thunderbolts of the Nile and Trafalgar prostrated the naval strength of the enemy, and the victories of Wellington first arrested, and at length broke, his military power. Prosperity, universal and unheard of, pervaded every department of the empire. Our colonial possessions encircled the earth-the whole West Indian Islands had fallen into our hands; an empire of sixty millions of men in Hindostan acknowledged our rule; Java was added to our Eastern possessions; and the flag of France had disappeared from every station beyond the sea. Agriculture, commerce, and manufactures at home, had increased in an unparalleled ratio; the landed proprietors were in affluence; wealth to an unheard-of extent had been created among the farmers; the soil, daily increasing in ertility and breadth of cultivated land, had become adequate to the maintenance of a rapidly increasing population; our exports, imports, and tonnage, had mcre than doubled since the war began; and though distress, especially during 1810 and 1811, had at times been severely experienced among the manufacturing operatives, yet, upon the whole, and in average years, their condition was one of extraordinary prosperity. The revenue raised by taxation within the year had risen to seventy-two million pounds, from twenty-one million pounds in 1796; the total expenditure from taxes and loans had reached in 1814 and 1815 the enormous amount of a hundred and seventeen million pounds each year. In the years 1813 and 1814, being the twentieth and the twenty-first of the war, Great Britain had above a million of men in arms in Europe and Asia, and remitted eleven million pounds yearly in subsidies to the continental powers. Yet was this prodigious and unheard-of expenditure so far from exhausting either the capital or resources or the country, that the loan in 1814 was obtained at the rate of four pounds eleven shillings and a penny per cent., being a lower rate than that paid at the commencement of the war; although the annual loan at its close was above thirty-five million pounds, and the population of the empire at that period was only eighteen millions, just two-thirds of what it was found to be by the census of 1841.

"Since the year 1819 the empire has exhibited the most extraordinary spectacle that the world has perhaps ever witnessed; and it is to it that we earnestly request the attention of our readers, because then began the series of causes and effects in which we have ever since been, and still are, involved.

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Considered in one point of view, there never was a nation which, in an equal space of time, had made so extraordinary a progress. Its population had advanced from twenty millions six hundred thousand in 1819, to twenty-eight millions in 1844; its imports had increased from thirty million pounds in the former riod, to seventy million pounds in the latter; its exports had pevanced during the same period from forty-four million pounds

to a hundred and thirty million pounds; its shipping from two million three hundred and fifty thousand tons to three million nine hundred thousand. There never, perhaps, was such a growth in these the great limbs of industry in so short a period in any other state. Nor had agriculture been behind the other staple branches of national industry. Its produce had kept pace with the income, unparalleled in an old state in the population, as well as the still more rapid multiplication of cattle and horses for the purposes of use and luxury; and amidst this extraordinary growth of consumption the still more extraordinary fact was exhibited of the average importation of grain steadily declining from the commencement of the century, till at length, anterior to the six bad seasons in succession, which commenced in 1836, it had sunk to four hundred thousand quarters on an average of the five preceding years, being not a hundredth part of the annual consumption of men and animals, which is about fifty million quarters. And what is most extraordinary of all, the returns of the income tax, when laid on even in the year 1842, a period of severe and unprecedented commercial depression, proved the existence, in Great Britain alone, of two hundred million pounds of annual income of persons enjoying above a hundred and fifty pounds a-year each; of which immense sum about a hundred and fifty million pounds was from the fruits of realized capital, either in land or some other durable investment. It is probable that such an accumulation of wealth never existed before in any single state, not even in Rome at the period of its highest splendour.

"Considered in another view, there never was a period in which a greater amount of financial embarrassment has been experienced by Government, or more wide-spread and acute suffering been endured by the people. So far has the exchequer been from sharing in the flood of wealth which has thus been so profusely poured into the empire, that it has, with the exception of two or three years of extraordinary and perilous prosperity, been, during the whole of this period, in a state of difficulty, which at last brought the nation to such a pass that it was extricated from absolute insolvency only by the re-imposition, during European peace, of the war income-tax. Not only was the provident and far-seeing system of Mr. Pitt for the redemption of the debt practically abandoned during the necessities of this calamitous period, but the national account was turned the other way, and the annual deficiency gradually increased till it had reached the enormous amount of four million pounds annually, and added, in six years of peace, no less than eleven million pounds to the amount of the national debt. The nation, during the latter years of the war, prospered and experienced general well-being under an annual taxation of seventytwo million pounds, drawn from eighteen millions of souls: in the latter years of the peace it has, with the utmost difficulty, drawn

fifty million pounds from a population of twenty-seven millions. Wages in the former period were high, employment abundant, the working classes prosperous, with an export of British and colonial produce of from forty-five million to fifty million pounds annually: in the latter wages were low, employment difficult, suffering universal, with an annual exportation to the amount of a hundred and twenty million to a hundred and thirty milion pounds.

