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concerned, been nearly confined to London, Liverpool, Newcastleon-Tyne, Manchester and its dependencies; and in a very minor degree (if at all) Leeds, Birmingham, and Bristol. The whole rural district of England, including many towns having from fifty to a hundred thousand inhabitants, has been nearly unaffected. We have the means of knowing that, in the middle of England, the sums on deposit with the country bankers have not been diminished by 10 per cent. The bankers have not raised the rate of interest which they allow to their depositors. They have not charged more than 5 per cent. where they have made advances, nor more than the same rate for the discount of bills, either across the counter or to their customers. The shopkeeping and local manufactures of the rural districts, and of all towns which we have not included in our list, have not been visibly affected, and all agricultural payments, no small item, have been made with their accustomed ease and regularity. We state these circumstances in order to show how large a proportion of the country is ready to start on the work of reparation.

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Having thus endeavoured to assign some limits to the existing pecuniary pressure, we will say a few words about panic. We remember a clever picture in Punch,' in which two West End butcher's boys having met in the streets, one of them, propping his back against a post, says to the other- Jos! what is a panic?" 'I don't know,' says Jos; but they say there is one to be seen in the City. That is about as definite an idea as most people have of a panic. When some great and unexpected failure has burst on the commercial and monetary world, like that of Sanderson, or Trueman and Cooke, both of them solvent houses-when two or three great banks have suspended their payments, as in Liverpool —or when the suspension of one has been attended with a severe run on another, as in Newcastle-it is very natural that every dealer in money and in credit should say 'I will enter into no new transactions to-day. I must have to-day to look about me— to learn whose credit these events may affect and to consider what will be the future value of money.' This, when it exists extensively, may be fairly called a panic. But even such a panic as this is generally appreciable at per centum. It has its price. It is either a 10 per centum, or a 15 per centum, or a 20 per centum panic. And it never lasts above a day or two at the utmost. But we should think the principal panic must have existed in the minds of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and of Sir R. Peel, when they saw the reserve in the Bank of England daily diminishing.

The Bill of 1844-we believe, after all, we must own-has hardly been fairly tried. To try it fairly (its friends may say)

we

we should require an independent Bank parlour-not a set of men, a good per centage of whom has always been in the habit of being insolvent; and a good John Bull of a Governor (we have been told there is such a man), who would care neither for First Lords of the Treasury, nor for Chancellors of the Exchequer, but who would say, 'Here is the law on one hand, which I must keep; and here is my proprietary on the other, for whom I must do the best I can.' He would sit in the Bank parlour; you could not get him west of Temple Bar.

When we travelled in the North, on our arrival at Carlisle the coach-proprietor insisted on having all the luggage, which had arrived on two coaches, loaded on to one. It rose to a fearful height. When the coachman saw his load, he remonstrated with the proprietor, and said that he did not think it possible to drive that load safely over his ground. The proprietor said, ‘That is no business of yours. Get on the box, and be off.' The coachman, being a conscientious man, and not willing to kill any man without giving him warning, then addressed his passengers'Gentlemen, you see that coach. Mr. Wilson has ordered me to drive it, and I shall drive it; and, gentlemen, I shall keep time.' Then, anticipating the apology which they would not be able to hear when they were killed, he said, with much pathos, Gentlemen, I do assure you it is not my fault.'

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So our John Bull of a Governor told the two great financeministers and the legislature that their coach would break down when they came to the bad road. But they told him that he was an old woman; to go on, and stick to the Act. So our John Bull would have done. He would have gone to his Bank parlour (half filling it), and would have kept the Act, and thought about his proprietary: the only two things with which he would have had any concern. When he found his reserve dwindled down to between one and two millions, he would have said, 'Now I think I have made as much money for my proprietary as I safely can; I shall hold my hand, keep the Act, and take care of ourselves.' A deputation comes up to him from Liverpool, wanting a million or something of that sort. He says, 'Gentlemen, there is our last return: there is our Act of Parliament. You see we cannot do it.' So the deputation speeds away to Downing-street, where it finds the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the First Lord of the Treasury, and the panic-and Sir R. Peel not very far off. Then these two great finance-ministers would jump into a cab, and hurry off to the Bank, and, falling on their marrow-bones before the big man in the parlour, they would say, If you have any bowels of compassion, break the law for us-the law of 1844.

Sir R. Peel has authorized us to say, that the law of 1844 ought to be broken. "Rob us the Exchequer, Hal." We will do anything you require-we will write you a letter-we will call Parliament together-we will bring in a Bill of Indemnity. Here we are to pledge the whole support of Government. Sir R. Peel has authorized us to pledge the support of the amicable opposition.' Give us such a Governor of the Bank, and it will soon be seen who will flinch first-who will cry out first against the Act

of 1844.

That Act is now on its trial before the country-arraigned for being mischievous and good for nothing. If we were its counsel, we should advise it to ask leave of the court to plead guilty to the minor offence of being Good for nothing; but if Sir R. Peel, Sir C. Wood, and Sir William Clay persist in holding up their hands and saying for it Not guilty, we wish them a good deliverance. God save the Queen!

