COMMERCIAL CIRCULATION.
We have repeatedly shown that the effect of the gold-discoveries was augmented to an incalculable extent by the emigration and other circumstances in the state of the commercial world, which caused a new distribution of industry, and tended especially to stimulate that species of production which goes to supply the largest number of consumers. The extent and the suddenness of this expansion, however, put the existing stores of capital to the strain to meet such sudden opportunities ; and hence, we believe, that tightness in the money-market which has been observed on both sides of the Atlantic, enhanced by excessive trade on the other side' if not to a slight extent on our own. Before she can be quite free from her tightness, America must have made some way in redressing these arrears.
We have our own difficulty to contend with. Our harvest is calculated to be something under the average ; and as unquestion- ably an enlarged amount of means is in the hands of the people, the demand will be in excess on that of previous years witha short; er supply at home. For other supplies we calculate a considerable degree, no doubt, upon America; and here our difficulty tends to correct their difficulty ; in other words, the exchange which they have in some degree anticipated will be proportionably balanced by their exports of grain. This is but one illustration of the ef- fect of free trade, which enables the fluctuations of one country to correct those of another. By this means, the people of the two countries are becoming connected as closely as the members of two families living together in the same town and trading together. There was a time when war.used to be spoken of as a means of wiping off old debts; but here we observe that as fast as a debt oc- curs on one side, it has to be redeemed by a debt incurred on the other, and the welfare of each is involved for a time of indefinite extension in that alternation of debt incurred.
We call it "debt," and on the commercial accounts, taken in this view, the phrase is correct; but we must remember that the debt is but the financial representative of substantial benefits already receive& The immense trade which has taken place be- tween England and America has been neither more nor less than an exchange of substantial benefits. Each country is much better off than it was before : the people are better fed, actually in better and more substantial flesh; they are in better heart; better sup-
plied with employment, and enjoying better prospects ; therefore better socially and politically, as well as commercially. The "dif- ficulty," as it appears to be for the moment, is simply the index to an opportunity which one country or other has not yet had the full means of improving. If there is a balance of production on the side of England, the people in the -United States have but to Set their energetic hands to their rich fields of employment, and they can make up the arrears in the produce of their industry. In proportion as they do that, we by our industry can earn the fruits of theirs. Were it not for free trade, these balances of trade would be half-real, half-mysterious difficulties, by no means capable of this simple and substantial solution. By favour of free trade, our difficulties have been converted into opportunities. The Ame- rican market, or vast assemblage of markets, forms one of the most valuable regions commercially in connexion with our own ; but the same principles which are illustrated by the recent facts in the state of trade between the two countries apply equally to Australia, and in a greater or less degree to those countries with which we are in trading communication. It is both a solace to the mind and an instructive truth for us to remember, that what we now call shortness of money is not an absolute short- coming of means such as may occur in a country unproductive or wasteful in its finance, but is simply a shortcoming in comparison with the opportunities that are constantly opening before our com- merce.
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