trial of it, without any risk at all, be caufe, if it would not answer their end, they might, after a few months, repay it, and take ap their mortgage. But I cannot help thinking, that the principles of it are so just, and the plan to certain, that all understanding perfons would perceive and approve it.

I must here take the occafion and the liberty of saying, that it were greatly to be wished that those who have in their hands the administration of affairs, in the several states of America, would take no measures, either on this, or any other subject, but what are founded upon justice, fopported by reafon, and warranted to be fafe by the experience of former ages, and of other countries. The operation of political causes is as uniform and certain as that of natural causes. Andany measure, which in itfelf has a bad tendency, though its effects may not be instantly difcernible, and their progress may be but slow, yet it will be infallible; and perhaps the danger will then only appear when a remedy is impoffible. This is the cafe, in fome degree, with all political measures, without exception; yet I am mistaken if it is not eminently fo, with respect to commercial dealings. Commerce is excited, directed, and carried on by interest. But do not mistake this; it is not carried on by general universal intereft, nor even by well-informed national interest, but by immediate, apparent, and sensible personal intereft. I must also observe, that there is in mankind a sharp-tightedness up on this subject that is quite astonishing. All men are not philosophers; but they are generally good judges of their own profit in what is immediately before them, and will uniformly adhere to it. It is not uncommon to fee a man who appears to be almost as stupid as a stone, and yet he shall be as adroit and dextrous in making a bargain, or even more

so, than a man of the firil-rate understanding, who, probably for that very reason, is less attentive to trifling circumstances, and less under the government of mean and selfish views. As to currency, which has been our general subject, if coins of any particular species happen, as is fometimes the cafe, to pass at a rate, ever so little higher, in one country or corner of a country, than another, thither they will immediately direct their course; and if the matter is not attended to, nor the mistake rec. tified, they will be all there in a ve ry short time, and the place which receives them, must bear the lois.

I will now fum up, in fingle propositions, the fubitance of what has been afferted, and I hope fufficiently proved, in the preceding difcourse.

1. It ought not to be imputed to accident or caprice, that gold, filver, and copper, formerly were, and the two first continue to be, the medium of commerce; but to their inherent value, joined with other properties, that fit them for circulation. Therefore, all the speculations, formed upon a contrary supposition, are inconclusive and absurd.

2. Gold and filver are far from being in too small quantity, at present, for the purpose of a circulating-medium, in the commercial nations. The last of them, viz. filver, seems rather to be in too great quantity, so as to become inconvenient for transportation.

IP

3. The people of every nation will get the quantity of these precious metals, that they are entitled to by their industry, and no more. by any accident, as plunder in war, or borrowing from other nations, or even finding it in mines, they get more, they will not be able to keep it. It will, in a short time, find its level. Laws against exporting the coin, will not prevent this. Laws of this kind, though they are

still in force in some nations, supposed to be wife, yetarein themselves ridiculous. If you import more than you export, you must pay the balance, or give up the trade.

4. The quantity of gold and filver at any time in a nation, is no evidence of national wealth, unless you take into confideration the way in which it came there, and the probability of its continuing.

5. No paper of any kind is, properly speaking, money. It ought never to be made a legal tender. It ought not to be forced upon any body, because it cannot be forced upon every body.

6. Gold and filver, fairly acquired, and likely to continue, are real national, as well as personal wealth. If twice as much paper circulates with them, though in full credit, particular perfons may be rich by possessing it, but the nation in general is not.

7. The cry of the scarcity of money, is generally putting the effect for the cause. No business can be done, say some, because money is scarce. It may be said with more truth, money is scarce, because little business is done. Yet their influence, like that of many other causes, and effects, is reciprocal.

8. The quantity of current money, of whatever kind, will have an effect in raising the price of industry, and bringing goods dearer to market, therefore the increase of the currency in any nation, by paper, which will not pass among other nations, makes the first cost of every thing they do greater, and of consequence, the profit less.

9. It is, however, possible, that paper obligations may so far facilitate commerce, and extend credit, as, by the additional industry, that they excite, to overbalance the injury which they do in other respects. Yet even the good itselfmay be overdone. Too much money may be emitted even

upon loan; but to emit money any other way, than upon loan, is to do all evil, and no good.

10. The excessive quantity of paper emitted by the different states of America, will probably be a loss to the whole. They cannot, however, take advantage of one another in that way. That state which emits most, will lofe most, and vice versa.

11. I can see no way in which it can do good but one, which is, to deter other nations from trutting us, and thereby lessen our importations; and I fincerely wish, that in that way, it may prove in some degree a remedy for its own evils.

12. Those who refuse doubtful paper, and thereby disgrace it, or prevent its circulation, are not enemies but friends to their country.

