COMMERCIAL STATISTICS. Commerce, Trade, and Navigation of Great Britain in 1840...... 98 Navigation of Great Britain in 1840 and 1841........ 100 Exports of Calicoes from England to the United States for the last nine years. 100 Trade of Great Britain with the United States and France... 195 Tobacco, Snuff, and Manufactured Tobacco exported from the United States from 289 Statement, showing to what countries U. States Tobacco is principally exported.... 290 291 Iron Trade of Newport and Cardiff, (Wales,).. 292 292 Draft and Tonnage of Vessels entering the Port of New York.... Number of Arrivals and Tonnage of Vessels at New York, from 1810 to 1840...... 293 British Wheat and Flour Trade. Commerce of the United States with Great Britain.. 385 386 387 Imports into Great Britain and Ireland from the United States, from 1831 to 1839, 387 Exports of Cotton from New Orleans for the last ten years.... 472 Exports of Tobacco from New Orleans for the last ten years. 473 Arrivals, Exports, and Stocks of Cotton and Tobacco at New Orleans for the last ten years...... 474 Exports of Sugar and Molasses from New Orleans for the last five years. 474 475 Arrivals of Square-rigged Vessels and Steamboats at N. O. for the last four years... 478 478 479 Cotton Exports of Great Britain to different Countries for 1840. 482 482 Commerce and Navigation of the United States for 1840..... 561 Value of Merchandise imported from foreign countries to the United States in 1840, 562 563 Merchandise paying duties ad valorem, imported by the United States in 1840...... 564 Domestic Exports of the United States to Foreign Countries in 1840..... 571 572 574 575 577 Tonnage of the several Districts of the United States in 1840.. 578 Statement of Vessels built in each State and Territory of the United States in 1840, 580 India Sugar and Rum....... 581 581 Receipts, Expenditures, and Dividends of Massachusetts Railroads, in 1840.......... 185 Statistics of Western Steamboats..... Comparative Cost of Transportation on Railroads, Canals, etc...................... 284 Cost of Transportation on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad... ་་་་་་ 469 470 470 470 BANK STATISTICS. Condition of the State Banks in the United States....... 186 186 187 Condition of the Banks of the U. S. that have made returns near Jan. 1840.. 188 278 Condition of the Banks in the State of New York, from 1819 to 1841.. 280 483 Savings Banks in France...... 483 Banks in Boston-List of Cashiers, Capitals, and Semi-annual Dividends.. 484 484 COMMERCIAL TABLES. State Stock Table, exhibiting the comparative value of the various State Bonds.... 190 191 Import Duties-Reason, etc., of the American Chamber of Commerce at Liverpool, 194 379 Tables of Commercial Weights, computed by D. J. Browne...... Rate of Increase per cent of Population in Pennsylvania...... 282 Comparative Population of the Principal Cities in the State of New York... 283 Population and Square Miles of each County in Illinois in 1840.... Horticulture, Gardens, Nurseries, etc., in the State of New York...... 94 286 STATISTICS OF MANUFACTURES. Manufactured Leather, Tanneries, Saddleries, etc., in New York in 1840.. MERCANTILE MISCELLANIES. The Decimal System in Weights and Coins..... Mexican Dollars-Important to Manufacturers of Flour... ..... Tobacco suitable for European Markets-American Commercial Enterprise......... 104 Portraits on Roman Coins-New York Business Directory... Donations to Mercantile Library Association, New York. Boston Ice Trade-Commercial Resources of the South.. Glut in the Market-Commercial Honesty..... 293 296 296 463 464 464 HUNT'S MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE. JULY, 1841. ART. I. THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME. In the spring of 1716, a few months after the death of Louis XV., there was established in the house of a Scotch banker in Paris, an institution which lifted France from the distress which had arisen from a century of war; and which, when a few months more were passed, cast her into a bankruptcy which was only relieved by the destruction of the system that induced it. In the Spanish wars of Louis XIV., which wasted the most profuse taxation on foreign troops in a foreign country, may be found the source of the complete prostration which was experienced under his successor. The terrible revolution that followed, was hastened by the ruinous expedients which were taken to conceal the debt which had been thus created, and which doubled its principal under cloak of paying its interest. The people were involved as stockholders or as note-owners in a bank, which, as soon as it had sucked in their investments, shut its flood-gates, and locked up in its basin the wealth which it had thus obtained. We propose at present to consider, in the first place, the rapid steps by which the Mississippi Scheme achieved that wonderful victory over the laws of credit and the customs of trade, which