The Express.
London, England, 1852-06-05 00:00:00

for guidance what to think—is about svf--.Tvill hap.
pen through this affluence of gold. People are coy
about telling their thoughts, if they have any, on
this prodigious question. It is really remarkable
that so small a space iv devoted to this speculation,
in print and in conversation. In print, the facts of the
hour are given; and iu conversation men joke and
shrug their shoulders, and evade the queries of
wives and children. If any clear judgment has
ever been expressed, by any competent tbieker, on
the probable operation of a plenitude of gold, the
world would like to have the advantage ..f it. Any
thoughtful man would, perhaps, say unit such a
change is too vast for prophecy; that changes se
vast always bring their own compensation, and eall
out their equivalents, which arc invariably such ai
cannot be anticipated. Be it so; but, while the
function of prophet is going a begging, then: ran be
no harm in looking at a kw facts and probabilities.
It is whispered, in some alarm, that prices are ris-
ing in Philadelphia, which is taken to mean that
California will reduce fixed incomes throughout the
United States. But look at the immigration there—.
from Ireland, from Germany, and everywhere else, and
say how much gold will he required to supply a
currency to such a multitude in so vast a country.
Our own furty•six colonies will wont a good
deal, and more every year. The inhabitants
of our dependencies are not so extremely wise as we
are at home. Many millions of them choose to
carry their wealth about with them, instead of
trading with it. In Bombay Won; it is estimated,
the value of the gold and silver ornaments worn by
the natives is not less than 5,000,0001. There can be
no question that tens of thousands more would wear
their wealth in the same manner, if they had it to
wear; and their prospects in that way are improving.
And we ourselves are not so wise but that Wi• should
ail, Quakers included, relish having more gold and
silver in our houses. We do not covet none-rings,
nor anelets that would be as fatiguing to us as the
treadmill ; hut we should like shields of Achilles,
and vases and goblets, and statuettes, antimony
beautiful things not invented vet. It would take a
vast weight of gold to fill up the place of
the valuables turned into money, by melting or
barter, during centuries of warfare, at home and
abroad. When once we have begun to regard gold
familiarly as a material of public, household, and
personal ornament, the taste for it in that form will
spread, keeping up its value in that capacity for a
lung time, probably at a paint about its value as
coin. Then, there are wars in prospect, as most
people think,—continental wars, vast in extent and
duration, if their theme and admonitory symptoms
are to be regarded. A prodigious amount of' gold
would be absorbed by an European war of any
length. We might go on, with a pretty long series
of such suggestions ; but these may be enough to
indicate that nobody need be in any hurry to face
ruin. The time will, no doubt, come when the rela-
tions of the commodity, money, with other eornmodi.
ties will change: and the new discovery of gold seems
likely to be the means of effecting that which must
have taken place, somehow, sooner or later. There
is no use in being alarmed,—nor wisdom in being
anxious.

The use of the great fact may be made noble, if
we apply it to the wise founding and redemption, at
once, of a new and old society. The wisdom of those
who are thinking of their own little interest in the
mighty news--the wisdom of such persons as the old
lady who owned that it did not matter to her how
the world went on, while she had her little roast
chicken and her little game at cards—is simply in
varying their investments under the advice of judi-
cious friends, who will tell them that if one form of
property shrinks, another will expand. For the rest,
if some great revolution of " property and standing"
should take place at some future day —what then?
The fear of it now would be a greater evil than the
experience of it then. We do not think it likely
—through such an agency as this new gold: but, rf
it were so, is there any one of us who will venture
to wish any new discovery unmade? All the pairs
of German arguers that can be found in Europe
would hardly undertake to produce, with all their
diligence, such an opinion as that.