develop the bitterness of the poisonous counterfeit. From statements drawn up just after the time of which we write, it appears that for the one hundred and fifty-six joint stock companies of 1823, there were five hundred and thirty-two in 1825, with a nominal capital of £441,649,600; and in the same period, foreign loans were subscribed to the amount of eighteen millions. The professed objects of these associations were strangely various of many, ludicrously absurd. There were companies for mining in the Corderillas, and for milking the wild herds of the Pampas-for cutting through the Isthmus of Panama, and for interlacing England with canals— for lighting the obscurest villages with gas, for baking and washing by steam, and for supplying every breakfast-table with eggs hatched and butter churned by the same ubiquitous power. It was in vain that a sober few exposed the audacious emptiness of many of these schemes, the impossible pretensions of others, the enormous inflation of resources involved in the aggregate of even the honest and probable — in vain that the history of former manias was republished as a warning and a satire-remonstrance and ridicule were alike lost upon a nation maddened by a sudden lust of riches and a delirious dream of romance. But the hour of awakening could not be delayed, nor its bitterness mitigated. In July the king closed the session of 1825 with congratulations on "the general and increasing prosperity," but his ministers could scarcely be blind to some ill omens. The funds had been declining for some months--goods were coming home by shiploads from gorged markets and unpeopled shores -no gold was yielded by the Mexican mines in which millions of silver had been sunk—the banks in town and country began to close their hands, and every dealer found a difficulty in getting either accommodation or cash. The anxiety that had long been felt changed to alarm, and alarm soon became a panic. One commercial house stopped, and then two or three every day. Next the country banks began to close, every stoppage stimulating a " run," which soon reached to London. Not till the 5th of December did a Lombard-street house give way-but it was the famous one of Sir Peter Pole and Company; and was immediately followed by that of Williams. Within five or six weeks, sixty or seventy had stopped-the Bank of England was only saved, according to the confession of one of its directors, by the re-issue of one pound notes, a box of which was luckily discovered. The Cabinet set the Mint to work to coin sovereigns to supply the place of the four millions of notes which were as so much exploded gunpowder; and even ventured to stop the stamping of notes altogether. At the meeting of Parliament (in February) the urgency of the crisis was pleaded as a justification of this acknowledged stretch of Ministerial prerogative; and, supported by the City, the indemnity asked for was accorded by a majority of 222 to 39. At the same time, the stamping of

notes was to be resumed for a limited period, the Bank of England was induced to establish provincial branches, and the basis of country banks was enlarged by permission to include any number of partners. In consequence of a vigorous opposition in Scotland-headed by Sir Walter Scott (himself ruined in the crash) in the character of "Malachi Malagrowther" -the banking system of that country, which had well withstood the ordeal, was allowed to remain unaltered. By the end of February, the crisis had passed, but there was still much suffering to be endured. Not only were thousands of families stripped of their moderate possessions, and many of larger means utterly ruined, but every one was crippled-those who had stood aloof from the race were maimed if not trampled in the retreat— business was at a stand-still, and the habitually poor were deep in distress at the hardest season of the year. There was, perhaps, more of virtue and generosity displayed than might have been expected. If the mercantile classes generally were angry with the Government for their refusal to force a revival of credit by an issue of Exchequer Bills, they responded to their appeal to sustain confidence in their own remaining resources. The Bank

was authorized to make advances to the amount of three millions. Presently, the wheels of commerce moved again, and began slowly to drag the nation from the slough into which it had fallen in pursuit of the fantasy of miraculous wealth.

But the poor are ever the first to feel, and the last to be relieved from, the pressure of general calamity. So early in the reaction as August there were quarrels between the shipowners and seamen of Sunderland, which were not quelled till five persons had been shot. In November there was a successful rebellion of the cotters of the Isle of Man against the collection of tithe on their potatoes. In the spring of the next year, in Lancashire and Yorkshire there was a formidable rising, stimulated by severe distress, but unhappily directed against power-looms; a thousand of which were destroyed in one week in and around Blackburn-not one left standing. The silk-weavers of London and Dublin, of Norwich and Carlisle, were without work, or refused it at such wages as the impoverished manufacturers could give; and sought relief by methods varying in the degree of their unfortunate ineptitude. Even the sluggish peasantry of Somersetshire were goaded by lack of food to attack the provision-sellers of Trowbridge. As the summer advanced, drought was found to prevail. It had been resolved to dissolve Parliament, though this was only its sixth session; and Ministers-though they had obtained a majority of 101 against a motion by Mr. Hume for a committee of inquiry into the existing distress-were unwilling to be left without authority to mitigate the dearth that was evidently impending, while there were large stores of foreign corn in the ports. They carried with some difficulty two bills-one releasing 300,000

quarters already in bond; and the other authorizing the admission of 500,000 quarters if it should be necessary to do so—the agriculturist party insisting on saddling Government with the responsibility of determining the necessity. That responsibility they were reluctantly compelled to assume. The drought increased to a remarkable degree; and as accounts from the north of Europe foretold a scarcity, the final price at which corn was excluded from our shores was passed before the harvest was over; but as six weeks must elapse before the average would be struck in the regular manner, an Order in Council at once admitted those kinds of grain which were most needed. The wheat crop, after all, was not deficient; but it was felt that the subject of the corn-laws must be once more reconsidered, and during the recess, Lord Liverpool and Mr. Huskisson elaborated a measure which it eventually fell to Mr. Canning's lot to introduce [in May, 1827]. The bill provided that foreign corn should be imported and warehoused duty free; and released on the payment of a certain scale of dutieswheat at 1s. duty when it was 70s. a quarter, the duty increasing 2s. with every 1s. of decrease in price. It passed the Commons by majorities of about three to one. In the Lords, it was destroyed through a singular misunderstanding among Ministers one of themselves (the Duke of Wellington) proposing and carrying an amendment fatal to the principle of the bill, in the opinion of its authors. The next year it was revived, with some modifications, by a Cabinet of which the Duke was chief, and carried without trouble. It was reserved for a member of both Ministries, fourteen years later, to effect a radical alteration in the laws so jealously guarded by the strongest parties in the Legislature—and, a few years later still, to decree their entire extinction. When the famished weavers of Bethnal Green and Carlisle clamoured in 1826 for corn-law repeal, they were answered by military and assize commissions, under the administration of the very man on whose monument is the record, that he enabled industry to eat its bread unleavened by the bitterness of taxation.

