tries, and as our revenue now averages but eighteen per cent from imports, the net amount of revenue from Cuba would, in such case, fall below six millions, leaving an annual deficiency of seventeen million dollars. Concede that this may be reduced one-fourth by direct taxes on Cuba, and that changes may be made in our duties, shall we not still incur a deficit equal to the interest on two or three hundred millions of

dollars?

Is our country prepared to incur such additional charge for the acquisition of Cuba? Again, what will be the effect on the South? Will not the competition of Cuba compel Louisiana to abandon most of her sugar plantations and go into cotton, thus adding some four hundred thousand bales to the crop, and materially reducing the value of cotton? Will this be desirable to the South?

Shall we not, too, have another contest, tending like that of Kansas to the dissolution of the Union? A contest to determine whether Cuba shall enter the Union as a free State, with twelve representatives and senators, of various hues, or shall be admitted with a like number of proslavery delegates. In connection with this we are to remember that but one-third of the existing slaves in Cuba are females, and that the number of slaves must consequently diminish as soon as the slave trade ceases, while the whites, free negroes, and Chinese, now more than thirty thousand, are rapidly increasing. In view of all these considerations, is our own nation unanimous for the purchase or forcible acquisition of Cuba?

If our country really requires colonies adapted to the culture of sugar and coffee, it is easy to acquire them without incurring the enormous expenses which must attend the possession of Cuba. There are the Sandwich Islands on the one side, of great fertility, and lying in the route from California to Asia, where the native population is dying out, and a cession may be obtained for a mere trifle. There our whalers assemble to refit, and there would be a convenient station to coal our steamers and obtain refreshments, sugar, coffee, and other tropical productions. On the other side, we have the coast of Western Africa, but a few days' sail more distant from New York than the southern coast of Cuba. There we might occupy the coast from the Congo River to the Bight of Benin, a tract of greater length than the island of Cuba, and admirably adapted to all tropical fruits. Here we should find at least one navigable river, and easy access to the interior, and we might effectually suppress the slave trade, create asylums for our free blacks, civilize and Christianize the natives, and thus repay our debt to Africa, and all this could be put in train for less than one year's interest on the cost of Cuba.

If philanthropy is our pole-star, and economy worthy of consideration, let us take the right direction; and let us pause for reflection before we undertake by conquest and vast expenditures to absorb and assimilate a million and-a-half of foreigners, by no means homogeneous, speaking different languages, and trained under monarchical institutions in Cuba.

Art. V. CONSIDERATIONS ON VALUE AND THE PRECIOUS METALS.*

PERMIT me to make a few observations suggested by an article over the signature "C. H. C.," in your March number, "On the Nature of Commercial Value." The writer of the paper in question very justly comments upon the "practical mischief," which has arisen from the general misconcep tions growing out of the treatment of this subject. But what, I would ask, will he find but discord and confusion in that which generally goes by the name of "political economy?" Even at the present day we find distinguished men, philosophers they are called, who maintain Ricardo's "Theory of Rent," while it has been shown, clearly and beyond cavil, that this theory, and all the facts in the history of the occupation of the earth, from the remotest ages to the present hour, are at direct variance with each other. The same may be said of Malthus's "Law of Popula tion," which is equally fallacious, but is maintained with the same dogmatical partisanship by these "philosophers." What, then, can be expected from such sources but "practical mischief?"

But one theory of value, as I conceive, has ever been given to the world which holds good, is true, and can maintain its ground under all circumstances, and is sufficiently comprehensive to "embrace every commodity or thing, in reference to which the idea of value could existwhether land, labor, or their products." I refer to that of Mr. Henry C. Carey, first announced by him in "Principles of Political Economy," Philadelphia, 1837. It will be found in volume i., page 18, of that work. Thirteen years later it was adopted without credit by the distinguished French economist, Bastiat, in his "Harmonies Economiques," Paris, 1850. Within the narrow compass of a brief article like the present, it is impossible to do justice to the subject, which can only be done by presenting some such beautiful illustrations as those by which Mr. Carey has established its truth. It will, however, be found treated in detail in his recent work, "Principles of Social Science," volume i., chapter vii., page 147, Philadelphia, 1858. Mr. Carey there conclusively demonstrates that value is determined by the cost of reproduction; that the cost of reproduc tion is the only measure of value. In other words, and we quote from him, "value is the measure of the resistance to be overcome in obtaining those commodities or things required for our purposes-of the power of nature over man."

