Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1847-10-23
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.
Magasines ofthe Monfh-Continu,


so that at liberty merely recite in brief its
contents OF this liberty we usually shun to avail
ourselves, when we find those contents interesting
but at present we can only notice single paper.
The first article is upon that very unavailable
kind of assets now widely known in the stock mar
kets under the imaginative designation OF SPANISH
Bonds Stock markets." we have allowed our
selves to say; but mean not to add live stock
markets, for these stocks appear rather to approach
the catastrophe of being dead loss to the holders
Nor can we exactly why the proprietors of such
fanciful possessions should be styled holders"
For, in order that there should be holders people
holding or hauing,) there must be holdees-those
who are held or had; but, in this case, the pre-
tended hodees have refused to be held SO that the
bonds aforesaid 81 have and hold'' nobody: and
therefore it is the holders or havers who are them
selves had. Now, all this may be somewhat
roundabout and circumambent way of informing
our readers that the naughty Don, or the modern
Don at least, hath said with ancient Pistol !. Base
is the slave that pays! and is become what is po-
litely styled ga repudiator; y but the statement of
such factis disagreeable statement; and we like
to break such matters to the parties concerned as
gradually and as gently as may be.
The Peninsula, in short, (for Portugals predica-
ment seems much the same SPANS, hath ceased
to be retrograde. 1t conesses, at last, the grand
" movement of the age, the Progress - and
scorning the aggard gait of liquidation, hath leaped
to the van with Mississippi, resolute to march
abreast with Notwithstanding Arkansas herself
The shackles of debt have fallen from her limbs
her body las the unadorned eloquence of Counsellor
Curran so chastely expresses D /" hath burst the
measure of the bonds about it her soul walks
abroad in its own majesty. She stands forth re-
deemed, regenerated, and dsenthralIed, by the ire
sistible genius of universal emancipation -
AT last we repeat the Peninsula, benghted so
long by the darkness of Knighthood, bushes be-
meath the growing dawn of the New Ideas-the
Peninsula, where once the Cid pawned his beard to
Jew for ten thousand pisoles, and preposterously
redeemed that hairy security, just if his face
could not atany time grow another the Peninsula,
where, indeed, that primitive sort of bank note,
ruder than coon-skins, seems once to have formed
quite !" a convertible currency !" for did not the
great Albuquerque, or some other naughty Don, hy
pothecate whisker to raise the wind for war,
and afterwards, in his barbarian fidelity to engage
ments, lqudate to the last lock the strange scrip
of that loan?
And whence, into this old darkness, broke the
light of the New IDEAS the Progressive Philosophy
of Debt! What hath become of
The foreign wealth. that flowed on every shore,
Save hers that earned with her peoples gore !!
How got Spain such enlightenment! The solution
IS muttudinous the Progress hath been propagated
to her from many quarters. Hath she not been
revolutionzing, for above quarter of century,
with that happy effect which has every where else
attended that benefcent process, until all her an
cient prejudices are dispeled! Hath she not dealt
in Constitutions, dabbled in improvements, and ex-
permented in Currencies, until she hath not an in
stltutlon, law, coin left to bless herself
with The finance of oar new school hath had
full swing with her, without any perilous interreg-
mum of Wing redemption. She has party of
Progressisfds, almost as philosophc as our own.
Virtually, she hath enjoyed the incalcuable advan-
tages of free trade for all her population who have
not been busy fighting have been as happily en-
gagged in smuggling English goods; so that her pro-
ductive industry now delightfully."- consists of mutual
blows and the manufacture of our own great Ameri-
can commodity, Paper Constitutions.
Such rich blessings as she hath reaped from all
this seed of revolution not, Of course to be ga
thered free of all cost it were too much-the limits
of human happiness would be at end-the So
cia state would be too angelical-if the national fe
lcity Of having no more government than each man
found personally convenient were attainable with
out any more expense than hal(-a-dozen times the
utmost that oppression had ever before cost. Ii,
then, Spain be over head and in debt, she
surely console herself for it, for first, she hath
had great deal for her money; and, secondly, if
she has learned nothing else, she has learned the
science of Non-payment. Knowledge" saith
Solomon, is better than silver or than gold " and,
verify, if there be any knowledge which more than
all others answers his description il must be pre-
cisely the science of Repudiaon--a science which
completely stands in stead OF SPECIE is richer than
the pearls OF Ormuz the gold Of scrptural Ophrs,
imaginary Eldorados, the silver soil of Peru"
the rubies Of the Philippine islands, or the dia-
monds of all Goconda and Brazil.
And where, indeed, the good, the profit Of the
march Of mind" if it is not to tighten the old
load of human obligations! At the swift pace of
the Progress" how should men under all
that ponderous pack Of principles which once they
could carry, when they went leisurely and " took
it easy !" No, the esprit of the age" is speed !;
and that is impossible, if we TO run under a
dead weight of discretion and with as much morals
we can lift. All that sort of lumber must be let
alone or there is an end of celebrity, of the go
ahead" Civilization is become perpetual forced
march and the army that starts upon that should
begin by burning all its baggage, all its impedimenta,
Cesar did when he set out to subdue Rome, or
Alexander THAT rapid Greek W when he marched
TO the conquest of the furthest east.
We have said that Spain may have learnt, may
have caught the radiance Of the new ideas, by a
mulitudinous enlightenment And perhaps, in
especial, she has studied-at least in a translation
the lofty truths which, first divuged by the apostle
nnnocracy - deccendad fron, b;,,, a. ,ho r,,bo.