488 The PulUkuL Stale oj [Nov. 



publicly proclaimed and d^ounced by the tribunals ? It is a subject 

 of minor curiosity, that to this hour the " panic of 1825" is a pro- 

 blem ; tiiat no man has been able to give a satisfactory account of its 

 immediate cause ; and that while every arguer has his theory, the impulse 

 tliat hurried a whole empire to the very edge of the gulph of bankruptcy 

 is as unaccountable as ever. 



The South Sea bubble is the only similar event in our financial his- 

 tory ; but it dwindles down beside the gigantic mischief of the " panic." 

 It was the giddiness of our financial boyhood ; the loss was confined to 

 comparatively a few indivrduals ; the sum thrown away was trifling ; 

 the injury to public credit was scarcely felt beyond the moment ; and 

 the financial system actually seemed to have derived vigour from its 

 accidental contact with the ground. But the catastrophe of 1825 was 

 the work of our maturity : the chastisement was, like the frenzy, univer- 

 sal ; it cast millions of wealth like dust into the air ; the effects of the 

 visitation are still felt through the depths of the land ; the Egyptian 

 plague of darkness and fatuity that covered the people, has left the 

 atmosphere lowering, and the countenances of men distempered, to this 

 hour. 



In this argument we assume nothing. We allow the whole impres- 

 sion of popular feelings, popular follies, and human casualties ; we know 

 of what a strange and desultory creation are the vapours that from time 

 to time arise and blot out the national day ; but it is only reason to 

 believe, that even the shifting and mingled natui'e of public affairs has 

 a loftier guide. The vapours are not suffered to gather into thunder 

 clouds and fling out their fires, with capricious vengeance ; there is a 

 Hand that brandishes those fires, a Voice that marshals the rude elements 

 and agencies of mortal things, and a Wrath that compels Chance to shape 

 itself into the minister of the Supreme Justice and Wisdom. 



We disclaim the idle and presumptuous idea of measuring the motives 

 of Providence, or of pursuing it into the minute details of human or 

 national conduct. We only, and it is in humility, attempt to trace the 

 connexion between its declared will, and its conduct of those larger 

 transactions which from time to time give a new character of good or ill 

 to nations. The wind bloweth where it listeth : but if we refuse to 

 know its direction, we throw away a knowledge which was intended 

 for the safety of the vessel. 



From the first infusion of popish principles into the cabinet under Mr. 

 Canning, we feel that perplexity was brought into the State. We have 

 not space here to follow the illustration through its details. But it is 

 notorious that our political supremacy then first began to totter. Extrava- 

 gant declamations in the senate — so peculiarly menacing to the repose 

 of Europe, that the miiister was compelled to the humiliating necessity 

 of retracting them in print, while they were yet tingling in the ears of 

 his astonished auditory — romantic speculations of conquest and influ- 

 ence that more exhibited the colour of a schoolboy's fancy, tinged with 

 classic visions, than the grave judgment of a statesman's mind — unna- 

 tural rejections of the old and trusted friends of the State, and equally 

 unnatural advances to its old and ostentatious assailants, shewed that a 

 new era had come, in which every lover of his country must be pre- 

 pared to see new hazards to the dignity and stability of the empire. 



The moral death of Lord Liverpool soon placed Mr. Canning in undis- 

 puted power. He bore the Catholic question along with him ; yet at every 



