gent losses. It is through these channels, that private negotiations can be made, to suit the wants of the parties, and that foreign capital can find sound investment, while at the same time it encourages safe individual enterprises. This plan of investment has not yet been very extensively adopted, as it requires to be fully and generally understood, to be appreciated; but it is destined soon to become an important medium for the introduction of foreign capital. The system, so far as it has been adopted, has worked exceedingly well, and to the entire satisfaction of all parties; and it is not to be doubted that it will rapidly gain a firm hold upon the favor of the foreign capitalist. We can speak with great confidence of the strict integrity, sound judgment, vigilant supervison, and consummate financial skill, with which these trust companies are conducted; and we embrace in these encomiums the following, constituting, we believe, nearly all that have procured charters, and gone into operation; viz: The New-York Life Insurance and Trust Company; the North American Trust and Banking Company; the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company; the United States' Trust and Banking Company; the Morris Canal and Banking Company; the Trust and Banking Company of Buffalo; the American Life Insurance and Trust Company of Baltimore; the Southern Life Insurance and Trust Company, Florida; the Georgia Insurance and Trust Company; and the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company.
The prejudice which, for political purposes, was attempted to be created in this country, a short time since, against the introduction of foreign capital, did not take much hold of the public, and may now be said scarcely to subsist at all. Indeed, nothing could be more unwise and unreasonable. We are in possession of countless treasures, locked up from use, and requiring a golden key from the other side of the Atlantic, to unfold them to our view. Shall we, on that account, utterly reject them, or waste our energies in comparatively fruitless attempts to obtain them in a violent and unnatural manner? We have vast plains of inexhaustible fertility; shall we refuse to reduce them to cultivation, by foreign aid, when perhaps one year's crop, exported to the country that furnished it, would repay it as satisfactorily as the transmission of the gold and silver, and leave us the improved fields, to pour their treasures for ever into our laps? Surely not; but let both the old and new world, casting aside distrust and prejudice, improve fully the advantages of their respective positions, and mutually enjoy the benefits of a wise and enlightened policy. Then would Europe no longer be burthened with an overgrown population, destitute of employment; nor America languish for want of capital to develope her resources; then the beggars who solicit one's charity at the corner of every street, in almost all the countries of the old world, would be converted into wholesome and prosperous farmers in the new; then the overgrown capitalist, who racks his brain on 'change, to find any investment for his money, or add one eighth of one per cent. to his interest, would at once double his income, and at the same time contribute much to the cause of philanthropy, and the improvement of the condition of man. Then, in short, should we see, in Europe, the poor amply provided with provisions and employment; the rich finding abundant use for their money; and the middling classes possessing far wider fields for enterprise and business; while in America, the
