants to meet their engagements, and allowing their deposits in bank to accumulate as a fund from which the banks can discount the acceptances on account of southern and western crops, the city dealers have not been able to meet their own obligations without difficulty, and the means of the institutions to lend have been small, evident by the amount of government stocks upon the market. The baħking institutions have prospered under this state of things—a fact indicative in the dividends which, in Boston, have been as follows, semi-annually for several years: Capital....... 17,010,000..17,480,000..17,480,000..18,180,000..18,180,000..18,980,000 Div. April.......417,000.... .426.300.....550,250.. .593,000.. 623,000. 702,800 "October.....417.000..... 480,800... 561,850.....603,000.....658,300.. 725,550 Total year.......834.000....907,100....1,112,100...1,196,000...1,281,300...1,428,350 The improvement in bank profits has been large and regular, and in New-York the average has risen from 6 1-2 to 8 1-2 per cent. per annum in the same time. It will be observed, that in the last two years of the Independent Treasury operation, the increase of profits has been $232,350, or 20 per cent. The general prosperity that has existed has had its origin in the prosperous export trade of the country, which has been unchecked by vicious speculation. The Independent Treasury has simply operated to prevent an inordinate expansion and subsequent violent revulsion when the trade fell off. Instead of ruin, we have simply a slight stringency in the market, relaxing before the improving trade. The advices from Europe continue to be such as to indicate large demands for American produce for the year, and the exports from the port of New-York are considerable. The duties on corn in England come off in February next, and there are now shipments made to hold in bond then. Some English houses advance 3-4 the value on flour, and most produce has a favorable prospect. GOSSIP OF THE MONTH. "Mieuer est de ris que de larmes escripre, Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme."-RABELAIS. I was tickled with the picturesque view I had taken of myself in deep meditation, and forthwith sat about a formal arrangement of the result of my observation on the nature of man. I began to myself: "Man by nature, unenlightened by reason and sound philosophy, floats down the tide of time into the broad bosom of the ocean of eternity; he is" and there I was fast. I had not decided what tone to give to my reflections. I began again: "Man as such, in so far forth as, humanly speaking, he is to be considered as" this was giving a philosophico-religious air to what was to follow, but the trouble was, nothing would follow. My last meal had been a good one, my pipe was smoking fragrantly, my seat was comfortable-but the brain just would not reflect to order. This was vexatious. It struck me that my want might be a good general definition of the subject, and I revolved some of those commonly given. Man is a reasoning animal;" and so are at least the upper classes among the other animals-hundreds of his inhuman fellow-beings step from their places in natural history to rank beside him on this score of reasoning and invention. "He is the only one of Noah's arkhold who goes to war and destroys his kind." Victorious chanticleer crows in mockery at this saying, and the swinish parent grunts derisively, while he enjoys the digestion of his offspring. "He is the only cook, kitchen owner, eating-house keeper." But the Greenlander, who, stuffed with raw blubber, sinks away into a fulfilled Elysian stupidity; those wild southern tribes, who bolt mud balls with satisfaction; nay, more and worse, those thousands of gaunt, glassy-eyed wretches found within the pale of civilization, and only there in such numbers; though we mean by this something better than barbarism, whose whole seeking is limited to a poor supply of esculent roots-who die for want, not of enough cooked food, but of enough turnip parings and fish entrails.* Will not these protest against being cast off from humanity by a phrase; will not these rather cast off us others as non-human, the well-fed spectators of their suffering? The "unfeathered biped," the "forked radish," the "clothes screen," and many others-I tried them all, and found them all imperfect. I saw no way of getting on. I wriggled about in the chair, put my feet on the fender, on top of the stove, on top of the brasses, till my heels ached; took them down and tucked them under the chair, stretched them wide apart, made an accurate survey of a zig-zag crack that runs from the right end of the mantel shelf leftward up to the ceiling, and finally, to change my mood and quiet myself, took down Rabelais. The very handling of the book was soothing; by the time I had fairly opened it and read to the second line, "D'espouillez vous de toute