Professor Ferrara, of Turin, in "Biblioteca del Economista," volume xii., page 117, regards this formula as "most felicitous," and "destined to be universally adopted."

The writer of the article on "Commercial Value" very properly points out the confusion which has arisen in the treatment of this subject, by regarding "value" and "price" as expressing the same idea. Archbishop Whateley has complained of the great defect of political economists being "the want of definitions," which will establish the meaning of important leading words in the science. But this is but one of the discords to which I have already referred, and which characterize all political economy of the English school!

*In accordance with our invariable rule of keeping our pages open to the discussion of both sides of all questions of interest, we admit the remarks of our correspondent upon the article of "C. H. C.," upon commercial value.-Ed. Merchants' Magazine.

Further, respecting the movements of the precious metals, the writer of the article in your Magazine says:- Every one, whose attention is called to the subject, will observe that money, real money, always runs away from countries and districts where interest is high to those where interest is low. Following the law of value, money flows from the cheap to the dear market like every other commodity. Thus, it leaves California, where interest is 24 to 30 per cent per annum, for New York, where it is 6 to 9 per cent, and leaves New York for London, where it is 3 to 4 per cent, and London for Hamburg, where it is 2 per cent, and so on, running always counter to the rate of interest.

"I have been surprised that the plain contradiction of the common notion of the value of money, expressed in this fact, has not attracted public attention. I think I have never heard or seen any public mention of it, except once in the sermon of a philosophical preacher."

Without pausing at present to examine your correspondent's "law of value," or his "cheap" or "dear" market, I would call the attention of your readers to the following passages from an article on "Money," by Henry C. Carey, printed in the Merchants' Magazine, vol. xxxvi., pages 403 to 428, wherein will not only be found noted the facts to which your correspondent "C. H. C." refers, respecting the movements of the precious metals, but an explanation of the causes of those movements. I quote from Mr. Carey as follows:-"Of all the commodities in use by man, the precious metals are those that render the largest amount of service in proportion to their cost, and whose movements furnish the most perfect test of the soundness or unsoundness of its commercial system. They go from those countries whose people are engaged in exhausting the soil to those in which they renovate and improve it. They go from those at which the price of raw products and the land itself is low-from those at which money is scarce and interest high. The country that desires to attract the precious metals, and to lower the charge for the use of money, has then only to adopt the measures required for raising the price of land and labor. In all countries the value of land grows with that development of the human faculties which results from diversity in the modes of employment, and from the growth of the power of combination. That power grows in France, and in all the countries of northern Europe; and for the reason, as has been shown, that all those countries have adopted the course of policy recommended by Colbert, and carried out by France. It declines in Great Britain, in Ireland, in Portugal, in Turkey, in the Eastern and Western Indies, and in all countries that follow the teachings of the British school. It has grown among ourselves in every period of protection; and then money has flowed in and land and labor have risen in value. It has diminished in every period in which trade has obtained the mastery over commerce. Land and labor have

always declined in value as soon as our people had eaten, drunk, and worn foreign merchandise, to the extent of hundreds of millions of dollars, for which they had not paid; and had thus destroyed their credit with other communities of the world." (Page 422.)

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"The precious metals go from California, from Mexico, from Peru, from Brazil, from Turkey, and from Portugal-the lands in which property in money is transferred only by means of actual delivery of the coin itself, to those in which it is transferred by means of a check or

note. It goes from the plains of Kansas, where notes are not in use, to New York and New England, where they are-from Siberia to St. Petersburg-from the banks of African rivers to London and Liverpool-and from the "diggings" of Australia to the towns and cities of Germany, where wool is dear and cloth is cheap." (Page 426.)

By a reference to the second volume of Carey's "Principles of Social Science," it will be found that the author therein treats this subject very fully, under the head of "The Instrument of Association," and that he gives due prominence to the facts above quoted. His entire book is a harmonious system of inductions from facts; and he is the first systematic writer on political economy who has followed throughout his speculations the Baconian method in treating of science.

