The same metal occurs, either pure or mixed with silver ore, in the greatest number of veins that have been wrought in Mexico; and there is scarcely a single silver mine which does not also contain gold.

On the coast of California there is a plain of fourteen leagues in extent, covered with an alluvial deposit, in which lumps of gold are dispersed.

It must be borne in mind that these words were printed in a wellknown and extensively read work twenty-nine years ago; since that time we have had more than half a dozen colonial secretaries, with adequate salaries and abundant patronage and power, sworn to guard the interests of England in foreign lands. Couple this authentic information with the admitted fact that England possessed a "very fair title" to California, and you have a proper sample of the conduct of bureaucracy working with and by the instrumentality of a supine and trusting parliament. There can be no rational doubt of the abundant mineral resources of California. The whole country, and more especially Mexico, Peru, and Brazil, abounds (as Humboldt as well as Jameson asserts) with mineral treasures; but they have nowhere been yet found in such abundance and so cheaply and readily accessible as in the alluvial soil of California. We attach great importance to the discovery of quicksilver in that country. Specimens of cinnabar (which contains 87 parts in 100 of mercury) have been transmitted by the officers of the United States government to Philadelphia to be tested. We hope much from this discovery as a means of breaking down a baneful monopoly. The Almaden quicksilver mines of Spain have of recent years been the principal, not to say almost exclusive, source for obtaining this useful and necessary product, which is to the abstraction and separation of other metals, what coal and water are to the steam engine, what rollers and the spinning jenny are to the fibres of wool, cotton, hemp and silk. No great amount of production fit for market can be raised without them. Recently, in the hands of Rothschild, the high price of quicksilver prevented the working of many of the inferior silver mines in various parts of the world, and stopped all the industry and all the profit of invested capital dependent on them. We must again explain this matter, though we denounced the monopoly and explained its conse

quences many years ago.

Quicksilver has been found in some quantity in various countries, and Peru was at one time a tolerably prolific source. The political troubles of South America checked or stopped the working of the Peruvian quicksilver mines, and the mines of Almaden in Spain (as we have already said) became the principal source of supply-Styria and China as well as other countries yielding small quantities. When the Almaden mines fell into the hands of Rothschild, some ten or more years ago, the price of quicksilver became enhanced-all other sources of supply yielding no quantity weighty enough to break down the monopoly; and its value stood for several years at 4s. 6d. the pound, or higher. The price is now, we believe, not higher than 3s. 6d. the pound-a fall of 25 per cent. And if, by the application of new capital and labor, the produce of the American continent should be increased by the re-opening of old neglected mines or the discovery of new sources, we may hope to see the price of quicksilver fall to one-half of its former range.

In this way, the discovery of the mineral treasures of California may become of very great importance to other countries, if quicksilver should prove to be one of its principal products. This is our answer to some friends, who have represented to us that the riches of the California mines will have the effect of closing inferior mines in other countries. They will lead to precisely an opposite consequence, provided their promise of yielding quicksilver should be realized so as to lower its price, and so render it available for mines long excluded from its use by

its enormous cost.

We have dwelt on this extraordinary event, because it may prove the prolific breeder of interesting changes and events-in commerce, intercourse and the arts, as well as in the apportioning of wealth and political power among distinct active communities. This is a critically fastidious. age, in which genius is nipped and enterprise restrained or obstructed for fear of ridicule and failure. The little censors who wish to lead public opinion, peer about here and there till they can pick out a place of safety for themselves, whence they may shoot their little arrows at boldness and intrepidity. Ours is a different temper, apt to admire a Watt, a Fulton, a Stephenson, or a Brooke, more than a Huskisson, a Peel, or á Lloyd. We are attracted to what men do to advance their generation onward in the high career of civilization; not to the theories which men dream in their closets, and then agitate the public mind to carry them out in legislation, all the time knowing no more about the consequences than they know of the application of chemical agencies in the moon. We admire prodigiously the enterprise, promptitude, energy and indomitable will of our transatlantic descendants, however much our moral sense may be occasionally outraged by their unscrupulous and intemperate manifestations. And we rejoice that it is still the AngloSaxon race that is destined to carry the laws, language and character of our forefathers to vast countries unknown to them. What, in progressive wealth and power, England was at the commencement of the century, the great republic will be at the completion of its medium stage. The weakened, sleepy old giant, glowingly suffers the young giant to take from him that which he could rightfully appropriate and was necessary to his strength. What will be the end of these things?

