The Kanzas news., 1857-11-07
From the Cincinnati Commercial.
The SUSPENSION.

AS the eOlBOr OF tle new Ork 4f101Ene
would phrase 1.-THE panic has become gen.
eral In other words, our monetary sys-
tenn has collapsed. There is what is equiv
alent to an universal suspension of specie
payments. So far from being able to aid
the business community through the diff
culties into which, by their completely, it
has fallen, the banks have demonstrated
their impotency to preserve themselves from
a state of insolvency. If they have per-
formed their duty, they did not close their
doors until they had placed all the specie
which their Golfers contained in the hands of
their creditors, to relieve as far as possible
the public necessity. Whether they have
done so does not, except In few cases, as
yet appear but it is probable that during
the severe draught of several weeks past,
the store of coin has been pretty nearly ex
pended. The first effect of the suspension
| is slight appearance of relief in the great
markets of the country. The prices of grain
have met small advance; but whether this
is not owing rather to depreciation in the
market value of currency, now unconSerti-
BILE. than to any movement in the price of
the article as brought to a specie standard,
is question which we would rather sug-
gest than attempt to decide. We must not.
however, forget that the tendency of an in
convertible currency is perpetually toward
depreciation, producing differences that are
constantly varying between the nominal and
the real value of everything that is the sub
ject of business operations.
The suspension of the moneyed institu-
tions, as they are called, of the Union, is
simply step in downward progress that
commenced several years ago. The banks
and mercantile failures that occurred in this
city some three years since, were indications
that the soundness of the business constitu
ton of the country had been sapped-that
the eliminating point had been passed, and
that reaction had begun and although
the most strenuous endeavors have been
making to recover the ground that was lost,
and place things in healthy condition, the
expedients employed being merely a repeti-
ton and intensifcation of past bad practices,
have only had the effect still further to un
dermine the basis of our prosperity, until
an universal crash became inevitable. We
have now, so far as affirmative acts are con-
cerned, reached the worst-the community
is powerless for good, and fortunately almost
equally powerless for evil. Little can be
done by individual acts or combined exer-
ton. Even sagacity will be in a great
measure at fault; and society will be forced,
in its helplessness, to await the slow but
sure operation of those potent and para
mount natural laws, which ever and anon,
when man has bound himself in web of his
own devices, come in with the benignity of
la Providence, to release him from the con-
sequences of his madnes and folly.
And yet the worst has not been reached.
There will be many things to suffer before
all the results of past intemperance have been
eradicated from the system. There will be
suffering in every walk and branch of busi-
ness, and to every order and occupation will
be brought home realizing sense of the sad
effects that spring from the laying of false
and unsound basis upon which to build the
structure that embodies the entire economi-
cal concerns of a great people.
What attempts viii be made to relieve and
palliate the troubles that are rushing upon
US, it is difficult to predict The present is
one of those times when empyrics, quacks,
and men of desperate expedients, are apt to
gain more influence than they deserve
Thousands are crying out for something to
be done, who viii be ready to give their
faith to any scheme, however shallow or vi
olent, that carries with it a specious prom
ise of relief. Attempts will, doubtless, be
made in some quarters, and perhaps with
success, to induce the suspended banks to
issue largely, for the relief, as it is said, of the
community. Such a course might prolong,
by retarding that final adjustment which
must take place before any substantial relief
can be realized, but in the end would al
ways be, as it always has been, an additional
element of distress and disturbance.
ga paper currency" says vone of the
ablest of modern writer's upon political econ
omy, (Which the maker is not able and le
gally bound to redeem in coin at the will
of the holder, whether issued by the gov
eminent, by incorporated or joint stock
bankers, or by individual bankers, is one of
the greatest evils that can afict any coun-
try" That evil we have already upon US
"a thing whose market price to-day viii
furnish no indication of its price tomorrow
whose value at any time is perhaps mere
ly thing of the imagination-whose pos
session is not wealth, nor even the assurance
of the means of subsistence; and whose
principal function will be to derange and
unsettle all our ideas of value, and to give
an additional insecurity to every business
transaction. As little as possible of this
is the best for every community, whatever
may be the straits to which it is reduced.
And what is to be the end and the char
acter of the final adjustment, when at length
it shall be reached? Experience supplies
the answer. The wiping out of millions
upon millions of Indebtedness that can
never be paid. The obligations that were
contracted upon the pledge of the winds that
were shut up in the bags of Eolus, must
be released when the bags are punetured
and The basis has escaped. Until there is
IA re initiation there can be no hopes of pay
ment. Bankrupt laws belong to the same
category with paper-money infations and
explosions; and it is only through the ope-
ration of such laws or their EQUIVALENT.