To draw to a conclusion, it is probable that those who perceive, which it will be easy to do, that the author of this tract is not a merchant or trader by profession, will be ready to say, what has this gentleman to do with such a subject? Why should he write upon what he has no practical knowledge of, money and commerce? To these I answer, that I have written, not as a merchant, but as a scholar. I profess to derive my opinions from the best civilians of this and the last age, and from the history of all ages, joined with a pretty confiderable experience and attention to the effects of political causes, within the sphere of my own observation. It is not even too much to say, that one of the mercantile profession, unless his views were very enlarged indeed, is not so proper to handle a general fubject of this kind, as some others. His attention is usually confined to the business, and to the branch of that business, in which he is employed. In that his discernment will be clear; and he will find out, if possible, where he can buy cheapest and sell dearest. But as to the theory of or the great objects of

commerce,

tational intereft or connexion, he can have no advantage at all over a perfon given to study and reflexion, who has fome acquaintance with public life. With these remarks, by way of apology, and having no interest in the matter but what is common to every citizen, I freely commit the whole to the judgment of the impartial public.

Account of the life and death of Edward Drinker, who died on the 17th of November, 1782. In a letter to a friend: faid to have been written by Benjamin Rujh, M. D. &c.

E

DWARD

born on the 24th of Decem- ber, 1680, in a small cabin, near the present corner of Walnut and Second-streets, in the city of Phila-delphia. His parents came from a place called Beverly, in Massachufets-bay. The banks of the Delaware, on which the city of Philadelphia now stands, were inhabited, at the time of his birth, by Indians, and a few Swedes and Hollanders. He has often talked to his companions of picking whortle berries, and catching rabbits, on spots now the most improved and populous of the city. He recollected the second time William Penn came to Pennsylvania, and ufed to point to the place where the cabin stood, in which he and his friends, that accompanied him, were accommodated, upon their arrival. At twelve years of age he went to Bofton, where he served his apprenticeship to a cabinet-maker. In the year 1745, he returned to Philadelphia, with his family, where he lived until the timeof his death. He was four times married, and had eighteen children, all of whom were by his irft wife. At one time of his life, he fat down, at his own table, with fourteen of his children. Not long before Vol. II. No. I.

I

his death, he heard of the birth of a grandchild, to one of his grandchildren, the fifthin succession to himself.

He retained all his faculties till the last year of his life. Even his memory, fo early and so generally diminished by age, was but little impaired. He not only remembered the incidents of his childhood or youth*, but the events of latter

NOTE.

* It is remarkable that the incidents of childhood and youth are seldomremembered or called forth until old age. I have sometimes been led, from this and other circumstances, to suspect, that nothing is ever loft that is lodged in the memory, however it may be buried for a time by a variety of causes. How often do we find the transactions of early life, which we had reason to suppose were loft from the mind forever, revived in our memories by certain accidental fights or founds, particularly by certain notes or airs in music? I have known a young man speak French fluently, when drunk, that could not put two sentences of that languge together, when sober. He had been taught perfectly, when a boy, but had forgotten it from disuse. The countess of L-v-l was nursed by a Welsh woman, from whom she learn ed to speak her language, which she foon forgot, after the had acquired the French, which was her mother tongue. In the delirium of a fever many years afterwards, she was heard to mutter words which none of her family or attendants understood. An old Welsh woman came to see her, who soon perceived that the sounds which were so unintelligible to the family, were the Welsh language. When the recovered, the could not recollect a single word of the language the had spoken in her sickness. I can conceive great advantages may

years; and so faithful was his memory to him, that his fon has informed me he never heard him tell the same story twice, but to different perfons, and in different companies. His eye fight failed him, many years before his death, but his hearing was uniformly perfect and unimpaired. His appetite was good till within a few days before his death. He generally eat a hearty breakfast of a pint of tea or coffee, as soon as he got out of his bed, with bread and batter in proportion. He eat likewife at eleven o'clock, and never failed to eat plentifully at dinner of the groffeft folid food. He drank tea in the evening, but never eat any supper; he had loft all his teeth thirty years before his death, which was occafioned, his fon says, by drawing exceffive hot fmoke of tobacco into his mouth; but the want of suitable maftication of his food, did not prevent its speedy digestion, nor impair his health. Whether the gums, hardened by age, supplied the place of his teeth in a certain degree, or whether the juices of the mouth and stomach became so much more acrid by time, as to perform the office of diffolving the food more speedily and more perfectly, I know not, but I have often obferved, that old people are most disposed to excessive eating, and that they suffer fewest inconveniencies from it. He was inquifitive after news in the last years of his life. His education did not lead him to increase the stock of his ideas any other way. But it is a fact well worth attending to, that old age, inftead of diminishing, always increases the desire of knowledge. It must

NOTE.

be derived from this retentive power in our memories, in the advancement of the mind towards perfection in knowledge (so essential to its happiness) in a future world.

afford some consolation to those who expect to be old, to discover, that the infirmities to which the decays of nature expose the human body, are rendered more tolerable by the enjoyments that are to be derived from the appetite for sensual and intellectual food.

