Hard Money Or Soft?

The question of hard nioney or soft is no new question in America ; and the people who decided it, and thought thoy decided it forever, a generation ago, were ust such people as the people who are deciding it now. While there is, up and down in places where noise can be rnade, a great body ot people who are in dobt, and live more or less by debt, and liko to see what they cali " l'acility" in the movement of money, the great body of the people of the country earn their money before they spend it ; place a valué on it quite as large as they ought to place ; and inow perfectly well in their own history, in that of the country, in that of the rebels, and in that of tho world, that any play with the standard is dangerous. - When, therefore, in what are now old times, Gen. Jackson appealed to the country to know whether it would have hard money or soft, the country decided, very stiffly, for a generation, to have hard money. What is more, it tried to separate, and for a generation did separate, the treasury froin the business of banking. In that issue, tho banking institutions of the country, and financial men very generally, took sides against Gen. Jack3on. They supported the United Statea Bank. They made the strength of the National Republican party. They thought, as scine people do now, that the cry oí a groat deal of money would be a popular cry. They went to the people on that cry, and were beaten out and out. The organizations which they formed were so beaten, that, as party organizations, they never preseuted thtinselves again. This time the banks, the bankers, the people who deal in money, are as wise as the laboring men, the farmers the millers, and the great mass of the middling-interest men of the country werethen. There is now an alliance, very healthy and very hopeful, between the ppople who have least money, and the people who handle most. There is, therefore, every reason to believe, that, so soon as the question of more or less paper money comes fairly beforo the people, the people will determine that there shall be no enlargement of the currency which exists now. If the people had not deterinined on this, the President has. That seems to settle this matter for three years, for the remark attributed to Mrs. Grant seems true, whother it carne from her, or no : " People will find out, some time, that, when Mr. Grant has' made up his mind, he is a very set man." - E. E. Hale in Old and IS'ewfor June. One almshouse in Philadelphia has a population of ;,519.