ples must come in collision-if no possible means can be devised whereby they can be reconciled with each other, he will sacrifice the instrument to the object, and shake off the debt, "like a dew-drop from a lion's mane."

The Government must not lay the flattering unction to their souls, that they are already come to the worst. Lord Liverpool boasted of this seven years ago, and found himself woefully deceived. They are yet but at the beginning of troubles. They have as yet scarcely tasted a drop of that bitter cup, which they must drain to the very dregs. When they shall see the continental level of prices established permanently in England; when they shall see the continental level of rents established, and the continental level of taxation and of wages established; when they shall see all these mighty consequences established in England, and all working and harmonizing together, then they may begin to think that their troubles are at an end. But what a world of calamities must they not witness before this state of things appears! Famine, bankruptcy, and revolution-these are the three demons which they have yet to grapple with. When the Duke of Wellington shall have overcome these gaunt and remorseless enemies, he may sit down under the shadow of his laurels, and rest in peace.

These are probably new enemies to the Duke of Wellington. They are not new to Lord Liver

pool; they were proved to him to be the inevitable consequences of his measures in 1819. It was proved to him in 1819, that he was entering upon "a race where the course was filled with difficulties and distresses, and the goal was death.” It was proved to him that he was pursuing a course, "beginning with poverty, misery, and universal fraud, and ending in famine, bankruptcy, and revolution." It was proved to him, that in scattering the ruin over a series of years, he was not changing its character, but that he was "giving the nation to perish by the tedious and intolerable agonies of prolonged disease, instead of sinking under the sudden and swift destruction which a bolder policy would have occasioned." It was proved to him, in every shape and way in which proof can be given, that the restoration of the continental measure of prices would necessarily produce the restoration of the continental level of prices; that this continental level of prices would literally double the real weight and the real value of all British obligations; and that the consequent pressure of British obligations upon the country would be made so extreme, that it would be certain "to pull down the fabric of society upon his head." With desperate fatuity he persevered in his fatal careerhe rejected all counsel - he refused all inquiry. The panic comes, and, with a voice of thunder, tells him that he is wrong; still he perseveres. Prosperity and adversity are laid both before

him. Instead of rectifying the standard, which caused the adversity, he proceeds to rectify the paper, which caused the prosperity! Stern, inflexible, ruthless, and remorseless to the very last, with dying breath he imprecates calumnies and penalties on the heads of his victims, and leaves famine, bankruptcy, and anarchy, as a legacy to his

successors.

A SCOTCH BANKER.

No. VII.

SCOTCH AND ENGLISH BANKERS.

July 20, 1828.

THE Scotch banking system is somewhat different, but it is not better than the English banking system. The failures among the English banks are not so much a proof of weakness or imprudence in those banks, as they are of crime or error in the Government. The principal, if not the only fault, in the English bankers, has been ignorance; not ignorance of their own business, but ignorance of the wild and mortal political measures which the Government has been secretly setting in operation. This has been their grand fault. In consequence of this fault, they have stood still patiently, and suffered themselves to be fleeced and plundered for fourteen years together. Some of them have been fleeced out of their whole property, and all of them have been unjustly injured in their property and their character in various ways. If they had been as good politicians as they are bankers, if they had understood their political rights and interests properly, they would have resisted the introduction of the present gold and silver coins into circulation, except

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with a prospective operation; and they would have insisted upon their right of making their retrospective payments in Bank of England notes, or in some other description of paper currency, equally cheap and tangible as that in which they had made themselves liable to such payments. There would then have been no failures among them, or none worth notice, and none among their connections generally. The debts due to them from the public, contracted in what Lord Goderich calls "worthless rags,' would all, generally speaking, have been good; and they would also all have been tangible, or capable of being got in when wanted. But when the public, or rather that portion of the public which comprises the productive classes, when these unhappy helots and adscripti gleba" were ordered to pay the bankers heavy gold at the ancient low price, instead of "worthless rags," it is no wonder that the public should have become insolvent to the bankers, and that the bankers in their turn should have been, in some cases, incapacitated from paying every body, at a period when nobody could pay them! It does not appear, however, that many of the English banks have been made absolutely insolvent; for even the individuals among them who have been driven into the Gazette, seem generally to have paid 20s. in the pound. The public have therefore not been injured by the English bankers; but, on the contrary, have been greatly benefited by the sacrifices which the bankers made in support of public credit, at a time when all credit must have given way, but for their

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