He was remarkably fober and temperate. Neither hard labour, nor company, nor the usual afflictions of human life, nor the wastes of nature, ever led him to an improper or excessive use of strong drink. For the laft twenty-five years of his life, he drank twice every day of toddy, made with two table spoons full of spirit, in half a pint of water. His fon, a man of fifty nine years of age, told me that he had never seen him intoxicated. The time and manner in which he used spiritous liquors, I believe, contributed to lighten the weight of his years, and probably to prolong his life. "Give wine to him that is of a heavy heart, and strong drink to him that is ready to perish with age, as well as with fickness. Let him drink and forget his forrow, and remember his misery no more."

He enjoyed an uncommon share of health, infomuch that in the course of his long life, he never was confined more than three days to his bed. He often declared, that he had no idea of that most distressing pain, called the head ach. His fleep was interrupted a little in the last years of his life with a defluction on his breast, which produced what is commonly called the old man's cough.

The character of this aged citizen was not fummed up in his negative quality of temperance; he was a man of the most amiable temper; old age had not curdled his blood; he was uniformly chearful and kind to every body; his religious principles were as steady, as his morals were pure. He attended public worshipabout thirty years in the rev. dr. Sproat's church, and died in a full affarance of a happy immortality. The life of this man is marked with several tircumstances which perhaps have feldom occurred in the life of an individual; he saw and heard more of those events which are measured by time, than have ever been seen or heard by any man fince the age of the patriarchs; he saw the same spot of earth, which at one period of his life, was covered with wood and bushes, and the receptacle of beafts and birds of prey, afterwards become the feat of a city not only the first in wealth and arts in the new, but rivalling in both, many of the first cities in the old world. He saw regular streets, where he once pursued a hare; he faw churches rifing upon morasses, where he had often heard the croaking of frogs; he saw wharfs and warehouses, where he had often seen Indian savages draw fith from the river for their daily subsistence; and he law ships of everyfize and use, in those freams, where he had often seen nothing but Indian canoes; he saw a ffately edifice, filled with legislators, afionishing the world with their wifdom and virtue, on the same spot, probably, where he had seen an Indian council fire; he saw the first treaty ratified between the newly confederated powers of America and the ancient monarchy of France, with all the formalities of parchment and feals, on the same spot, probably, where he once faw William Penn ratify his first and last treaty with the Indians, without the formality of pen, ink, or paper; he saw all the intermediate stages through which a people pass, from the most simple to the highest degree of civilization. He saw the beginning and end of the empire of Great-Britain in Pennfylvania. He had been the subject of seven successive crowned heads, and afterwards became a willing citizen of a republic; for he embraced the liberties and independence of America in his withered arms, and

triumphed in the last year of his life, in the falvation of his country.

Letter from dr. Franklin to a friend, containing an account of a remarkable whirlwind.

Philadelphia, Aug. 25, 1755. DEAR SIR,

A

S you have my former papers on whirlwinds, &c. I now send you an account of one which I had lately an opportunity of seeing and examining myself.

Being in Maryland, riding with col. Tasker, and fome other gentlemen, to his country feat, where I and my son were entertained by that amiable and worthy man with great hospitality and kindness, we faw in the vale below us, a small whirlwind beginning in the road, and shewing itself by the dust it raised and contained. It appeared in the form of a fugar-loaf, spinning on its point, moving up the hill towards us, and enlarged as it came forward. When it passed by us, its smaller part, near the ground, appeared no bigger than a common barrel, but widening upwards, it seemed, at 40 or 50 feet high, to be 20 or 30 feet in diameter. The rest of the company ftood looking after it, but my curiofity being stronger, I followed it, riding clofe by its fide, and observed its licking up, in its progress, all the duft that was under its smaller part. As it is a common opinion that a shot, fired through a water spout, will break it, Itried to break this little whirlwind, by striking my whip frequently through it, but without any effect. Soon after, it quitted the road, and took into the woods, growing every moment larger and stronger, raifing, instead of dust, the old dry leaves with which the ground was thickly covered, and making a noise with them and the branches of trees, bending fome tall trees round in a circle, swiftly and very surprisingly, though the progressive motion of the whirl was not