career of rapid and beneficent expansion. It was in an especial manner promoted by the magnificent prospects unfolded to colonial and mining enterprise in the discovery of the New World, by the stimulus and the facilities afforded to industrial skill by the researches of natural science, and by the emancipation won for all the activities of the human mind through the free principles of the Reformation. Thus, by degrees, credit came to intervene in nearly every operation of commerce and of social exchange, — from the small daily dealings of the mechanic at the shop, to the larger wholesale transactions of merchant with merchant, and to the prodigious expenditures and debts of imperial governments. Credit by note of hand, credit by book account, credit by mortgages and hypothecations, credit by bills of exchange, credit by certificates of stock, credit by bank-notes and post-notes, credit by exchequer and treasury drafts, credit, in short, in a thousand ways, enters into trade, filling up all its channels, turning all its wheels, freighting all its ships, coming down from the past, pervading the present, hovering over the future, reaching every nook and affecting every man and woman in the civilized world.
Such is the extent of credit; but let it be remarked in connection, that, in all these innumerable and multifarious forms of it, in all the stupendous interchanges of Mine and Thine, the ultimate reference is to one sole standard of value, which is the value of the precious metals. The civilized world has adopted these as the universal solvent of its vast masses of obligation. It is assumed that some standard is indispensable; it is asserted to be the imperative duty of governments, if they would not make their exactions of taxes arbitrary, unequal, and oppressive, — if they would render the dealings of individuals mutual and just, — if they would preserve the property and labor of their subjects from the merciless caprices of the powerful, and keep society from reverting to a more or less barbarous state, — to supply a fixed and equable money-measure; and the majority of the governments have selected gold and silver as the best. As seemingly less changeable in quantity and value than anything else, as imperishable, as portable, as divisible, as both convenient and safe, the precious metals challenge superiority over every other product; and accordingly every contract and every debt is resolvable into gold and silver. From this fact, the reader will see at once the prodigious significance of those materials in the economy of trade, and the prime necessity that they should be not only uniform in value, but so equally distributed that they may be easily attainable when needed. Every change in their value is a virtual change in the value of the vast variety of obligations which are measured and liquidated by them; and every apprehension of their scarcity or disappearance, by whatever cause excited, is an apprehension of embarrassment on the part of all those who have debts to pay or to receive.
But it happens that this standard is not an accurate standard. It does not stand, while other things alone move, but moves itself; its value is changeable, fluctuating from time to time according to the relation of supply and demand, and from place to place according to the perturbations of the trade of the world. Moreover, its very preëminence of function—the universality and the durability of its worth—renders it peculiarly sensitive to accidental influences, or to influences outside of the usual workings of trade. A great war or revolution occurring anywhere, the loss by tempests or frosts of an important staple, such as wheat or cotton, the fall and reaction consequent upon some great speculative excitement, are all likely to produce enormous drains or sequestrations of this valuable material. When the revolt of 1848 broke out in Italy, every particle of specie disappeared as effectually as if it had been thrown into the Adriatic or the mouth of Vesuvius; when the corn crop failed in England
