The last word has not yet been said on national currency, which, though the basis of all commercial transactions, has necessarily no other relation to banks than that which it holds to any individual in the community.
Economic questions have interested the highest order of mind on the two continents.

Sismondi published a paper on commercial wealth in 1803, and in 1810 a memoir on paper money, which he prepared to show how it might be suppressed in the Austrian dominions; Humboldt made a special study of the sources and quantity of the precious metals in the world, in which Mr.Gallatin aided him by investigation in America.

Michel Chevalier was interested in the same subjects; surviving his two masters in the art and witnessing the marvelous effects of the additions made by America to the store of precious metals, he continued the study in the spirit of his predecessors, and favored the world with instructive papers.

Mr.Gallatin's contributions to this science are remarkable for minute research and careful deductions.
In 1843 President Tyler tendered the Treasury portfolio to Mr.Gallatin.
The venerable financier looked upon the offer as an act of folly to which a serious answer seemed hardly necessary.

Yet as silence might be misconstrued, he replied that he wanted no office, and to accept at his age that of secretary of the treasury would "be an act of insanity." He was then in his eighty-third year.