fan into a flame the then smouldering desire for a revolution in the system of Government. Napoleon maintained that "every man has his price," and that if a bribe does not succeed, it is only because it is not large enough. It seems certainly true that there is no class of men, howsoever loyal and politically contented, who will not become Radical Reformers under prolonged suffering in their business and worldly affairs. It was the long Agricultural distress which, by producing discontent among both farmers and landowners, carried the Reform Bill of 1831, in a Legislature in which the Landinterest predominated. As Alison, then a youth at college, put the matter, "Given the Toryism of a landed proprietor, how many years of want of rents will reduce him to a Radical Reformer!" A somewhat parallel phenomenon is apparent at the present time, when the distress produced by a long series of bad harvests has largely converted the farmers to the side of Innovation, especially as regards the Land-laws, and has raised opposition to Primogeniture, &c., among the class who hitherto have been most favourable to that law of inheritance. When such is the potent influence of Distress upon the agricultural classes, who in all countries are the stablest supporters of old institutions, it is needless to speak of the impulse which Distress gives to political innovation on the part of the more mobile and excitable manufacturing classes. The passion for political change may readily assume a dangerous and noxious form, under the pressure of hardship

and suffering, even though it be occasioned simply by the course of the seasons and influence of the weather and certainly it behoves statesmen, entrusted with the welfare of their country, to guard well that periods of national distress are not aggravated, or even created (as has sometimes happened), by the operation of the Monetary system, which more than any other is the product of pure legislative enactment, and which, as shown abundantly in history, and not least so in our own annals, is one of the most powerful agents for weal or woe upon the condition of a nation,-especially of a nation like our own, whose needs alike of sustenance, industry, and enterprise far transcend the limits and resources of our own islands; and whose very existence is dependent upon a world-wide commerce and foreign financial investments, necessarily full of vicissitudes, and with ceaseless ebb and flow of the precious metal which has been made by law the sole basis of our currency and entire banking system, which in turn is the indispensable support of the whole trade of the kingdom and employment of the people.

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CHAPTER XIV.

THE SCARCITY LESSENS.-BEGINNINGS OF A NEW GOLD-SUPPLY.

We now enter upon a period, of nearly twenty years, during which the annual supply of the precious metals gradually increased, until it became fully onehalf larger than it had been at the beginning of the century, and more than three times as large as it was at the outset of this period, viz., in 1829. Contemporaneously—although it was in great part a period of stagnation in the British Isles-there was a considerable increase of general production and trade throughout the world: an increase of domestic production and trade in each of the leading countries of the globe, and also of international trade, or the general commerce of the world. The accumulation of wealth, too, progressed. And in consequence of this progress in material civilisation, the requirement for money increased, in its twofold shape,—namely, alike as actual currency, for effecting exchanges of property in its various forms, labour included; and also as a means of storing wealth, in a condensed and

most readily available shape. Hence, as will be shown, despite the increase in the annual supply of the precious metals, the period of scarcity did not come to an end.

Happily, there was in one respect a most favourable difference between the twenty years immediately antecedent to 1848 and the first quarter of the century, when the dearth of the precious metals was at its height. That dearth had been aggravated and intensified by the contemporaneous course of the longest and most terrible war which Europe has witnessed. But thereafter, as a sequel to that great war, a long period of international peace ensued,— the famous Forty Years' Peace, which followed the victory of Waterloo, and to the attainment of which the noble efforts, the indomitable valour and energies, of our own nation had so largely contributed. Industry and enterprise-with their results, production and trade-advanced considerably in all countries during the period at which we are now arrived; but happily the increased requirement for the precious metals thereby occasioned was not added to by the imperious specie-demands of War. Every Treaty of Peace is perishable: the wisest and most perfect Treaty can do no more than attain what is possible in the world, or among the rival nations, at the date of its framing. It cannot meet unknown or undeveloped requirements, nor satisfy opinions and sentiments of future growth or predominance. Indeed it is such changes of views and sentiments which ere long antiquate and destroy all treaties. And, what

VOL. II.

H

ever defects may now be attributed to the territorial arrangements made by the Congress of Vienna, the Treaties of 1815 at least gave to Europe the longest period of repose from international combat which our Continent has enjoyed; while the fame of Waterloo, and of the redoubtable part played by Great Britain throughout the War, secured for our country not only immunity from attack, but a peerless position of power in the international politics of Europe.

The period now in question, 1830-48 (or indeed the somewhat longer period between 1810 and 1848) may be regarded as an Interregnum between the Silver and Golden Ages of the world,—a transitional period in the history of the precious metals, during which Silver was gradually losing its old supremacy, alike as regards the amount of supply and its use and acceptability as Money, the circulating medium of the civilised world.

The Great Silver Age of the world came to a close with the outbreak of the Revolutions in Spanish America, which produced a neglect and partial abandonment of the Mines of the New World,—some of which, like those of Potosi, had been worked continuously and profitably for upwards of two centuries and a half. Thereafter the American production of the precious metals, in which Silver predominated, declined greatly; and even when the new American republics had become established, the Mines of those countries never regained anything like their old productiveness. On the other hand, a notable increase ere long began in the production of the