The first stage towards that end will be very soon accomplished. We have already seen that it was no idle rumor concerning the grasp of the possession of Cuba by the United States, but that it was a design avowed (though in secret) and intended to be carried into execution by its government. What does this import? That England shall have no power where the power of the United States ought to predominate, according to the interpretation of her rulers. How long will the cry of "All Oregon or none," be allowed to slumber in the traditions of history. Just so long as until the time comes when California shall feel herself strong enough to grasp all that belongs to England in her vicinity, and no longer. Then will England be expelled from her North American possessions in the Pacific, whether with or without the assent of the cabinet at Washington. Events in the passing course of time, demonstrate this to be the ruling passion of the enterprising hordes flocking to California, and such its inevitable direction. There may be

checks, hindrances and disappointments in their career. We look strictly at the nature and position of the country about to be peopled, without allowing much weight to that discovery on which no satisfactory calculation can be founded, but which may nevertheless give accele rated force to obvious and permanent causes, when we say that England's ascendancy in the Pacific is doomed to annihilation. Under the negligent, obstinate, imbecile rule of England there can be no other result. The new Anglo-Saxon Republic rising up, or to rise up, in California, will be held and controlled by a fragile thread of power at Washington; the bond will be instantly broken on the first attempts to check the ruling passion-that passion which led to the overrunning of Texas, the conquest of Mexico, the "grab" at Cuba, the possession of California. Instead of checking it, within five or ten years, Washington may again seek to ride on its whirlwind.

Remote, by habits of thought and action as well as by distance, from the moral influence of the European world, which, notwithstanding all we may say, exercises a wholesome restraint at Washington, what shall stay the course of the ruling passion in the Republic of California? She will possess within herself all the means of wealth and power and military strength. She can see no rival on the vast shores of the Pacific, where all else is feebleness and fragility. What can, what dare, England now say against the deliberate, though rapid, planting of this formidable power, already in possession of the most important highway of nations, with the command of its maritime extremities? At less than one-half of the distance, you have with great difficulty and cost crushed the Boers of Southern Africa. They had no military appliances, no land-locked bays, no ships and steamers or means of constructing them, no impregnable mountain fortresses; and, compared with active intelligent men of the Anglo-Saxon race, entrenched by nature in a favorable position, must be reckoned as fifty for one. No, no, having shamefully lost the opportunity, England must submit to her inevitable destiny. The simple statement of the question, what can England now do in opposition to it? involves the bitterest, and to all lovers of their country, the most painful sarcasm on the tarnished honor of England.

After all, an attempt to scan the inscrutable ways of Providence would be presumptuous; what we deplore and mourn over may, for aught that we can see, be designed for the speedier extension of the laws, language, physical and moral attributes of the Anglo-Saxon race throughout the regions of heathenism and idolatry. For such a consummation-call it an abstraction if you please-we must continue to offer our humble but fervent aspirations.

COMMON USE OF METALS.-If a convincing and familiar proof of the extensive application of the metals to the common purposes of life were required, we need only refer to the case of many a common cottager, who could not carry on his daily concerns and occupations without the assistance of several of these substances. He could not, for instance, make his larger purchases, nor pay his rent, without silver, gold and copper. Without iron, he could neither dig, nor plough, nor reap;

and, with respect to his habitation, there is scarcely a part of the structure itself, or of the furniture contained in it, which is not held together, to a greater or less extent, by means of the same metal; and many articles are either entirely of iron, or of iron partially and superficially coated with tin. Zinc, and copper, and antimony, and lead, and tin, are component parts of his pewter and brazen utensils. Quicksilver is a main ingredient in the metallic coating of his humble mirror: cobalt and platina, and metals perhaps more rare and costly than these, as chrome, are employed in the glazing of his drinking-cups and jugs. And, if he be the possessor of a fowling-piece, arsenic must be added to the foregoing list, as an ingredient in the shot with which he charges it; for it is arsenic which enables the shot, during the process of its granulation, to acquire that delicately spherical form by which it is characterised. So that of the whole number of metals made use of by society at large for common purposes, amounting to no less than twenty, more than half of these are either directly used by the peasant, or enter into the composition of the furniture and implements employed by him.—Kidd.

BANK STATISTICS.

Liabilities and Resources of the Banks of Massachusetts, September, 1848. [Compiled for the Bankers' Magazine from the Official Reports

26 Banks, 1848, $18,980,000 $4,951,233 $2,419,650 $3,866,998 $6,430,560

$638,265 $2,051,277 $1,635,020 $30,085,076

Table shewing the number of Savings Bank Depositors and the amount of Deposits in the several Savings Banks of Massachusetts, September, 1848.

Boston,

Andover,

5,300

We have prepared the following Table of Liabilities and Resources of the Country Banks of Massachusetts, from the Annual Report to the Legislature. It shows the Capital, Circulation, Profits Undivided, Deposits, Bank Balances, Coin, Real Estate, Loans and Dividends of each.