A NEW SALVE.
BEING heartily tired of the old salves for state sores, we hail with much cordiality the announcement of a new one.* Enough has been said and written on the subject of the Currency, to induce a quiet man to run his country; and yet what was the mighty advan- tage of small notes after all ? Were they to be got for nothing, any more than sovereigns ? as INVESTIGATOR well asks.
" Was not the poor man and the rich obliged to work, or to give some commodity for them ? Supposing that ten or twenty shillings had been given to every family as a compensation for the loss they supposed they sustained from restricting the issues of small notes, (and certainly they did not lose so much by the change,) what better off or richer would they be now?"
Answer that, Mr. ATTWOOD, if you can. As to the humbug of the National Debt, can any rational man doubt, that if we could pay it off to-morrow, " the momentary alleviation received from it would in ten years' time have totally disappeared ? " Then for the decay of trade, manufactures, and agriculture, every one must allow that " that is not the cause of the distress-it is merely a symptom." And what would it avail us to remove the symptom, if the disease con- tinued? A man may die with a hundred of the best possible symp- toms about him ; and if one man, why not a nation of men ? It is to no purpose, therefore, that pseudo economists direct our attention to paper money, the malt-tax, and low price of ribbons-they must go to the bottom of the sore if they mean to effect any good.
" Palliative measures or minor considerations must not interfere ; politics, revenue, the calculations and figures of the political economists, must be dis- regarded. It is the spirit and ultimate success of the thing that are to be looked to. A man must first put his own fire-side and household into order, before he can expect to walk abroad with comfort,"- That is, unless he have made up his mind to bivouac it for the remainder of his life. The absentees should attend to this: they must come home some time or other, and if they find the fire out and the floor unswept, what will their fine foreign notions avail them ? A match-box and a broom would in such a case be worth all they have picked up in theit travels. What, then, is the real evil under which the country labours ? our readers cry. Why, "want of labour," most certainly-the nation is dying of lack of something to do. What with spinning-machines, weaving-machines, and ten thousand other inventions, humanity now-a-days has nothing left but to sit with her hands across. Of old, when the Devil found a man idle, he was sure to set him to work ; but the steam-engine has driven even the Devil to his shifts, and he is as much at a loss for employment as his children. The remedy is, however, simple,-burn the mills, burst the boilers, send the walking-beam to its travels ; and then we shall once more have work o' days and sleep o' nights, as our grandfathers had before us.
"The Legislature should pass an act, prohibiting all farmers from keeping more than one horse to convey their produce to market; ploughing. har-
rowing, all their machinery for curtailing the labour of hands, should be pro- hibited: your fields should be dug with the spade, hoe, or pick, and raked. You.have shown your ingenuity in finding out all kinds of devices and con- trivances for abridging human labour, but that is not now what we want-we want work ; something to do, and be paid for it. You will save a great deal of seed corn. One acre cultivated with the spade will produce so much more than if cultivated with the plough, as to astonish you. You will save the price of horses, their keep, wear and tear, and rent of land."
Having settled agriculture on a sound and rational basis, it re- mains only to apply the same rule to manufactures.
"Next to the cultivation of the land by manual labour, and the prohibi-
tion of plough horses and farm machinery; should be a prohibition as to ma- chinery of all kinds ; for example, no matufactory with machinery employ. .ing more than ten persons should be alloued to exist, or some such regula- tions to the same effect."
As to a currency, after these small alterations in our present
im-
perfect system have been adopted-" either paper or oyster-shells will answer all the purposes equally well, provided they issue all front an immaculate source." We know whence oyster-shells issue: the materials of which paper is made up are not, indeed, at all times im- maculate, but the dirtiest rags admit of scouring. If, when all this is done, we still continue depressed, we should strongly recommend to put up the island to auction, and then ship ourselves, one and all, for New Holland: the passage will cost nothing, for the ships, must go thither at any rate.
• A New Salve for the State. By Investigator.
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