The Sun.
London, England, 1837-09-16 00:00:00

themselves and their European correspondents with.
the least possible discredit or injury to either from
the situation of embarrassment and confusion in which
the erroneous system of credit had placed both.
Some of those who, during the recent crisis in the-
commercial transactions between Great Britain and
Amrica, hazarded opinions unfavourable to the mer-
cantile body of the latter country, and .vho have not
the manliness and candour to retract and atone for an
injurious aspersion once committed, however clearly it
may he proved to be such by the subsequent evi-
lence of facts, pretend now that the large importa-
,ions of bullion from the United States to this coun-
try, have little or nothing to do with the liquidation
af pre-existing obligations ; that they are not " des-
tined to the clearing off old accounts, but to cover
fresh orders for goods for the current consumption of
the interior of America." This is something worse
than a gratuitous assumption. It is an assump-
tion directly at variance with the ordinary course
of commercial dealing,. and with the facts and
probabilities likewise of the actual case. In an
account current the credits, whether for goods
consigned or cash paid, are always regarded as in liqui-
dation of the debits of the oldest date, unless in the
case of some express arrangement to the contrary.
This is the invariable Understanding in accounts be-
tween individuals. And what can be mare arbitrary,
or indeed more nonsensical, titan to take for granted,
without any evidence whatever, a peculiar, unusual,
and unnatural announcement of debits and credits in

the general account between two great commercial
countries, consisting, as the latter evidently must, of
nothing else but the aggregate of the multifarious and
diversified accounts of ►ndividuals ? There is nothing
besides more improbable than the supposition that the
current consumption of the interior of America in
European articles, struggling, and toiling, and declin-
ing as the most important interests and most active
classes of that country have been for some time
past and still are, should exceed at the present mo-
ment the value which is liquidated simultaneously
or even antecedently to consumption, by the impor-
tation into Europe of cotton and other American pro-
ductions. The consumption of foreign commodities
in America, as in every other country not possessing
mines of the precious metals, is originated, supported,
and circumscribed by its ability or expectation of pay-
ing for those commodities by the exportation of its
own peculiar commodities an:l productions, other than
gold and silver, to an equivalent amount. Gold and
silver are only employed to adjust the balance of trade
between nations when ►t is discovered that the impor-
tation and consumption in any particular country
of foreign commodities have already exceeded its
means of paying for them in the ordinary way of
barter ; or, which is practically the same thing when a
country, whether by accident or miscalculation, or pro-
digality, or a too sanguine spirit of speculation, has taken
from foreigners articles to a greater amount than foreign-
ers have taken, or are prepared and willing to take, of
such articles as it can supply. The notion of a country
like America sending forth its gold and silver to pay
for articles of foreign luxury for instant consumption,
lea►ing the balance of foreign trade, already notoriously
against it to a considerable extent, to adjust itself as it
may, involves an imputation of reckless and unprincipled
prodigality which we have never yet heard ascribed to
the c►tisens of the United States as a national charac-
teristic. It is an aspersion, however, to which the
Americans will probably be indifferent, inasmuch as
they must perceive, in common with all persons in
every country who observe and understand the nature
of commercial dealings, that the conduct which they
are charged with pursuing is not merely faithless, pro-
digal, and anti-commercial ; but that it is contradictory,
absurd, and, in the strictest sense of the word, imprac-
ticable.—Morning Post.