placed under the control of its projector the entire resources of the kingdom; and in the second place, the steps, even still more rapid, by which, after the victory was won, and the capital of the state secreted in the coffers of the Scotch banking-house, the fabric gave way, and involved those who had taken shelter under it in a ruin from which they could only extricate themselves by the overthrow of the dynasty under which it had been produced. John Law was born in 1671, and before he was of age, had spent the patrimonial estate which the prudence and thrift of his ancestors had amassed. He sold his lands in Lauriston, though in a quarter from which he afterward received them discharged of the incumbrances to which they had been subjected, and entered, as soon as the restraint of his wardship could be cast aside, into the whirl of London dissipation. The fondness for game, which in the sequel of his life displayed itself still more destructively, led him into a series of embarrassments, which forced him at last to leave the country as a culprit. He was involved in a quarrel which ter minated in his killing his antagonist, and as the circumstances were such as could afford little palliation on the ground of passion or heedlessness, ne was found guilty, in April, 1694, of murder. As was usual, however, in such cases, and as may have been anticipated by the jury themselves, his connections found themselves powerful enough to secure a majority of the privy council, and a petition for his pardon was presented to the king, backed with influence which could not be resisted. But the family of the murdered man were unable to appreciate the reasons which could be brought in to stay the ordinary course of justice in a case so ripe for her consideration, and an appeal, according to the forms of the old English law, was lodged in the Court of King's Bench, the necessary result of which was that Mr. Law was carried back again to prison to wait till the first judicial tribunal in the kingdom had pronounced on his case. But finding that the exceptions to the proceeding which he offered to the court were immediately overruled, he thought it better to avoid the doubtful issue thus presented, and by the aid of gold within, and the intrigues of his high-born friends without, succeeded in escaping to the continent, having acquired all the lustre which a triumphant duel in those times could throw around him, without running into the martyrdom by which it was so often followed. In Amsterdam, where he first emerged, after the long obscurity into which the circumstances of his escape had involved him, he officiated for a time as secretary to the British resident, and through the advantages thus opened to him, obtained an intimate acquaintance with the celebrated bank there situated, which at that time exercised so mysterious an influence on the monetary system. He returned to Scotland at the commencement of the seventeenth century, at a time when the country was plunged in the deepest commercial distresses, and when, through the suspension of the banks, and the consequent scarcity of specie, the currency of the kingdom was frozen in its channels. Under the support of the first Duke of Argyle, of the Marquis of Tweeddale, and other powerful Scotch noblemen of the day, he offered to the imperial parliament a plan which he styled "a proposal for supplying the nation with money." In the work which was meant to be the key to the scheme itself, he entered at large into the subject of banking and of the currency, and filled up with the most gorgeous coloring the outline which he had previously laid down. The ancient monetary system was to be abolished. Gold and silver must cease to be the medium of exchange. How can they adapt themselves, he argued, to the exigencies of trade? Our commerce extends every day, but if it is stretched out and nailed down on a rack so contracted as that which is afforded by a metallic circulation, how will it bring itself to bear on the points where it is needed, and how will its resources be brought into the necessary action? Forgetting that as trade became wider, and the objects of investment multiplied, the medium, whatever it might be, would increase in value till the same proportion was maintained that had previously existed, he assumed that the precious metals in the kingdom would become grossly inadequate in another revolution to the purposes of circulation, and insisted, therefore, that a medium should be sought which should be both more intrinsically valuable, and more capable of adaptation. The objections which bear against a metallic currency, he fancied would not operate against a paper circulation based upon the landed credit of Great Britain. The allodium of the realm remaining in the king, who was, in theory at least, lord paramount, and the moneyed interests being represented by the commons, it was proposed that parliament should appoint commissioners, |