we are writing. Even political despotism in this age would
necessarily respect the ordinary rights of commerce, and quite
probably the greater security that would be given to property,
the increased dignity and authority of the courts of justice, and
the visible control of a vigilant and efficient government might
rather have a tendency to build up than to check the progress of
the capital of any country.

Civil war, in our view, can alone produce any material checks to
the prosperity of these towns of Manhattan. Against the malign
influence of so great a source of evil no one can with discretion
venture to predict the consequences. But we do not think that it
enters into the spirit of the true American character, so
remarkable for its mildness and disposition to mercy, in carrying
out the powers of government, to permit such a struggle as would
be likely to produce long-continued, or very withering local
distress. Compromises in some form or other would be resorted to,
to restore the course of the commerce of the country; and
although it might be, and probably would be, that this could only
be accomplished in the midst of the triumph of disorder,
irresponsibility, and the derangement of most that is necessary
to permanent security and quiet, a set of laws would arise for
the control of the affairs of the towns that would exercise their
sway, without any appeal to regularly constituted authority,
beyond that of the law of necessity. At this very moment, when we
have all the machinery of an efficient government around us, and
one has a right to look to the courts for the protection of his
rights, a thousand dollars of debt are secured and paid in a
place like that of New York, by the sole influence of commercial
opinion, where one dollar is secured and paid by the process of