The last two columns in the above table are the calculations of Professor Tucker. Mr. Seaman gives to each person in the United States $57, and Mr. Tucker, $62; averaging these calculations, we shall have about $60 of annual income for each person, or $300 for each family.The Commissioner of Patents, in his reports for 1847, estimated the aggregate products of the labor of our people at $1,738,779,975, and the population at near 21,000,000, which would give $83 to each person, or $415 to each family. The Commissioner has also estimated the population and aggregate wealth of the nation for 1847-the former at 20,746,000 souls, and the latter at $8,294,360,000, giving to each indivivual a trifle of $400 or about $2,000 to each family.

On reviewing these tables, we are willing to submit to the judgment of the reader the question, whether in the most favored nation to which reference has been made, there is a penny of superfluous wealth, or a penny of annual increase not wanted to supply the wants of the people? Is an estate of $2,000 too large for one family? Is an annual income of $300 to $400 too much for the comfortable support of four persons? Or is an estate of $4,000 given in the English tables, too much for a family? Let the reader consider the real wants of man, both physical and mental, and he will conclude that $4,000 or $10,000 can be employed to a useful purpose in the judicious support of a family.

4. Having thus passed through the statistical branch of our subject, we will revert to the principle involved, to wit: that it is impossible to increase the wealth of the world beyond the demands of the people.

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That is, wealth which is valuable. Value diminishes in proportion to the increase of the supply. If, instead of producing $50,000,000 of breadstuffs for exportation, there is a deficiency of that amount for home consumption, it is at once perceivable that the price will be greatly enhanced. This deficiency may be the result of indolence, or some act of God."When, however, a people become so indolent as not to produce enough for their use, they are on the decline, and in their degradation will lose all recollection of many wants, and thus restore an equilibrium between their demands and supplies. In case of a superabundance of production, as may happen when greater labor and greater fruitfulness concur, the price will fall so as to bring the various articles more within the reach of all, and consequently, more will be consumed. But all things tend to an equilibrium. Individuals will employ themselves according to the demands of their being. If the necessaries of life are abundant and cheap, many will prefer to spend their time in mental pursuits and discoveries, rather than in productive labor. This will tend to diminish the quantity and enhance the price, until it bears down the other end of the scale, when many more will go to the field and the workshop, and assist in balancing the beam.

If it could be conceived possible to increase the productions beyond the ability of the people to consume them, it is possible also to see a point at which productions, whether of the farm or manufactory, will lose all value, and consequently cease to be wealth. But we are relieved from the anticipation of such a result by another consideration. The known wants of mankind increase pari passu with the increase of productions. It is a law of human progress that man becomes sensible of his wants in proportion to his ability to supply them. With every increase of means, some faculty or passion of our being that has hitherto been almost dormant, is awakened by the supply of means for its gratification. This

law is traceable through every stage of society, and through every degree of development, from the most ignorant to the most learned-from the subject to the master, from the fool to the sage.

The wants of the savage are said to be few-that is, he is aware of but few. These he readily supplies with his bow and arrow, and with his hook and line. The simplest cabin is a sufficient shelter; he cannot appreciate elegant mansions, genteel clothing, nor but a small portion of those things which make up the expense of the civilized.

Another illustration we draw from the different grades of men in the civilized state. The person of low development cannot see the utility of the Fine Arts, and of the beautiful generally, which the refined enjoy; and yet these are as much demanded by real want of human nature as are food and clothing. They are essential to the development of the spiritual portion of our being; as much so as food is necessary for the growth of our physical constitution.

The knowledge of our wants increases in proportion as the productions of the world multiply, affording us the time and means for bringing into action more and more of our faculties and passions. Man is a constantly advancing being,-no end can be imagined to his mental progress and the wants of his nature; and therefore it is not possible for the aggregate wealth of the world to surpass the full supply of the wants of the

race.

