libraries. If American editions are seen on our shelves, they are mostly found to be those published by Parker of Boston. What, then, has become of the first reprint? and what has become of all the money spent throughout the United States in purchasing the ugly Philadelphia edition? Can the public show an equivalent for it? We much fear they have paid dear for the whistle. Nor are these forlorn reprints cheap. A book is not cheap at a shilling, if a shilling is twice as much as it is worth. Now, the very hurry in which these republications must be thrown off, increases the expense, so that readers are obliged to pay a certain per centage on every popular work for the fear a publisher entertains of being forestalled in the operation of reprinting it. And this tax must always be paid on the miserable hurried reprints, while books which are got up at leisure and in better style are exempt from it. They are therefore actually dearer, considering the style in which they are got up, than books which are printed much better and on handsomer paper. In all other respects there can be no doubt that the public would be benefited by the copyright law. There would be a greater va. riety of books, much better printed, and worth preserving. At present the choice of books for the readers of the United States is in the wrong hands; it is the publishers who decide what books shall be read in our country, and what shall not; and they make a very bad use of their despotism, for their selection is a very poor one: they give us all the trash of the English press, and they retain from us many a valuable work which might do a lasting good to the reader. They reprint the most trivial and worthless novel of the day, and refuse to re-publish De Tocqueville's admirable work on the democracy of the United States, a book which ought to be in the house of every American citizen. Austrian tyranny never framed a more cunning plan for keeping its subjects in ignorance of what freemen ought to know, than the American system of re-publication proves to be this system is founded on the basest love of lucre; there is not one generous sentiment connected with it; its whole object is to get money, and it hardly scruples with regard to the means employed. It never seeks to improve, elevate, or refine society; it panders to the meanest wants of the mind; it creates an unnatural excitement, and encourages a false and degraded taste. We exhort our countrymen to beware of the system of republication. In the taste for feverish excitement, and the disrelish for whole. some literature which it occasions, may we not expect to trace, in some degree at least, the corruption which in old Rome arose from the excitement of games and public spectacles, and which is thought to have given the death-blow to liberty? H. C. SONG TO THE WHIPPOORWILL. COMPLAINING bird, that sing'st at eve When all around is calm and still- As, sitting on yon old oak tree, I whipped him once, but ah! in vain; Still bids me "Whip poor Will.” And though the little fellow screamed For being whipped he knew not whyTill on yon heavens the starlight gleamed, There came that mournful cry "Whip poor Will!" On other themes, oh lonesome bird! For William is a pleasant boy, A merry-hearted, lovely one- What! never done! wilt always sing? Can no persuasion keep thee still? And not thy note, does Willy wrong: P. B. BANK EVILS, AND THE REMEDY. It is worthy of remark, that the two most important pecuniary interests of this country, Insurance and Banking, have been conducted chiefly by corporate bodies, to the exclusion, in the one case by law, and by custom in the other, of private competition. In both cases the business has been done well and profitably in prosperous times; and in both, when we had need to lean upon the reed, it entered into our hands. We need not tell our readers of broken banks and insurance companies, the tale is too recent; but we can tell them a good reason why incorporated companies are less worthy public confidence than individual or unprivileged traders. For it would be unphilosophical and invidious to point to the late signal failures of these companies as an argument against them, without pointing at the same time to the principle which caused the failure, and which stamps it as the result of an inherent vice, and not an accident or extraordinary misfortune. This, then, is that principle. Incorporated companies divide their profits; thrifty individuals accumulate theirs. The customer of the latter, therefore, when he appears in the character of a creditor, derives some benefit from the profits to which he has contributed-they are there to answer his demand. But we have paid our premiums year after year in Wallstreet, and they have gone in dividend and extra-dividend; or, if they have formed any trifling surplus, we are put in chancery to get possession of it, and staved off at last in many cases with less money paid us on losses in the great fire than we have ourselves paid, if all were reckoned up, to these same companies in premiums. The application of the principle to incorporated banks is different in form, but the inference against them is equally strong. Their resources are constitutionally stationary; while their business, if well managed, has a natural tendency to increase. They allow it to increase, and they do not provide a surplus capital in proportion; thus they overtrade; and when we discover that they have not the means represented by their circulation, they might well laugh at us if we should ask the stockholders, whose dividends that circulation has sustained, to come forward and pay the premium on our specie in case of suspension, or the loss on our bank notes in cases of total insolvency. The calamities