dismal evening, this establishment, which at the beginning of the panic had twenty millions specie, left off with about five hundred thousand pounds in coin, and a similar amount in bullion.  A large freight of gold was on the seas, coming to their aid, and due, but not arrived; the wind was high; and in a few hours the people would be howling round their doors again.  They sent a hasty message to the government, and implored them to suspend, by order in council, the operation of Mr. Peel’s bill for a few days.  A plump negative from Mr. Canning.

Then, being driven to expedients, they bethought them of a chest of 1 pound notes that they had luckily omitted to burn.

Another message to the government, “May we use these?”

“As a temporary expedient, yes.”

The one-pound notes were whirling all over the country before daybreak, and, marvelous anomaly, which took Richard Hardie by surprise, they oiled the waves, the panic abated from that hour.  The holders of country notes took the 1 pound B. E. notes as cash with avidity.  The very sight of them piled on a counter stopped a run in more than one city.

The demand for gold at the Bank of England continued, but less fiercely; and as the ingots still came tumbling in, and the Mint hailed sovereigns on them, their stock of specie rose as the demand declined, and they came out of their fiercest battle with honor.  But, ere the tide turned, things in general came to a pass scarcely known in the history of civilized nations.  Ladies and gentlemen took heirlooms to the pawnbrokers’, and swept their tills of the last coin.  Not only was wild speculation, hitherto so universal and ardent, snuffed out like a candle, but investment ceased and commerce came to a stand-still.  Bank stock, East India stock, and, some days, consols themselves, did not go down; they went out, were blotted from the book of business.  No man would give them gratis; no man would take them on any other terms.  The brokers closed their books; there were no buyers nor sellers.  Trade was coming to the same pass, except the retail business in eatables; and an observant statesman and economist, that watched the phenomenon, pronounced that in forty-eight hours more all dealings would have ceased between man and man, or returned to the rude and primitive form of barter, or direct exchange of men’s several commodities, labor included.

Finally, things crept into their places; shades of distinction were drawn between good securities and bad.  Shares were forfeited, companies dissolved, bladders punctured, balloons flattened, bubbles burst, and thousands of families ruined—­thousands of people beggared—­and the nation itself, its paper fever reduced by a severe bleeding, lay sick, panting, exhausted, and discouraged for a year or two to await the eternal cycle—­torpor, prudence, health, plethora, blood-letting; torpor, prudence, health, plethora, bloodletting, etc., etc., etc., etc., in secula seculorum.