THE THREE ERAS OF THE CATHOLIC QUESTION-THE LAST STAGE REACHED-MR. CANNING'S BILL FOR THE ADMISSION OF CATHOLIC PEERS TO PARLIAMENT-SCENE WITH MR. BROUGHAM-THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION-AN ACT PASSED FOR ITS SUPPRESSION-MR. CANNING, MR. PEEL, AND THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD-SIR F. BURDETT'S CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL-THE DUKE OF YORK'S DECLARATION-GENERAL ELECTION-THE DUKE OF YORK'S DEATH-CANNING'S PREMIERSHIP AND DEATH-THE GODERICH CABINET-THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON PRIME MINISTER-REPEAL OF TEST AND CORPORATION ACTS-THE CLARE ELECTION-THE ORANGE CLUBS AND THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION-SIGNS OF YIELDING-MR. PEEL RESIGNS THE REPRESENTATION OF OXFORD THE CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL-THE KING'S RELUCTANT ASSENT-MR. O'CONNELL'S RE-ELECTION FOR CLARE.

THE death of Henry Grattan completed, as his public life had constituted, a second era in the history of the Catholic question. The first period extended from the violation, by King William the Third, of the treaty of Limerick-which assured to the Catholics of Ireland the secure enjoyment of their religion-to the assertion of independence in 1780; the period of the execrable penal laws. The second period was that of degradation and disabilities, peacefully because hopefully endured - endured, during the latter half of the term, on the understanding that only the life of an aged monarch stood between four millions of his subjects and their civil rights. At the commencement of the third period, the Catholics of Ireland were fully four to one to the Protestants. Their grievances consisted in exclusion from Parliament, from posts of distinction and trust, from municipal offices, virtually from the public service, and even from the jury-box; besides which, no Catholic could be guardian to a Protestant, and no Catholic priest could be a guardian at all; they were allowed to have arms only under certain restrictions, and not at all to keep arms for sale or as a matter of trade. In 1808, as we have seen, they stirred from their position of passive, waiting hope, rejected Mr. Grattan's proposition to allow the Government a veto on the appointment of their bishops, and commenced an agitation which the law officers of the Crown could not and Parliament would not interfere to put down. With the premiership of Lord Liverpool, theirs became apen question. Repeatedly, it will be remembered, the lower House, led by Cash and Canning, had affirmed the justice of their claims. Now that George the I

the Castle, and Mr. Canning in the Cabine, the Marquis of Wellesley at

brook delay?

should they suffer or

The great statesman devoted to their service what last Parliamentary speech. On the 30th of April, 1822, he шded for his

to bring in a bill to admit Catholic peers to the House of Lords. He was probably induced to make that his specific effort, by the circumstance that the Catholic peers had been conspicuous in the recent ceremonial of the coronation-at all events, he made splendid oratorical use of the fact:"Did it occur to the representatives of Europe, when contemplating this animating spectacle-did it occur to the ambassadors of Catholic Austria, of Catholic France, or of states more bigoted in matters of religion, that the moment this ceremony was over the Duke of Norfolk would become disseised of the exercise of his privileges among his fellow-peers ?—that his robes of ceremony were to be laid aside and hung up until the distant (be it a very distant!) day when the coronation of a successor to his present most gracious sovereign might again call him forth to assist at a similar solemnization ?-that, after being thus exhibited to the eyes of the peers and people of England, and to the representatives of the princes and nations of the world, the Duke of Norfolk-highest in rank among the peers-the Lord Clifford, and others like him, representing a long line of illustrious ancestry, as if called forth and furnished for the occasion, like the lustres and banners that flamed and glittered in the scene, were to be, like them, thrown by as useless and trumpery formalities ?—that they might bend the knee and kiss the hand; that they might bear the train or rear the canopy; might discharge the offices assigned by Roman pride to their barbarian

ancestors

'Purpurea tollant aulæ Britanni;'

but that with the pageantry of the hour, their importance faded away; that as their distinction vanished, their humiliation returned; and that he who headed the procession of peers to-day, could not sit among them as their equal on the morrow!" The bill thus strikingly recommended was strongly opposed by Mr. Peel, passed the Commons by but small majorities, and was thrown over in the Lords by a majority of 42.

In the next session (1823), instead of presiding at the council board in Calcutta, Mr. Canning was seated on the treasury bench of the Commons. His being there was interpreted—such was the deplorable want of mutual confidence among public men-into an abandonment of the Catholic cause. On the night of the 17th April a discussion arose on the presentation of a proCatholic petition from some clergymen of the diocese of Norwich (whose bishop was the first of the episcopal bench to take that side). In this debate, Sir F. Burdett, Mr. Teirney, Mr. Grey Bennett, and Mr. Brougham, successively attacked Mr. Canning for his supposed tergiversation-the lastmentioned with such characteristic vehemence of invective as might have been unbearable to a less sensitive spirit than that of the genius as well as the politician. At length he rose, and with terrible calmness gave Mr. Brougham the lie! Mr. Speaker was the first to break the dead silence that ensued