"Who and what are you?" asked the magistrate. "What I professed myself. I have travelled through the whole of Germany, and never but here met with impertinence." "Your hasty flight made you very much suspected; why did you fly ?" "Because I was tired of being the jest of your mob." "You threatened to fire?" "My pistol was not loaded; let the weapon be examined; there was no ball in it." 66 Why do you carry concealed weapons with you?" "Because I have articles of value upon me, and because I have been warned of a certain Wolf who is said to rove about the country." 66 Your answers say much for your assurance, but nothing for your honest business. I give you until morning to determine whether you will discover the truth to me." “I shall stand to my declaration." "Let him be taken to the tower." "To the tower? Mr. Superintendent, I hope there is still justice in this country. I shall demand satisfaction." "I will give it you as soon as you have justified yourself." The next morning the superintendent reflected that the stranger might very possibly be innocent; an imperious tone could do nothing with his obstinacy; it were, perhaps, better to meet him with decency and moderation. He assembled the jury and ordered the prisoner to be brought out. "Forgive the first ebullition, sir, if I yesterday treated you somewhat hardly." "Very willingly, when you so apologise." "Our laws are rigid, and your adventure made some noise. I cannot release you without violating my duty. Appearances are against you; I wish you could tell me something by which they might be confuted." "What if I know nothing?" "Then I must inform the governmen of the occurrence, and in the meanwhile you remain in strict custody." "And then?" "Then you run the risk of being scourged across the border as a vagrant; or, if they deal leniently with you, of falling into the hands of the recruiting officer." He was silent for some minutes, and seemed to struggle violently; he then turned quickly to the magistrate "Can I be alone with you for a quarter of an hour?” The jury looked at each other doubtfully, but withdrew on a signal from the magistrate. "Now what do you wish?" "Your yesterday's behaviour, Mr. Superintendent, would never August, 1845.-VOL. XLIII.-NO. CLXXII. 21 have brought me to a confession, for I defy form. The moderation with which you have treated me to-day inspires me with confidence and respect towards you. I believe that you are an honourable man." "What have you to say to me?" "I see that you are an honourable man; I have long wished for such a man as you. Let me take your hand." "To what does this tend ?” "This head is grey and venerable; you have been long in the world, have seen many sorrows-is it not so?—and have become more merciful.” "Sir, what means this?" Can you "You stand but one step from eternity; soon, soon, you will need mercy with God; you will not deny it to man. not guess? With whom think you that you speak?" "What means this? you alarm me.” "Can you not guess? Write to your prince how found me, that I was myself, of my free-will, my own betrayer; that God will one day be merciful to him as he is merciful to me. Pray for me, old man, and then let a tear fall upon your report. I am Christian Wolf!" He died by the hangman's hands. you SONNET. BY RICHARD ROTHWELL. SUMMER shines forth in monarch pride and prime, In pomp barbaric as an Ethiop queen, Towers o'er the blossoms of an humbler mien- THE NATIONAL CURRENCY. WE some time ago placed before our readers the leading features of a question of the deepest public interest-that of the National Currency; a question which, in its issue, enters into every pecuniary transaction of a man's life; which influences his every engagement; and one which, though at present it is little understood, will one day occupy every man's attention, and form one of the first elements of education for the future agriculturist, manufacturer, tradesman, and merchant; while to the rising landowner it will prove so important as to determine whether he is to receive any rental or not. It has hitherto been very much the practice for, so-called, political economists to consider price without reference to one of its most essential elements-namely, money. Now price undoubtedly consists of two parts-the commodity to be disposed of and the money by which it is to be paid for. If, in all considerations of price, the former of these is only taken into view, it is obvious that the question will be but half discussed and understood. Into this second element of price, however, there enters another constituent, that which superadds to natural cost-namely, taxation on the commodities consumed in producing; where this extensively prevails, as in Great Britain, a money varying from the currency of the world, not so taxed, is requisite. The taxation to which we refer, our readers will be aware, has its origin in our heavy national debt. It does not appear to have been seen by our legislators and statesmen that while gold-a scarce foreign commodity-might represent the values of Great Britain in 1792, when the national debt was under two hundred and fifty millions and the population one half only what it now is, it is a very different matter in the present day when the debt is full seven hundred and seventy millions and its population doubled-to attempt to measure its highlytaxed prices by such a circulating medium. Yet such has been the attempt of her Majesty's present Prime Minister by his Bank Charter Bill of last, and by his Scotch and Irish Banking Bills of the present session. The Right Honourable Baronet, it is quite evident, has greatly receded from his original intention with regard to the application of his fond theory to Scotland and Ireland. He has postponed the period when he will bring these countries to the rigorous compression of their circulation which