affection," I snuggled away in the back part of my seat, at peace with myself and the authors of one-sided apothegms, and the world at large; and coming to these lines, "Mieuex est de ris que de larmes escripre, I found what I had been wanting, and thinking that now the reflections would go on glibly, and would be too good to lose, I made a demivolte, pivoting on the cushion, which brought the table on my flank, set down the crabbed old French at the head of this paper, and wrote on, as you see and will see. Indeed this faculty of laughing is our distinctive attribute, whose co-possession can be arrogated by no other existence in nature; for in the case of the Laughing Hyena it is *Sec Irish newspapers during the winter of 1846-'47. ↑ The address of Aux Lectures, preceding La Vie tres horrificque du Grand Gargantua. vox et preterea nihil.* I have a few words to say about it. Laughing is, physically, a convulsive activity in the vocal and respiratory organs firstly, which activity extends afterward, according to the violence of the attack, to the facial and diaphragmatic muscles, then works on to the most remote parts, causing a shrugging of the shoulders, a cracking of the fingers, a stamping of feet. Take a general example of broad laughter: The mind being tickled and set in motion, the movement communicates itself to the orbicularis oris, that is what Van would call one of the main puckering strings of the mouth, which yields to the loosening influence, and gives free play to a set of opponent muscles, that forthwith pull up the lip, draw the sides of the mouth into more cosy vicinage, elevate the nostrils, and sink those fun pits, the dimples, and mark those cheery wrinkles about the eye and temple that so provoke like corrugations in the countenances of the by-standers. Now the costal muscles topple backward, overcome with delight, the hands slip down to join their merrymaking, the diaphragm jumps up and down in speechless jollity, and the swelling throat from time to time, like the orchestra at a feast, advises passers-by of the good cheer going on within. The finest specimens of the physical phase of laughter are the productions of masters of the African school. Their peculiar gift in this regard may be an inheritance from ancestor Ham, who seems to have been more addicted to mirth than his brethren. Whether this be the case, (the question is unimportant,) I leave for settlement to controversial divines. Let the cause be what it may, the fact is boisterously illustrated by my fellowtownsman Ira Tossett-the Ira is a misnomer. for a better-tempered man never disclosed teeth. His perceptive organ of the laughable is apparently situate a little above where. Cabanis is said to locate the poetic faculty. There is where, on due provocation, the commotion begins. Starting from about the duodenum, the ferment rapidly rises and spreads into every vein and muscle of the breast, throat and face, tugging and struggling for vent around the mouth, creeping out to his finger tips, playing in the nostrils, jerking at the eyebrows, and gradually gaining the mastery. He is now brimfull from index to topmost crown, the joints relax, the head rolls about, he sways and bends sideways, and then comes the explosion. Such cannon roars of merry noise discharge themselves as figures cannot do justice to, and proper terms not approximate to. The surrounding air becomes infected-becomes a laughing gas, involuntarily breathed in by circumstantial mouths which are perforce opened, and against the working of whose virtues an impending funeral or constitutional melancholy are no barriers. When he is once in full operation, you lose sight of the Tossett, and admire only the realized ideal of laughter. After the main eruption has subsided, and you think that all is over, and begin to recover yourself and draw long breaths, a succession of lesser volleys reprovoke you to cachinnation, gradually diminishing in force, and seemingly coming up independent on Ira's volitions—as it were, laughing on their own account. Each individual has his style of laughter varying with disposition, bodily condition and other circumstances. One's personality is as discernible in this as in his " parts of speech," or in his treatment of his family, to say nothing of his countenance, which may be but a mask, or his chirography, which comes too much from his writing master, or his cranial inequalities, which may lie over vacuum or uniform platitude. Under the same moving cause a gross-bodied, fat-minded man gurgles, a facile-tempered, ease-loving one chuckles, where one in rebust health, of a frank, lively disposition, roars. S. W., who is of a nervous temperament, an acute intellect, and a thin body, sitting behind me years ago when "Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps."