which enacted, that no joint-stock banking company should carry on business within a certain distance of London, would be successfully evaded. The Bank of Ireland was fenced by a similar protection in regard to notes under 50l.; but the private banks rendered it nugatory, by appointing, as their agents, bankers resident in Dublin, as if what they did by an agent were not as illegal as if they had done it themselves. The scheme, likewise, it was argued, would give encouragement to those who, from time to time, enriched themselves by preying on the credulity of the publie, and who had never been more successful in their nefarious pursuits than they had lately proved under this very form of joint-stock associa tions. The country would be inundated with unsubstantial paper; the notes of the country bankers would become mere local tokens; the branches of the Bank of England, free from all the disadvantages to which country banks were liable, would monopolize the paper circulation; and it would only be fair, therefore, to postpone the measure, until the privileges of that body had expired with its charter. To this it was answered, that the possibility of improvidence being seduced, or knavery tempted, to do what was foolish or dishonest, by any facilities which this measure might afford, could be no reason for rejecting it, when it would so certainly be productive of general and essential benefit to the country. It was acknowledged on all hands, that the Bank alone was insufficient to manage all the money concerns of the country; and the question then was simply, since other banks we have, and must have, in what lies the magic of the number six, as applied to the

members of these necessary establishments? No doubt, there were still restrictions in the bill which it would be difficult to justify on any sound principle; but to remove these required a farther surrender on the part of the Bank; and government had been unable to obtain more extensive concessions than the present bill contained. Although, however, the bill was not what it otherwise would have been, it would be unwise not to avail ourselves of the facilities yielded to us, so far as they went.

Some slight alterations were made in the bill, and were agreed to by the Lords. The bill then passed; and, in virtue of the powers conferred by it, branches of the Bank of England were soon after estab lished in some of the principal trading and manufacturing towns, while the ordinary banks, which had escaped from the hurricane, were rapidly regaining confidence and composure.

But, while these two leading measures of government, in which they had received fully as much support from their customary opponents, as from their habitual friends, bade fair to give new security to the pecuniary arrange ments of the country for the future, the ministers could not be blind to the widely-spread distress of the present. The total want of demand for manufactures and labour had suffered little diminution; and, in the city, above all, the absence of money, or rather the absence of that confidence, without which gold lurks as closely concealed as when buried in its native veins, kept the whole current of commercial transactions in stagnation. An expression in the communication from the Treasury_to the Bank, regarding the surrender

of part of their charter, that "the panic had subsided, and confidence was nearly restored," had been severely animadverted upon in parliament; and ministers were twitted with it, night after night, as disas displaying great ignorance, not only of what was passing all over the country, but especially of the situation of the metropolis itself. From the opening of parliament, the mercantile classes had expected that government would take some immediate step to give them present relief, and applications to this purport had been made at the Treasury. The scarcity of money was the evil complained of, and an issue of Exchequer bills was the remedy generally pointed out; but government had resolved not to lend itself to a system of artificial relief for a disease which they thought would better cure itself without their interference. They had expressed themselves willing, indeed, to keep the Bank harmless to the extent of two millions, if it should think proper to go into the market, and purchase Exchequer bills to that amount; but no definitive step had been taken, when Mr. Wilson, one of the members for London, brought the subject before the House of Commons (February 23rd), on the occasion of presenting a petition from the merchants, bankers, and traders of the city, praying the House to take into its consideration the present commercial distresses. He assured the House, that, so far from distress having disappeared, or danger passed away, every day displayed new victims; and the privations and difficulties of even the last week, had brought many to the ground. The representations made to ministers had been fruitless; they had made up their minds to

grant no relief, and had referred the merchants to the Bank, who had it in their power to advance, money on the security of goods, a resource which, he said, no merchant could adopt without bringing a stain upon his credit. He vindicated the merchants from the aspersions which had been cast upon them, as having produced the present calamities by their own imprudence, and a fondness for spe culation, reckless of consequences. With the ephemeral schemes of the preceding year, the merchants, as a body, had had no more connection than other people, and, in many cases, much less. It was notorious that these bubbles had been the creation of a few scheming attor nies, and idle and needy speculators; not of the real merchants of London, who now, from mere inability to convert their securities into money, were trembling on the brink of ruin; and these bubbles had been as keenly pursued in St. James's street, as they ever could be in the alleys of the city. Even the imprudent speculator was often a man worth saving, if not on his own account, at least on account of others with whom he was connected in agricultural, commercial, or monied interest. The merchants, in general, were far from deserving to be harshly told, "some of you have over-traded; some of you have speculated rashly; therefore the whole body must be content to suffer, and suffer on, till every thing finds its own level." He was not pleading the cause of gambling share-holders, but of a class of individuals, who, from the general want of confidence that prevailed, and particularly among the banking part of the community, were suffering under a pressure which could not easily be described,

but whose sufferings, if not relieved, would describe themselves in a way which the House would not be able to misunderstand. All that was required was an issue of Exchequer bills-a measure which on former occasions had been often adopted, to relieve temporary, but general embarrassments, and which, on no occasion, had either failed in its object, or been productive of inconvenience to the government. He gave notice that on the 28th he would move that the petition should be referred to a select committee.