he has inflicted upon England, but he has done quite enough to render it certain that when a monetary convulsion shall take place in England, the sister countries will participate in the mischief that will ensue; and when that period shall arrive the steps recently taken will secure that the whole monetary system of the empire will be remodelled and placed once more upon a rational foundation-that devised by the immortal William Pitt; a basis that will permit the rapidly growing population and the intelligent energy of the producers full and rightful play. Experience of the past will enable us to correct all that was unstable in the system which, from necessity, was hastily adopted by Mr. Pitt under the emergency of the European war. But the principle of a conventional currency will be the same, because it was a principle sanctioned, not only by the experience we had of unexampled prosperity during the long war, but of the progressive advance made by this nation in a career of six hundred years, during which our currency was of a symbolic character; and because the principle is accordant with the practical experience and profound wisdom of Lycurgus and Solon, of Plato and Aristotle. It was lamentable to observe on the recent introduction of the subject of Scotch and Irish banking, that the only question raised by the otherwise intelligent bankers of the former country related to about four hundred thousand pounds of permitted circulation. They left the entire question of currency otherwise untouched, and this under the mistaken notion that their present amount of one-pound-note issues not being disturbed they are safe. Not so, however; their only safety would have been found in the performance of duty in the session of 1844; they should at that time have joined their English fellow-subjects in resisting with firmness the Bank Charter Bill, by which, according to Sir Robert Peel, the fatal monetary policy of 1819 was to be completed. But one of powerful influence-the influence of established literary character-has stepped out from the ranks of his satisfied countrymen, and has compensated in a great measure for their silence. Mr. Alison, the author of "Europe during the French Revolution," has just sent forth a volume entitled "England in 1815 and 1845; a volume that should be in the hands of every man who wishes to understand this great social question in its relation to "a sufficient or a contracted currency." We cannot resist the temptation of furnishing our readers with the following extracts from the commencement and the close of the volume: "No one can have considered the state of the British empire during the last half century, without being convinced that some great and unprecedented causes have been at work in producing the prodigious fluctuation and change of fortunes by which its domestic history has in that time been distinguished. Nothing similar to it ever occurred without external disaster, or the actual overthrow of society by the ravages of war, since the beginning of the world. It is hard to say whether these changes appear most extraordinary on a retrospect of their effects in times past, or on a contemplation of their results in times present. They have exhibited a combination of prosperity and adversity, of strength and weakness, of riches and poverty, of progress and decline, of grandeur and debility, of joy and sorrow, unparalleled in any former ages of the world, and which, in future times, instructed by our errors and warned by our sufferings, will probably never again occur. "During the first four years of that period distress and anxiety generally prevailed, and the nation, labouring alike under external disaster and internal suffering, with difficulty sustained the languid exertions and comparatively small cost of the early years of the war. The whole expenditure of the state, including the interest of the debt, was fifteen million pounds in 1793, and by the year 1796 it had risen to thirty-seven million pounds. The latter sum was considered by Mr. Pitt as so excessive, that he said, in parliament, It never had been equalled, and probably never would be surpassed.' During these four years one only victory at sea-that of Howe-was achieved; we were driven with disgrace from Flanders, Holland, and the north of Germany; Toulon beheld our standards recede before the rising star of Napoleon; our continental alliances were all, with the exception of that with Austria and Russia, broken up; and from the Texel to Gibraltar the whole coast was arrayed in fierce hostility to our arms. Nor was the internal suffering of this ill-omened period inferior to its external disaster. It began with the severe commercial distress of 1793, unprecedented at that period in intensity and duration, and which was only relieved by an extensive loan to the trading classes by Government; and it terminated in the dreadful monetary crisis and run upon the Bank and mutiny in the fleet in the spring of 1797, which reduced the Government to the necessity of suspending cash payments, and brought the nation to the brink of ruin. The next eighteen years of the war, from 1797 to 1815, were, as the world knows, the most glorious, and, taken as a whole, the most prosperous, which Great Britain had ever known. Usheredin by a combination of circumstances the most calamitous, both with reference to external security and internal industry, it terminated in a blaze of glory and a flood of prosperity which have never, since the beginning of the world, descended upon any nation. Hardly had the run upon the Bank shaken to its centre the whole fabric of our commercial industry, and the mutinies at the Nore, Plymouth, and off Cadiz paralysed the arm of our naval defenders, when the victories of St. Vincent and Camperdown again restored to us the dominion of the seas; and ere long the |