LETTER XXX.

DEAR FRANK,

In ranging up the valley from Staunton to W where I now am, we passed though a fine country of limestone, abounding in gay meadows, and pure springs, and bordered on all sides by mountains. The distance is about one hundred miles, and there are several towns in the way, which, however, do not exhibit any great appearance of growth or prosperity. They are generally the county seats, and depend, in a great degree, on the expenditures of those who are brought there by law business, and the employment given to the tradesmen of different kinds, by a circle of the surrounding country, of which each town forms a sort of centre. As new towns are founded in various places, this circle of course diminishes; and as new roads are made, or obstructions in the rivers removed, the little trade they enjoy is carried very often in another direction. Hence it is that our little towns are so apt to grow up prematurely for awhile, when they are all at once arrested in their growth by neighbouring rivals, or by a change given to the course of business, and often decay with the same rapidity they arose. The truth is, that we have too many towns; and so it will ere long be found, if I am not mistaken. We have too many

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traders of various kinds, at least in the Atlantic States, who will ere long be obliged to turn to some other profession, or emigrate to the new states. appears sufficiently evident to me, in the complaints we begin to hear, of the want of business and of employment among all classes of people in the cities, which is in some degree owing to the general pacification of the world, which has turned millions of soldiers into other directions, and enabled millions of people to supply their own wants, who before depended upon others. The people thus thrown out of employment in the cities and towns must emigrate, as I said before, or resort to new professions, or become paupers, and eat soup at other people's expense. It is a shame to our country, whose peculiar boast it was to be free in so great a degree from pauperism, to see the deplorable increase of this fatal disease, which saps the foundation of freedom, by creating a set of men dependent for their support, not on their own exertions, but the bounty of others; and, consequently, the mere tools of those who keep them from starving. These are the kind of people who make instruments in the hands of the rich for the destruction of freedom. When once men have lost the honest pride which shrinks from receiving charity from any human being, they lose the best support of their nature, and the most powerful motive to exertion. It may sound harsh; but the penalty of begging, as a profession, should ever be,-to be universally despised; in order to render it the very last means to which man will resort for his support.

But to return. I was saying, that we have too many people living in cities, in proportion to our farmers, who, after all, are the backbone of every country, whence originates its solid riches and its solid strength. At a time when every other class of labourers are crying out in the streets of our cities about hard times, and many of them forced to beg work, or starve, we don't hear of the farmer suffering any inconvenience; or if he suffers, you don't hear him complain. If it is urged, that the high price of all his produce is a sufficient reason for his not grumbling, I will answer, that he gives as high a price for what he must buy, as he gets for what he sells, so the balance is even. It is not this. It is because the farmers in every country, except one, where they have fallen victims to the accumulated numbers of commerce and manufactures, and to a system of inordinate expenditure, are the most independent of all men, and most emphatically so in this country. Here we have yet an unpeopled world, a blooming, and almost uninhabited Eden in the west, whose bosom is opened to the industrious and enterprising, and where millions of men may set themselves down without creating a famine, since they will ever be able to derive from the earth more than is sufficient for their support.

Yet still our people cling to the towns and cities, attracted by the hope of sudden wealth, and despising the slow, yet sure, rewards of agriculture, which, without leading a man to inordinate riches, secure him for ever from the chances of sinking into beggary

or want. The race of paupers receives few recruits from them; for in all my sojournings, I may say with truth, that I never saw the industrious farmer forsaken, "or his seed begging their bread." One great cause of the disproportion of numbers which I have noticed between the agricultural and other classes of the community, is the great system of paper-money, which has struck at the root of regular, persevering industry, whose rewards, though slow, are always sure. For some years back, hardly a tradesman in our cities, and of late in our little towns (each of which, however insignificant, has now its snug little bank) thinks of growing rich by his industry. No; he must get accommodations at some bank, and plunge into speculations; nor can you now go into a cobbler's stall without seeing a bank notice, or perhaps two or three, stuck up with an awl at the chimneypiece, to remind the honest gentleman that he owes a great deal more than he can pay. Thus is the axe laid to the very root of national morals, and consequently national prosperity, and the whole American people, farmers excepted, sunk into an abject subjection to banks and their directors.

This thing went on, at first, most swimmingly, while we were the carriers of the world, and while this universal system of borrowing was supported by the facility of employing the immense false capital created by the banking institutions, which has been let loose upon us of late years without limit. But all at once, the opening for the employment of this borrowed paper closes, leaving the borrower in debt

over head and ears. Then the reaction of the system begins. The banks are called upon to resume the payment of specie, which they can't do without curtailing discounts-which they cannot do without ruining several honest people, who have made a great figure without ever having been worth a groatwhich cannot be done without throwing out of employment many labourers and mechanics whom these honest gentlemen paid with the money they borrowed from the banks. This is precisely the case that will probably soon occur, when the farce of specie payments commences, and which will come probably to the following pleasant denouement: The banks will commence the payment of specie with great pomp, and perhaps some of them may muster a hundred dollars to jingle on the counter; but having the merchants completely under their thumbs by means of their power of granting or refusing those accommodations, without which no merchant now thinks of carrying on business, they will give the poor dependants to understand, that if they ever dare to ask for a dollar of specie from the bank, their discounts shall cease. Thus will the circulation of specie be effectually checked in the outset; the race of little twopenny rags perpetuated; and the great truth again be demonstrated, that no instance has occurred where a bank that had once stopped payment ever resumed it again, except in the way it will probably be done here-by offering to pay specie, but at the same time annexing a penalty to the demand; which nine out of ten will not dare to incur. Farewell.