A long discussion followed, in which the same views were taken, and the same sentiments expressed, by almost every member who spoke; and Mr. Canning and the chancellor of the Exchequer found themselves deserted even by some of their firmest adherents. The strongest position taken against them assuredly was, not so much the threatening appearance of the mercantile horizon, which no man could deny, as the fact that the particular preventive measure urged upon their attention was one of tried efficacy, justified by the sanction of great names, and one which the country had been too much accustomed to regard as a never-failing resource in evil times. Many, who had the evil before their eyes, would have allowed it to take its way, if it had been necessary to search for a remedy; but when they saw at hand what they believed to be a known specific, they readily joined in the wish that it should forthwith be administered, that they might escape, with all speed, from a painful spectacle. But, although ministers did not enter at large into the question, which would more properly be discussed on the motion for appoint

was

ing the committee, they did not shrink from firmly announcing the principles on which they had acted in refusing the various applications which had been made them, and on which they were determined still to oppose them. Convinced that the proposed measure erroneous in principle, and mischievous in practice, tending to produce, even by its temporary efficacy, a future recurrence of the same evil, and an improvident trust in the constant interference of government, when other and safer cures could be applied, they refused to accede to that, as a popular expedient, which their knowledge® informed them was not necessary, and which their deliberate judg ment taught them to reject as in itself prejudicial to the interests of the community.

The most provoking, the most unmanly, the most unjustifiable weapons of their adversaries, were the insinuations thrown out that the resistance of government proceeded from cold-blooded insensibility to the misery which prevailed, and the danger which threatened. "For myself," said Mr. Canning, "and my colleagues, I totally disdain to answer such imputations. I impute to no man who now hears me, that he is so insensible; but for others to impute to those upon whom every day and every night care and anxiety are brought by the consideration of these distresses, in addition to the common sympathy in which they share as men, is to impute to them not only a want of feeling, but a want of sense that would unfit them not merely for the situations they fill in the government of the country, but to appear here, in the midst of those among whom they have the honour to sit."

The information that government had come to an arrangement with the Bank having been communicated to the House of Commons, before the motion for referring the City petition to a committee had been made, that motion was withdrawn by Mr. Wilson; but both on this, and on some other occasions, the merits of the plan which had been adopted, and the superior efficacy and expediency of an issue of Exchequer bills directly by government, were discussed at great length. The general voice had, beyond doubt, been in favour of the latter measure, and it was supported by the authority of precedent and experience; yet the reasons why ministers rejected it, and preferred the interference of the Bank, rested on sound policy. It was bad, they said, in principle, because government was going out of its sphere when it intermeddled, in a pecuniary view, with the commercial interests of the country, and became a liberal banker, as it were, or a generous, and not very inquisitive, lender. To hold itself forth, likewise, as ready, on the occurrence of any general embarrassment, to pour forth its funds for the behoof of the involved trader, was, in reality, to offer a premium to improvidence, and seducc individuals to rely more on the relief which they might obtain from government, than on their own friends, their own prudence, or their own exertions. When the agricultural interests were suffering under a similar pressure, they made a similar demand: it was refused, not from any difficulty in the execution, but from objection to the principle; and if it were now granted under a commercial pressure, how could it ever again be denied? The very fact that the

Bank charter empowered that body to make advances in the way which was now proposed, proved that it had been foreseen that circumstances might arise, in which it would be proper and desirable to exercise that power, and on the Bank would depend all the efficacy even of an issue of Exchequer bills. The commissioners for superintending that issue might direct the funds placed at their disposal in the way best calculated to relieve the public; but this would be of no avail, if the Bank refused to cash the securities which the applicants received. If the Bank refused them, it was not to be expected that any other banker would accept them; and if nobody

took them in, then, besides having failed to increase the quantity of circulating medium, they would add to the already over-stocked market of Exchequer bills-fall to a discount-be received at a premium by the Treasury-and thus necessarily render the revenue of the country less capable of meeting the demands upon it. The question would be different, if relief could be afforded in no other way; but the Bank itself, a mercantile establishment, was able and ready to do all that was necessary to be done to assist mercantile men, and would do it far better than it could be done by the government of the country.

To the objection, that, in advances made by government commissioners, the transaction itself, and the necessary inquiries attending it, were conducted with a degree of secrecy most desirable to the continued credit of the merchant, while the arrangement which had been adopted would expose his affairs and his difficulties to the gaze of the whole body of Bank