of Commerce, when investigated, may always be traced to violations of some of its natural laws; its tendency is to go on well, and perform its functions like the circulation of the blood; and the crash and crisis are the results of diseases, which, again, are the results of ignorance, intemperance, and recklessness. A perfectly just reciprocal action of the widely-extended societies which compose the commercial world, cannot always be expected; ebbs and flows, to a certain extent, are perhaps inevitable; and common sense assumes this, and bases on it a law, of which all privileged trading corporations are a standing violation. It is simply this-that a portion of profits should be saved to meet losses; and what individual engaged in trade would be looked upon as prudent if he treated his whole profits as income, or only accumulated during a long course of years as much per cent. as the largest surplusses of our Banks and Fire Insurance Companies? They have gone on dividing from seven at the lowest, to twelve and fifteen per cent. a year; and the stockholders have spent the money as income, when the condition on which they had it was so explicitly written in the experience of commerce, that the expending it by individuals placed in the situation of these companies would have been a posi-` tive breach of trust. Gentlemen, this experience would have said, you have made eight per cent., you are now making ten, and you shall live to make fifteen; but these are years of plenty-fat kine, which the lean ones by-and-by shall hunger for. Use what is needful, but remember Pharaoh and treasure up the rest. An individual who heard this voice, and believed it, would have obeyed it; but a company would reply by dividing whatever surplus they might happen to have to get it out of harm's way. To follow this out, and show how habits of expense were encouraged by it among stockholders, and disappointment and bitterness prepared for them, is foreign to our present purpose, nor is it necessary; for all our eyes have seen the effect. It is a bad national economy and recog. nized mischief; but this mischief a corporation is privileged and almost constrained to do, being chartered to meet the responsibilities accruing in a long course of business with no more capital, at all events, than it begins with, and as much less as the misfortunes of its outset may decree. Here, then, are cause, consequence, and inference, in pretty close connexion. Incorporated trading companies, by dividing all their profits in time of prosperity, or by not reserving enough to meet inevitable re-actions, tempt their stockholders to improvidence, deprive their creditors of security, and eventually injure and impove. rish both. Therefore we are wrong in continuing this system, which is an attempt to separate the emolument of business from its risk, (so far as regards profits once acquired.) The widow and the orphan, and all the stock-holding poor, it is said, can thus become bankers and insurers; but there are many more of the poor who hold bank notes or policies than there are that hold stock, and all suffer when the company breaks. The widow and the orphan, if they have money, can always get interest on good private security; and it is dangerous for them, when misers and stock-jobbers desire to take them into partnership and give them more. But these are merely reasons why the public ought not to place confidence in incorporated companies, but rather in private partnerships or responsible individuals doing the same business, in preference, when such are to be found. I do not argue against incorporating banks; on the contrary, I would make a general law under which companies should incorporate themselves as they pleased, publishing their terms, and exposing themselves to be judged by the public accordingly. But I argue against the compulsion, the restraining law puts on us, of employing incorporated banks or none at all. Joint stock banks, with irresponsible stockholders, could not compete, I think, successfully, with private banks with equal rights before the law; and the force that is put on us to trust our money to the former, is a crying injustice in the land. As to furnishing a currency for the nation, the stamping paper with value as money is a prerogative with which no bank, public or private, ought to be intrusted. Much has been said of the usefulness of the late United States Bank as a check on the minor banks; and a chain of reasoning, somewhat fine spun, is made to lead to the conclusion that, though constituted exactly as they are, its superior capital and wide extension made it a check on the others while it needed no check itself. The present crisis, it is averred, was caused by the removal of this check; but it is not explained why, in Great Britain and Ireland, the Bank of England has not been able, with its disproportionate power, to exercise this wholesome checking influence on the issues of the minor banks there, nor to keep its own in a due relation to its specie. During the years 1835 and 1836, years full of danger and warning, the Bank of England kept up its issues against a diminishing stock of bullion, while the joint stock banks were rapidly expanding. The circulation of the former was 18 millions sterling in March 1835, and 18 in March 1837: while the latter increased from £2,200,000 in March 1835, to £4,200,000 in January 1836; but in this last period, the private banks-and this difference should well be noted-diminished their circulation from £8,200,000 to £7,700,000. The private bankers had their all at stake, and they looked well to it; but the directors, who had only their limited interests as far as they were stockholders to consider, dashed on till they were deep in the |