Virginia Argus

From the New-York Columbian.

Speculation! Speculation! One of the most remarkable events of the present eventful times, is the extensive and increasing mania for commercial speculations and monopolies. The late famous butter monopoly has dwindled almost into insignificance, before the multiplied and enormous speculations in groceries, and other articles of foreign growth and manufacture in this city within a week or two past. Without any unusual drain of the market, or new apprehensions of scarcity, and with a supply equal to what will be consumed in the country for two years at the lowest calculation, many articles have been raised by the mania of speculation to more than three times their former price, and higher than any just or reasonable calculation can authorize or warrant. Tea, which formerly sold at 90 cents or a dollar is now from $3 to 5 50 cents per lb. Sugar, formerly at 9 or 10, is now 20 per cwt. Salt, last year at 40 cents, is now $1 75 cents per bushel. Molasses, formerly 45 cents, is now 1 50 per gallon. Coffee, from 15 or 20 cents, is at 50 cents per lb. Pepper, alspice, &c. are about double, and every other article raised from their former value--we mention wholesale prices.

At what exact point, this mercantile madness is to stop, nobody can tell. But the golden bubble must one day burst, and bring distress and ruin on many who are now amassing fortunes on the visionary basis of ideal speculation, at the more immediate expense and pressure of the lower and middling classes of citizens.