Let me illustrate: In the Birmingham (Ala.) manufacturing district there are three great iron manufacturers, to wit: The Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; The Sloss-Sheffield Company; The Republic Company and the Alabama-Consolidated Company. Continued effort is made to merge two or all of these powerful forces. The Pontifex Maximus in the situation, the great bridge over which the merger, if merger there is to be, must pass, is a bank of issue—a national bank—willing and also able to finance the movement in transit and after consummation. Now, the willing and capable bank in the premises must possess an adequate supply of non-taxable, interest-bearing Government bonds, upon which, to their full face value, it may issue paper money equal to the exigencies of the great merged corporations. Without the bonds, upon which to issue the money, the bank could not finance the merger. If the iron manufactories be merged, the necessary sequence must be the merging of the railroads that enter Birmingham. In order to effect the merging of the railroads financing which would duplicate the original example, here cited, must follow. Commerce, founded on the public debt, is founded upon Government mortgages upon universal private industry. Must not that kind of commerce subvert free institutions? Yours truly, (Signed) JOHN WITHERSPOON DU BOSE. The writer of the letter on the public debt is the author of the “Life and Times of William L. Yancey,” a book which is a treasure-house of varied and valuable information. That this Magazine has made such a favorable impression upon so able and representative a man, is of itself a great encouragement to us who are devoting our lives to it. The question asked by the distinguished Alabamian is a spear-thrust into the very vitals of our vicious system of Class-Rule and Special Privileges. When Alexander Hamilton set out to make our government as English as the Constitution would admit of, he laid the foundations of his work in the English system of Protection, the English system of Finance, and the English system of Funding the Public Debt. With his Protective system he meant to favor one class of industries at the expense of others: thus rallying to the support of the government those who shaped its laws to fill their pockets with the money which belonged to other people. With his system of Finance, and his National Bank of issue, he meant to form a co-partnership between wealth and government. To the favored few was to be delegated that tremendous power to create currency which had always been a prerogative of the Crown until Barbara Villiers, the harlot, wheedled from the dissolute Charles II. that concession to the bankers.