risked our character for justice and impartiality if we had not drawn our information from official and authentic sources, and we have given at the head of this article the authorities to which we appeal.

We fearlessly challenge an examination of the bitterly-denounced Commissioner Yeh's correspondence with the English authorities since the fatal day on which the Chinese culprits were taken out of the Chinese lorcha the Arrow;' and call consideration to the fact, that in 1849 Sir George Bonham had, on the part of his sovereign, agreed to waive that part of the treaty which stipulates for free access to the city of Canton. We merely speak here of Yeh as a diplomatist and statesman, and not with reference to what may yet be proved to have been his conduct to prisoners of war.

And now, in conclusion, what are we to do next in China? If we force our opium upon them, that will not avert the ruin which the monopoly must ultimately bring down upon India. If we go on slaughtering along the coasts, up the Yang-tsi-kiang, and bombard Pekin, that will not increase our trade, nor strengthen our political position. If we are right, we can well afford to be magnanimous : if we are wrong, we may find it wise to remember that these words are written where they must prove true :

For, behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.'

ART IV.-The Commercial Crisis of 1857: its Causes and Results. By Wm. Romaine Callender, Jun. London: Longman and Co.

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HEN continental kinglets and their courtiers taunt us as a nation of shopkeepers, our answer is ready, and our answer is good. Our system is more rational, more solid, more comfortable, and more honourable than all the military pomp of despotic governments. That which is sometimes thrown in our teeth as our shame, really constitutes our glory. If merchants are honest men, they need not be ashamed of being merchants. If our traffic were kept pure, it would be to the nation what the Nile is to Egypt, the main artery of its economic life. There is neither sin nor shame in making bargains, if the bargainers do not cheat.

At the present crisis it is peculiarly important to distinguish clearly between the sound and the unsound in our mercantile system. In our circumstances, the comprehensive rule of Scripture is eminently necessary and suitable: Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.' On the one hand, we must not, through pride and prejudice, cling to evil habits because they are our own on the other hand, we must not, by the sneers of adver

Causes of the Commercial Crisis.

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saries, be driven from principles or practices that are right. It cannot be denied, that the rank fresh growth of the nation's commerce has attracted some vile worms to its root. We must uncover and destroy the vermin, but cherish the noble plant on which they feed.

The reader, if he is pleased to accompany us through this paper, will find some plain-speaking but no croaking. The writer loves his country with a fervent love, and specially exults in her pre-eminent commerce. He has travelled a little in several foreign countries, and has always been pleased to be recognised by his look, as well as by his language, as a denizen of this muchenvied isle. Although by profession he is only a spectator of the busy scene, he is one in spirit as in destiny with his brethren who strip and strive, like ancient athletes, on a more spacious stadium, and for a nobler prize. We love merchants; and love them so well, that we shall proceed incontinent to tell them some of their faults. If they take the reproof as frankly as it is given, they will find it an excellent oil which will not break their heads.

As our object is intensely practical, we shall endeavour to place before our readers in relief some of the more important causes and forms of the disease, and afterwards throw out some suggestions regarding the remedy. For a succinct yet comprehensive history of the crisis, written in a manly style, and pervaded by a healthful moral sentiment, we refer to the pamphlet whose title is prefixed to this paper. We shall assume that the principal features of the gloomy period are still fresh upon the reader's memory, and shall not burden our page with details and figures.

The commercial crisis through which the country has just passed, or is still passing, seems greater than any that we have heretofore experienced, as to the number of bankruptcies, the magnitude of the amounts involved, and the moral delinquencies brought to light. Some portion of this last count, however, if not the whole, is due to the improved machinery which we possess for the detection and exposure of dishonesty.

To

The forms of the evil, and its immediate causes, are various and easily observed. At the very outset of the disastrous course lies the morbid eagerness of each to be his own master, while circumstances demand that he should still be the servant of another. be no longer a working man, earning wages, but a merchant or manufacturer on his own account, is the ambition that fires the heart of our youth. It is, in itself, an innocent and honourable aspiration. As long as it is under subjection to the law of righteousness, it is not only harmless, but eminently conducive to both individual and national prosperity. It is the vital force that makes the machinery go round; and as long as it is regulated by the solid, steady, massive balance-wheel, its operation produces

only

only good; but when, weary of restraint, it snaps asunder the belt which bound it to the balancer, and spins round at will without impediment, it speedily shatters the machine to atoms, and perishes itself in the débris. In a former generation, the indulgence of this tendency to an almost unlimited extent produced no mischief, because, although many were masters, the servants of each were few. Each man was contented with a very diminutive business. The emancipation of one man did not involve the thraldom of hundreds. În our grandfathers' days, you and I might both have been chiefs, although our own roof sheltered all our subjects. Now, it is scarcely possible to be a small merchant. The competitory spirit has spurred science on, and science has served the competitory spirit, until profits, unless they are drawn from a very wide surface, cannot be drawn at all. In providing a supply of water for a large city, if you have access to a great lake, a draught from its depth, not greater than the thickness of cream on a basin of milk, will serve your purpose, as well as many fathoms of a smaller reservoir. This principle has been discovered in merchandise, and driven to a fatal excess.