-WM. HAZLETT. And in like confirmation say many others. Burton, in his Anatomy, speaks somewhere of blushing as being peculiar to man. The anatomists tell us that our physical distinction is the chin, which even the most respectable ourang-outang fails in. The appearance of the Rident Ira at this stage ever since I have read the Promessi Sposi of Manzoni, always reminds me of his description of Perpetua's difficulty of retaining the secret of Lucia and Renzo's marriage. Certo è che rue cosi gran segreto stava nel cuore della povera donna, come, in una botte vecchia e mal cerchiata, un vino molto giovine, che guilla e gorgolia e ribolle, e, se non manda il tappo per aria, gli geme all' intorno, e vien fuori in ischinma, e trapela tra doga e doga, e gocciola di qua e di la, tanto che uno puo assagiarlo, e dire a un di presso che vino e. we first saw Field in Jeremy Diddler, shot out at little intervals a series of sharp, ringing yells, which I think saved him from exploding in fragments on that occasion. Giggles, simpers, cackles, sickly smiles, and worst of all, those of pretended dignity, whose starch is sour, where the subject would have you believe (unless you are a simpleton, of course you won't,) that he is too deeply absorbed in important thought to more than half yield, should bar cultivation of acquaintance or further intimacy. Aristotle says that "all laughter springs from emotions of superiority." Begging the pardon of that wise heathen, of Hobbes, and of other unwise Christian philosophers of the selfish school who have said the same, he and they are mistaken. Cold derision may spring from that source; but there is your corrision, sympathetic and congratulatory; your subrision auxilliary, benevolently encouraging, that well up warm from the south side of the heart; your quasi, tentative rision, that springs to the poor suitor's face from hoping humility, and the following grateful smile, that falls like heaven's sunlight on the heart of the grantor of the suit, making him more blessed than the other-let alone your smile sycophantic, which must arise from very dirty emotions. When timid hope is changed to full fruition-as in the mother when the long-lost child is found-then rise mingled emotions, and from their contention a smile, whose "Plenteous joys, Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves In drops of sorrow." There is an old gentleman with whom I have watched many nights during the past year; he suffers much, at times fearfully, and when I bring him anything to alleviate the paroxysms of pain, through the old wrinkled features all distorted with agony there breaks a smile of thankfulness, beautiful as the pure ghost-flower breaking through the dead leaves of the wood-soil; then there is the smile on Devotion's face beaming with reflected radiance from the Golden City that she gazes on; and the smile with which Faith greets the coming of the good messenger, the Angel of Death; and one I used to see mantling over the transparent marble-white countenance of a sick child, as if he were already answering to the welcome of his fellows in their kingdom. But let us see if the more common laughs, and such as your selfish philosophers would be most likely to select and anatomize for the purpose of displaying the selfish skeleton they clothe, are not after all free from the charge brought against them. These theorists indeed charge the same against all acts and emotions; nor do they always mean by selfishness that basest form of it alone, which we commonly so designate. When you see a Jemmy Twitcher caught by his coat flaps on the spikes of a garden wall, and dangling like Mahomet's coffin, between heaven and earth, you roar with laugh ter, and rightly-Uncle Toby would. You laugh, not at the misfortune of the man, but at the extremely odd contrast between the nominal Jemmy Twitcher of your imagination and the pensile Jemmy of the spikes-the tendency to laugh is a necessary product, accordant with mental laws of the perception of the incongruity. Now if James had descended safely, with a prey of your choicest fruits in his pockets, and you had discovered him, you would doubtless be angry and report him to the nearest justice; but as matters hang, unless you are a harsher man than most, your vexation is tempered with a feeling of actual benevolence, you will help him down and dismiss him with a light reproof. You cannot laugh over and punish him at the same time. Shrewd schoolboys know this, and know that a poor, droll excuse is as valid as a dull, good one; the schoolmasters recognize the principle and bite hard their lips to avoid the inconsistency of feruling amid smiles. When philosophers get astride of a theory, and I do not see but they incline to it as well since Bacon's time as before; if it takes them to the devil, it is quite proper that they should go, but we commoners shall do better to keep in the pleasanter ways of common sense. |