"But extraordinary and apparently inexplicable as these facts are, they are yet exceeded in marvel by the details of our social and economical state during this period of unparalleled increase in our material resources. It may safely be affirmed that the anxiety and distress which have been felt during that brilliant period of national growth have never been surpassed, at least in a state possessing the external mark of prosperity. It is well known to what straits the Bank of England has been reduced on two different occasions in that period. In December, 1825, it is sain they were saved from stopping payment only by the accidental discovery of a chest of old notes, and the fortunate receipt of a large remittance of bullion from Rothschild; in November, 1839, their stock of specie was reduced to two million eight hundred thousand pounds, and they were under the necessity of negotiating a loan of several millions sterling from the Bank of France."

We have furnished enough to show the contrast Mr. Alison draws between "a sufficient" currency as it existed before the fatal Monetary Act of 1819, and "a contracted" currency, which has unhappily ruled since the passing of that measure. We will only add the following impressive and eloquent passage from the closing part of the volume.

، It is often said that the bill of 1819 was a great error, but that it has been got over; that prices have become accommodated to the new scale; that the sufferers by it are bankrupt, dead, and buried, and that everything would be thrown into confusion again if any change were now made. The seven hundred and seventyfive millions of the national debt has not become accommodated to the change; the thousand millions of private debts in the community has not found its debtors inured to the change; the payers of taxes, whose incomes have been lowered fifty per cent. by its effects, have not become reconciled to the change; the manufacturing and commercial classes, exposed every five or six years to a frightful monetary crisis, fatal to a large part of the persons engaged in business, in consequence of the present obligation of the Bank to pay in specie at the Mint prices, are not enamoured of it; the farmers, who find the prices received for their produce lowered from fifty to seventy-five per cent. are not reconciled to it; the nation, whose resources have been so seriously impaired by its effects, that any increase from indirect taxation has become im

possible, and the ultima ratio of an income tax has become indispensable in the thirtieth year of peace, has not become accustomed to it. The evils of the system, as long as it is adhered to, are lasting, corroding, and irremoveable. They are not over; they are only in their infancy."

These extracts will, no doubt, lead some of our readers to inquire for a remedy to a state of things so alarming. In a future article we will furnish them with the remedy suggested by Mr. Alison, and by others. In the meantime, the great object of all should be to promote, in every constitutional way, an inquiry into the effects of our existing circulating medium on prices, on the wages of labour, and on the comfort, happiness, and prosperity of the whole of the producing classes. We will only now add, that the statistics in the appendix to Mr. Alison's volume are beyond expression valuable; they will do much to bring the question to a speedy and a just decision.

GLEANINGS FROM MY SKETCH-BOOK.

BY N. B.

No. I.

THE WIDOWED BRIDE.

It was a tempestuous evening in the dreary month of November when a large party were assembled around a glowing fire in the hospitable mansion of Dr. D--, late resident physician to the --Lunatic Asylum. Music and dancing were laid aside, and all eyes were bent in eager expectation on the doctor, who held in his hand a book containing several very lovely portraits.

"Did you indeed know the original of this ?" exclaimed one of the group, pointing to a beautiful girl, apparently about eighteen, splendidly attired in a robe of white satin ornamented with pearls and orange flowers; "but how strange that black crape veil looks over that elegant wreath!"

"Yes, my dear girl, I knew her well, and her's, alas! is a sad, sad tale; and now I recollect, it was twenty years ago this very day that I first became acquainted with her."

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Pray tell us how, dear Dr. D--," exclaimed half-a-dozen voices at once. And, thus petitioned, he began :

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Well, then, it is just twenty years ago this very evening that I was aroused from a gentle slumber, into which I had fallen in my easy chair, by the entrance of a servant with a note, which merely contained these words-Dr. D is entreated to lose no time in hastening to the Inn, to meet a patient destined for the Asylum, but who is now too ill to continue her journey unless it be under his care.' This inn was about sixteen miles from my residence, situated on a dreary moor many miles in extent, to reach which I should have to traverse a most unfrequented road. It was therefore in no very good humour that I proceeded to do the bidding of the unknown writer; for in his haste (the note had evidently been written hurriedly) he had forgotten to add his signature. The rain was descending in torrents, and the wind howled fearfully; indeed, so terrific was the storm that at first my horses refused to brave it, but by dint of spurring and flogging we at last set off. Faster and faster fell the rain, higher and higher rose the tempest, yet still we journeyed on; when suddenly the progress of the carriage was arrested, and the postilion informed me that the lights were out and he could not see a step. What was to be done? To return was useless, espe