The next step in the process is, when a man, prevented by the physical conditions of his time from becoming a small merchant, is nevertheless determined to be a merchant, and in absence of cash, extends his operations on credit. Having no foundation on the rock, and being determined to build, he rears his edifice on sand, taking care to shovel in the earth about the roots of his wall, in order to hide the falsehood from his neighbours. Here lies the chief vice of our system. A man extends his business until it touches all the corners of the earth, and involves many hundred thousand pounds. His profits are great if he succeed; his losses great, if he fail: but he has no money of his own: therefore, if he gain, the gain is his; if he lose, the loss falls on his neighbour. And this discreditable thimblerigging is not an exception confined to a few desperadoes, it constitutes a very large proportion of the actual aggregate of trade. In the multitude of the speculators, and the fast methods of their life, each man grows giddy and reckless of results. Accustomed to hard driving and narrow escapes, they dash along, like London cabmen, taking a positive pleasure in grazing the precipice, and flourishing the whip as the danger passes, with leer and a boast that an inch is as good as an ell." But if, at the next turn, the whole concern is upset, the driver trusts that he will leap off in time, and keep at least his own skin whole. It is a heartless system. There is no brotherly love in it. It is loathsomely selfish; and it has become so common, that it has ceased to be wonderful.

An unfailing concomitant of the malady is an extravagantly expensive style of living. One man keeps an establishment of

eighteen

eighteen servants; another must have his table-napkins made of rich flowered silk; a third maintains, simultaneously, three mansions, two for himself, being town and country residences, and one for a friend,' whose name cannot be told. We have given at random some cases that were brought to light in a single city during the past winter. None of these men possessed a penny of their own in the world. They knew quite well that they had nothing wherewith to pay for these luxuries, for they were rogues, not fools. They obtained credit from the banks, and the money so received enabled them to set up establishments which seemed evidence of wealth. In this way retail dealers were deceived; and thinking their shops honoured when the dog-cart and the flunkey halted at the door with an order, gave out goods without limitation, and fell in the crash that followed.

The community are mysteriously bound together. We have all an interest in maintaining the channels of commerce pure. Dishonest dealings by one set of merchants render it impossible for another and better set to transact any business at all. In one city two concerns of fabulous magnitude had grown up in the sewed muslin manufacture. For several years, honest men, with abundant means in the same department of trade, had been brought to a dead lock. They could do nothing. In order to prevent loss, they stood idle; while the trade flowed towards their overgrown neighbours like a mighty river. It is known now that these gigantic manufactures had been carried on at a loss. Money to the extent of half a million had been drawn from a bank by swindling or collusion, to keep the surface of the cheat whole a while. The bank which gave the money has fallen, and many thousands have been crushed in its fall. Honest men could not trade at all on their own money; because they were undersold by dishonest men, who squandered the money of the community.

Perhaps the bitterest bit of all is the impudent bearing of the criminals after the catastrophe. When they have by wholesale dishonesty ruined many families, they seem suddenly to become mightier men than ever they were. We give a case which we personally know. A young mother, who was reared in the most affluent class of a first-rate city, is travelling by railway with her own infant in her arms, and without an attendant. At a certain station a fine equipage drives up, a gentleman steps out, and, through ranks of well-dressed, obsequious servants, enters the same carriage. The lady could not guess what great personage was in her presence. When her husband met her at the terminus a nod of recognition passed between him and the great man, and the young wife's curiosity was for the first time satisfied. Her husband had, with many others, during the dreary winter been checked in a career of honourable industry by large losses in Vol. 1.-No. 1.

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trade,

trade, and this was the magnate whose bankruptcy had brought him down. Her delicate hands were plied to menial work, because she had not the means of hiring servants; and the man who deprived her of her means drove past her in his carriage, with a flunkey perched behind. These are the things that gnaw the very heart of the community. Unless private virtue and public justice united succeed in putting down overgrown impudent dishonesty, the ascendancy of the nation cannot long be maintained. These things are morally as bad in one direction as the cruelties which prevail under despots are in another. We need not point the finger of scorn at Naples; injustice equally great, though of a different kind and from a different quarter, is inflicted and endured amongst ourselves.

The effects of these oppressions are disastrous to both the material and the moral interests of the people. Many thousands of the feeble are now pining in poverty, who six months ago possessed the means of living in comfort all their days. Some have been driven to labour at a period of life when it was their right to rest ; and not a few have been by the calamity hurried off to a restingplace in the grave. Let the rash and dishonest speculators know that the guilt of many murders lies on their heads. The collapse of a joint-stock bank, especially, scatters distress over a very extensive area, and sends the thrill of its deadly stroke down through every rank. The fruits of these gigantic bankruptcies are ripening and dropping one by one even now. Yesterday the magistrate of a remote country town was followed to the grave by a large circle of sorrowing friends; and the well-known fact passes in a whisper through the sad procession, that, having lost three-fourths of his means by the annihilation of his bank shares, the remaining fourth was demanded as a "call" upon the proprietors. This last blow, falling on the shattered frame, completed the work, and the victim fell. To-day, once and again, a rustling is heard among the leaves, and a heavy plunge succeeds. You ask the agitated bystanders what fruit has fallen this time. They answer, here a widow lady has left her beautiful mansion, and been immured within the grated doors of a madhouse; there, a rustic, who had saved a few hundred pounds and lost it, has taken his own life. Such fruits as these are dropping fast all over the country while we write-apples of Sodom, the cursed offspring of the haste to be rich, which gendered in the hearts of dishonest, selfish men. Let the spectators take warning. Fear, and sin not. Will this bitter experience be lost? God and men expect that in the coming years we shall learn wisdom from the errors and falsehoods and misfortunes of our day.

There is a species of crane which may be seen flinging its giant arms up into the sky at the side of every considerable building while