dise into this port, in 1851, the amount of duties collected, &c., as follows, namely:

Foreign merchandise imported into St. Louis in the year 1851, and en-
tered here, the foreign value of which amounts to....
Foreign merchandise entered at other ports in 1851, and now in trans-
portation under bond for the payment of duties at St. Louis, the en-
tries being received, the foreign value of which is....
Amount of duties on foreign merchandise collected in 1851.
Amount of duties unpaid on foreign merchandise-on goods in store,
31st December, 1851 ....

Amount of duties unpaid on foreign merchandise in transit from other
ports, destined to this port......

Amount of duties paid and accruing on merchandise imported for this port in 1851.....

Of the above, exclusive of the said merchandise in transit, there was imported from England, merchandise, the foreign value of which.. From France.....

From Germany and Holland.

From Spain and dependencies.
From Brazil.....

Total foreign value......

$757,509 00

107,902 00 239,318 68

8,261 89

32,679 20

$280,259 77

$406,113 38,404

23,239

220,770

68,983

$757,509

The general description of merchandise imported, entered for consumption and warehoused in the year, and foreign value thereof, is as follows, namely:—

Hospital money collected at this port in 1851...

Ditto expended in this port in 1851 for the relief of sick and disabled

boatmen...

2.259

2,618

$757,509

$2,941 03

8,441 44

TABLE SHOWING THE QUANTITY OF LIQUORS, OILS, MOLASSES, ETC., INSPECTED DURING THE YEAR 1851, AS REPORTED BY THE INSPECTORS TO THE CITY REGISTER.

IMPORTS INTO ST. LOUIS DURING THE PAST YEAR. The following table comprises all the important and many of the minor articles of Merchandise, Groceries and Produce, received by the river during the past year, from all sources. It has been compiled with great care to accuracy, and to merchants and others, it will be a source of ready reference, as to the extent of the trade to this port during the year:—

COMPARATIVE STATEMENT, SHOWING THE IMPORTS INTO ST. LOUIS OF EIGHTEEN OF THE PRINCIPAL ARTICLES OF PRODUCE, PROVISIONS, GROCERIES, ETC., FOR THE PAST SIX YEARS, NAMELY, 1851, 1850, 1849, 1848, 1847, AND 1846-COMMENCING JANUARY 1ST, AND ENDING DECEMBER 31ST, OF EACH YEAR.

Art. V. THE CURRENCY-GOLD AND SILVER.

The tardiness with which great speculative truths often make their way in legislative bodies, would form a curious chapter in the annals of human knowledge. Is it that these bodies share in the ignorance of their constituents, or, from flattery or timidity, show it a respect they do not feel. Be this as it may, the progress of truth is sometimes marvelously slow; and Error may not seldom boast of its hundred victories on the battlefield of legislation, before Truth finally prevails. Adam Smith had demonstrated that the corn laws of England, instead of securing to the people a more certain supply of bread, made it scarcer and dearer, nearly three-fourths of a century before the British parliament profited by his reasoning. It has been almost as long since Bentham conclusively proved that usury laws, (which, by the way, had the sanction of Adam Smith,) besides other objections to them, increased the very evil they were meant to cure. Beccaria had shown, that severe punishments were less efficacious in repressing crime than mild ones, because they were more uncertain, some forty or fifty years before Pennsylvania had the honor of first testing his wise and humane system by a penitentiary; and, lastly, though Locke, as far back as 1691, had made it clear that a double standard of value is both absurd and inconvenient, it was more than a hundred years before the legislature of his country conformed to his theory. Very few States, have, however, yet followed her examplemost of them seeming to think that a single standard, which they aim at in all other measures, would be unsafe in a measure of value.

We have adopted this mistaken policy, and have found the inconvenience of it. At one time gold was rated too high by law; then it was rated too low, and now it is confessedly too high again; and in all those discrepancies between the legal and the market relative value of the precious metals, which no regulation can permanently prevent, the undervalued metal is sure to be drawn out of circulation, by being exported, hoarded, or melted up. This is the case at present with silver.

But the Secretary of the Treasury proposes to remedy the mischief by adopting the English monetary system, by making silver a legal tender for no sum exceeding ten dollars, after subjecting it to a heavy seignorage, and making gold the sole legal tender for all sums exceeding that amount. Without doubt this course would remedy the evil for the time. The country would be adequately supplied with silver coin, which would not be advantageously exported. The remedy, however, would be but temporary. The immense yield of gold from the mines of Siberia, of California, and of Australia, leave no doubt that gold will continue to depreciate, and thus, in no long time, the silver currency, notwithstanding its proposed adulteration, will be, as at present, worth more than its legal price in gold, in which case it will, as at present, be withdrawn from circulation. The legislature must then resort to the same expedient, of the further debasement of the silver coin-for if it is wise now it will be wise then-and continue to repeat the same legislative botching, as gold continues to grow cheaper, until they discover that they must do at last what they ought to have done at first.

But again is this a time for imitating the English system in making gold the principal legal tender, when, in addition to the arguments used by Locke and others, in favor of silver as the sole standard of value, the recent unprecedented influx of gold, insuring its great depreciation, no longer