Physical productions cannot become too abundant except by sacrificing mental wants; but these expansions on the one hand and contractions on the other, work their own cure, for man has a remarkable facility of shifting his action to the power of motion. In proportion as physical productions multiply, mankind are unable to beautify the earth and adorn the houses; and on the contrary, in proportion as mental productions increase, greater facilities are afforded for the multiplication of physical wealth. The intelligent farmer produces more with the same amount of labor than the ignorant one; so that the one enjoys both mental and physical comforts, because intelligence gives him time and meanswhile the other is compelled to toil like a slave to get the bare means of sustaining life. Inventions and discoveries are continually made, which enable the people to increase their productions, thirty, sixty, or an hundred fold. As man's wants increase, he devises means to supply them. He perhaps finds himself unable with his present means to supply the demands of his being; he therefore calls upon the mind to devise a remedy, and it is done. The earth is made to yield more abundantly and the manufactory produces more rapidly.

FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL REVIEW.

THE flattering prospects of the coming year, commercially, both in England and the United States, as well as India and Europe, have induced the most extensive preparations generally, for a large spring business, and as a consequence, money has gradually come more in demand. As the month of February opened, a variety of causes operated to produce a greater demand for capital-the California fever still combined with the early opening of the spring business, the large arrivals of goods, and consequent considerable payments of cash duties to aid for the moment the attempt of the banks to force the rate up. Exchanges, however, continue low and falling, and the momentary tightness is again becoming relaxed. The news from England to the 9th of Feb., giving advices of a considerable increase in the buoyancy of the markets there, and a marked rise in the value of United States stock, of which there were sales at 106 a 106, was calculated, especially when accompanied by considerable sales of cotton and other produce at firm rates, to impart great buoyancy to the United States market. That it did not do so, is attributed to the operation of the Independent Treasury; but even those speculators who are impatient under the supposed restraint, cannot but admit its salutary nature as regards the general business of the country, and the prospective continuance of a sound state of the finances. In this acknowledgment of the friends of paper excitement, we have the admission that the Independent Treasury plan has done for the markets of the United States what the collective wisdom of the English statesmen and most able financiers failed to do in regard to the currency of England. Thus, the principle laid down by the soundest financiers of the Ricardo school, and acted upon on the re-charter of the Bank of England in 1844, was that the volume of the currency should always fluctuate precisely as if it were exclusively of gold and silver. If gold and silver, following the indication of the exchanges, should be exported, it is an unerring indication that the currency is "too full," and that the laws of trade, like those of hydrostatics, are applying their own unerring remedy. On the other hand, if the metals are imported, it is because the currency is insufficiently supplied, and there is a demand for money as for corn or cotton, or any other commodity. To arrive at the desired result, the Bank of England was deprived of its right of issuing paper money. Its capital, comprised in a debt due it by the government, is £14,000,000; and to this extent it was allowed to issue bills secured on that debt. Beyond that sum it can issue no bills, unless it has an equal amount of specie on hand; or, in other words, it has no option in the matter. It must give notes for specie, or specie for notes, whichever is demanded of it. If a merchant wants specie to export, he carries notes to the bank, and procures it. If he imports specie, he carries it to the bank, and takes notes, if he pleases. Formerly, when specie was imported and deposited with the bank, the institution, as a rule, issued £3 notes for £1 specie on hand. Hence every £1,000,000 imported allowed of an addition of £3,000,000 to the currency, and vice versa, every £1,000,000 exported compelled the withdrawal of £3,000,000. These violent oscillations were the supposed cause of disastrous