One other point in the paper of your correspondent I will remark upon, and then conclude. He says:"If we double the supply of money upon the market, other things remaining in supply and demand as before, the prices of all property will double in the average. In this case, money falls in value one-half-two ounces of gold must be given in exchange for commodities which could have been obtained before for one ounce; there is no alteration in the value of other things, because their relation to each other remains unaltered; they exchange for precisely the same quantities of each other as before; the alteration is wholly in the value of money itself."

It being admitted by your correspondent " C. H. C." that commodities go" from the cheap to the dear market," and he having presented the proposition which we have quoted above, he can in no way object to furnishing your readers with answers to the following questions. Indeed. it would seem difficult, if not impossible, for the proposition itself to stand without the questions being properly disposed of.

If it be true, as stated by your correspondent, that the only effect of increasing the supply of money is to increase prices in a corresponding ratio

1. How is it that prices in Europe have not so increased within the last three centuries, as to have arrested long since the continuous, neverceasing flow of the precious metals from America thereto ?

2. How is it that Europe has not become from these imports "the dear market," into which would flow the manufactured goods from some other "cheap markets"—those for instance which have been drained of these precious metals?

3. How is it that prices have not long since so greatly increased in all European countries receiving these metals, as not to have literally put an end to their export trade?

4. How is it that France, with a net import of the precious metals, over and above the export, of more than $500,000,000 within the past quarter of a century, is increasing her general exports, the results of her industry, in a ratio exceeding those of any other country in the world!

5. How is it that with the import of the precious metals into Northern Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and Denmark, the exports of manufactured goods in all of these countries steadily increase?

6. How is it that the precious metals have always flowed from those countries in which raw materials are cheap, and therefore exported, into those countries in which manufactured goods are cheap and also exported?

7. In view of the phenomena presented in France, Northern Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and Denmark, into which the precious metals have been, and still are, flowing, is it not probable, or even quite likely, that those metals possess some life-giving property? May it not be that they impart activity to the movements and the industrial pursuits of men? and would it not seem that their influx prevented "other things from remaining in supply and demand as before?"

8. If they do not possess any such property, why is it that while they can be neither eaten, drunk, nor worn, they are held in more universal regard by man than any other commodity known to him?

9. Why, if they have no grand and distinctive quality, is it that they have been thought worthy of so much legislation, and of so many disquisitions in state papers, books, magazines, and newspapers, by distinguished and thoughtful men ?

B.

Art. VI-USURY: ITS MEANING AND DEFINITION.

Ir is of importance, in these times of commercial troubles, when men's minds are being seriously turned to the consideration of the economy of our banking and currency system, that a correct knowledge be obtained of the word usury. There is the more necessity for this knowledge, inasmuch as it is a word to which a modern meaning has been attached, different from its former use-one which refers it to an exorbitant rate of interest; and although this modern sense may now almost universally prevail, it is obvious it can be of no weight at all in the consideration of those passages in which the word occurs in ancient times, or in Holy Writ. Any interpretation, therefore, of such passages, must be in strict accordance with the meaning then properly attached to the word, for it is only in this way that the mind of their author can be obtained.

The

Nothing is suggested regarding the real meaning of the word, usury, from the expression itself. It is evidently another form of the word use, more expressive of the act of lending out money on interest. Words are only signs, and their signification is the stamp of public consent. question, therefore, regards the original sense attached to the word. The only proof which I intend to bring forward, and which to my mind appears conclusive, is derived from the use made of the expression by the English translators of the Scriptures, in that admirable version, the rigid adherence of which to the Hebrew idiom, it has been well remarked, has at once enriched and adorned our language. Now, we know the word usury has been invariably employed by these translators in version of the Hebrew word-to bite. This is sufficient to fix the sense of the word under review. It is impossible, therefore, to deny that the Hebrew word, as it stands in connection with the word increase, as its exegetical synonym, and viewed in its relation to the previous and following context in those passages of Scripture in which it occurs, denotes interest in its lowest as in its highest degree.

It is not always safe to receive the sense naturally suggested by a word as its true sense. But no exception of this kind can be made with regard to the Hebrew word. It seems to have been employed by the Hebrews