P.S. Since the foregoing hints were penned we have read the debate on the appointment of the Banking Committee. We are gratified to find in it, in the aggregate, clearer views than we have been used to in such parliamentary discussions. The defence of the Bill of 1844 was exactly what everybody anticipated. 'Tis true that the Bill did not prevent wild speculation and panic, though we said it would. We said there would be no more 1825's; but we never thought so, and you must not find fault with us; that was only allowable parliamentary exaggeration. This, however, we tell you, that, but for the Bill of 1844, the speculation and the panic would have been a great deal worse than they have been.' As this defence requires neither knowledge, nor talent, nor any qualities but a bold face, and great confidence in the timidity and ignorance of your audience, we have nothing to say to it. But one assumption was made by two or three speakers in the debate so extremely barefaced, that we cannot wholly pass it by. It was assumed that but for the Bill of 1844 more than seven millions of gold would not have remained in the Bank of England during the worst of the pressure. The reason seven millions odd remained was that there were sixteen millions odd to begin with, and that the export of nine millions sufficed to turn the exchanges. About the same sum turned them in 1825, and a very much less sum on every other occasion. Does any one suppose that, if the Bank had begun with eight millions of gold, and the famine, and the Bill of 1844, that a single sovereign would have been

left

left at the end of the pressure? In 1797 we exported not only all the gold in the Bank of England, but every guinea out of our circulation, to carry on a foreign war. And do you suppose that the men of 1847 would have let the two sides of their stomach grow together for want of food, because we had put some stupid quackery into an Act of Parliament, and had divided the Bank into a banking department and an issue department? We send gold abroad when we want something for it, and we keep it at home when we don't; without, in either case, consulting the fancies of Sir W. Clay and Sir C. Wood. Now, we do not send gold abroad because we want nothing; we do not want food, nor tea, nor sugar, nor coffee, nor indigo. Neither, it appears, do we owe money abroad, because people from all quarters are sending bullion to pay their debts to us.

ART. X.-The present Movement in Italy. By the Marchese Massimo d'Azeglio. Translated from the Italian. London, 1847.

THE

HE Marchese d'Azeglio, whose work, in the absence of a better, we have placed at the head of this article, is a native of Piedmont, a man of respectable family, and the son-in-law of the celebrated Manzoni. He has studied painting with professional assiduity and with considerable success; he has also been a candidate for fame in the walks of literature; he, too, is the author of historical romances, which have been praised by his countrymen, but of which we confess we have never qualified ourselves to judge. He is, no doubt, a man of general accomplishment and of lively talent; but we have yet to learn that he is entitled to interpret between Italy and the rest of Europe -to rebuke princes, or dictate to imaginary senates. We congratulate him, however, on having rightly understood the improved taste of the present age in avoiding all thundering denunciations and every appeal to the knife of Timoleon or Brutus. He assures foreign countries' that Italians no longer take Rienzi or the Gracchi for their model. For ourselves, while we recognise some traits of Rienzi, we own we can trace but little imitation of the energy of the Gracchi. It is the absence of courage, still more than of practical talent, that has been so wofully conspicuous in all the efforts of the Liberali. Their wishes, he says, are moderated, and their disinterestedness increased. We would gladly believe him :-but we were in Italy during the rebellion of 1831, and during the commotions of 1843

and

and 1845, and we have not got over the disgust of witnessing such a race of meanness, corruption, and treachery.

The Marchese is sanguine in his hopes of the good effect of the 'moral force' which is to be opposed to existing governments. We do not understand him, and we think he does not understand himself, unless, indeed, he is guilty of mystifying his readers. Moral force' in the people, we take it, can only mean physical weakness in the governors; nor can 'moral force' have any effect unless supported by physical energy. It was not in 'moral force' that the confidence of the Reformers was placed in 1831 (the last occasion on which they had an opportunity of displaying their prowess), since it was to a civil war that they trusted for success. May not the Papal government of that day be said to have trusted more effectually to moral force' when it purchased the submission and the secrets of the rebel chiefs with gold?

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We shall make few comments on · Gli ultimi casi di Romagna a sort of defence of the abortive risings in Romagna. He condemns them himself, but more, we fear, because they were premature and unsuccessful than because they were flagitious. We have never admired what is called the Liberal cause' in Italy, but we would not do it the injustice to confound it with the felony of the smugglers at Ravenna, or of the desperadoes and ruffians of Rimini, who seized a defenceless town, frightened the priests and old women, robbed the treasury, and afterwards dispersed before a few companies of Swiss, to pursue their natural calling in the highways and hedges of Ro

magna.

One chief complaint against the Marchese is that his essay on the new movement is not written in good faith. The real object of it he does not disclose; he leaves it to be divined. The Italians, amongst many pleasing and some valuable qualities, possess an overweening opinion of themselves; they still vaunt their martial skill, and in proof of it appeal to the Scipios and the Cæsars. The Marchese has his full share of national as well as personal vanity-but can he really opine that a union of Italian princes (were some magician to bind that rope of sand for him) could successfully oppose the power of Austria? This question he leaves undiscussed-but his meaning is manifest by allusions to Navarino and to Belgium. It is on the assistance of England, of France, or of Russia, that all Italians must rely who seriously hope to get rid of the German rule.

Our author admits reluctantly that the Austrian is a better government than that of any of the native princes, and he also admits the superior prosperity of that portion of the Peninsula over which it extends, while he justly ridicules the prepos

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