fluctuations in prices; and it was supposed that if the bank were deprived of the power of lending £3 for every one imported, money would become less cheap on the occasion of a favorable turn in the exchanges; there would be less temptation to speculators and projectors to borrow the cheap money, and by so doing hasten an explosion, the effect of which would be enhanced by the violence of the contraction. Commerce and regular business would always supply itself with money, as with all other commodities. The principle was a sound one; but the great railroad and corn speculations of the past two years were appealed to by its opponents, the paper advocates, as evidence that it had utterly failed in its design of preventing undue speculation. Its friends, on the other hand, contend that without its operation those speculations would have been still more disastrous. In ' October, 1847, the speculators complained that the restriction of the Bank Act prevented money from being plenty, and the ministers were weak enough so far to give way to the clamor as to permit the bank to violate the law. Before acting on that permission, however, the pressure passed, and since then the movement has been upward. In New-York, the operation of the Independent Treasury has always been to keep active the principle sought to be carried out in the re-charter of the English bank, viz: to prevent any other increase in the supply of money than that created by the operation of legitimate commerce. Precisely in proportion to the amount of goods imported is the demand for specie, and the banks are compelled to confine their movements to regular business paper maturing within a circle of 60 a 90 days. They can lend no more money than they have got, and they have got no more than the operations of commerce supply for its own use. The returns of the New-York banks have been made to the 9th December. As compared with the previous return, the leading features of the city banks are as follows:

Now this return gives an increase of over $1,110,000, or nearly 25 per cent., in the amount of specie held by the banks of this city; and as the banks invariably, as at this moment, when they seek to raise the rate of discount, ascribe the alleged necessity to the action of the Independent Treasury, it is important always to ascertain relative positions. The following shows the specie in banks and in the Independent Treasury, as also the net export from the port of New-York between the dates as per official returns :

In

There was, it appears, $1,081,910 exported to Europe, $241,335 more accumulated in the treasury, and yet the banks enhanced their reserves $1,109,577, making altogether an accession of $2,432,812 in 60 days, from some source. the 60 days here embraced, the rate of discount fell nearly 1 per cent. in the New-York market. Nothing can show in a clearer light the absurdity of the

notion that money will be scarce unless the corporate banks have the exclusive control of it. Since the date of the bank return, the export of specie has nearly ceased, exchange has fallen, and the rate of money is much lower; yet the collection of an amount of specie in the assistant treasury, not much greater than that of December, is again stated as a plea for a higher rate. It cannot be, that any one really believes that such is the operation of the department; but the effort to manufacture opinion in favor of restoring the public money to the control of the speculators is the motive. In this connexion it is well to recall the fact, that eight years ago last month, the United States National Bank finally failed, having in vain striven, by all possible means, to prolong its bankrupt existence until the incoming of the new administration on the 4th of March following, when the Independent Treasury was to be repealed, and the public money restored to the monster, to revivify its expiring frame, amid a jubilee of whig triumph. The country was saved the calamity by the utter inability of the institution to prolong its existence a few weeks. The Independent Treasury, then in operation, was repealed in the extra session, and the money returned to bank custody. Many of these institutions are now striving to regain that plunder.

If we observe the comparative imports for the spring business, we shall at once find a sufficient cause for an enhanced price of money before the progress of business draws money into the hands of city dealers, from their country debtors.

These considerable importations, demanding remittances as well as cost, for duties absorbing the means of merchants as their shelves become stocked, are the real cause of the important value of money. In former years, under the management of the bank system, when a rivalry in credits existed, and dealers with small capitals sold on longer terms than on what they could purchase, as the business increased, a heavier demand for money was created. Under the present system, as the goods are sold, payments mature and merchandise turned into money, enhances the supply.

The favorable prospect for produce abroad has stimulated exports, and, together with the advance in stocks, have supplied the bill market to an extent sufficient to cause a further fall in prices. This decline under the imports, indicates the possibility, that before the remittance for the fall business takes place, the range of prices may permit of an importation of the precious metals from England, where it is apparently accumulating to a very considerable extent; and the disposition to invest in the United States, as indicated in the advance of prices, as quoted in the circulars of Messrs. Baring, adds to the channels through which capital finds its way hitherward. In London money is cheaper than ever, and there seems no probability of an early change in this respect; indeed, it is likely that the Bank of England will have a large accession to her stock of bullion; for it is stated that the Emperor of Russia, under the apprehension that the value of gold may be seriously affected by the supplies from California, intends forwarding a large proportion of his hoards of bullion to London: report speaks of upwards of ten million sterling. The prices of American stocks in London are as follows :