a nice game they could play with rents and consols, private stocks, and American securities!

Yes, bullionists and finance writers lay all changes in the money market at the door of the Bank of England. But what does she care?-her policy is to make money; and if she brings on a crisis, how simple it is for her to get an order in council to suspend specie payment! She has done it before, she can do it now! How strange it is that her private securities, now that money is high, roll up so! Why, in '51 and '52, when money was 2 and 2 per cent., private securities were only from fifty to sixty-five millions; but during the last year and a half, when the rate has been backing and filling between five and seven per cent., the private securities come up to ninety-five, to one hundred and five, millions! But the exports then were only three hundred and fifty millions; now this year they are at the rate of five hundred and fifty-five millions!-showing that the more commerce increases, the more we have to pay for money. Is it not so? Hence, I do not think we shall get the old rate again for a long time.

The history of the Bank of England would read like a romance, so many are its thrilling scenes, so numerous are its individualities, so gigantic are its operations. In times of peril, it holds up great names,

and deals out millions as smaller corporations would thousands; but her greatness is of the past-yet her influence still shakes the kingdom. Through a dozen kingly reigns, private bankers and the Bank of England have managed to rule the financial world, and pocket all the banker's profits; but during the last quarter of a century a new element has been introduced, which has given a wonderful impetus to trade, and somewhat startled private bankers with the fact of their possessing a powerful competitor, that bids fair to swallow up all the time-worn names. I allude to the joint-stock banks in England, with branches in all the colonies. Allowing interest on deposits, giving great facility in discounts, and declaring satisfactory dividends, the joint-stock bank and the private banker, so long as they are rivals, cannot be friends. When the one sneeringly alludes to the gigantic swindles of the Royal British and Tipperary banks, the other remembers one Strahan, Paul, Bates & Co.; so each has a piece of the argument for illustration.

Most interesting is it to trace the stimulants to commerce. England first, and Holland, and once Venice, and old Spain. The discovery of the North American continent was a powerful stimulant. Another, of smaller proportion, the conquest of India. Then came that mighty agent, the steam-engine; af

terwards the opening of China; and then gold in the Pacific, gold in the Indian Ocean. The last four agents spurred on and pushed, to their working capacity, the acknowledged potency of the joint-stock bank. England may, therefore, give that institution some credit for the astonishing and unhealthy impetus given to her commerce, as shown by the Tables of the Board of Trade. Most of the heavy enterprises of the day, have been completed by the joint-stock bank. man of standing, they are not mean in their facilities. Overdraw your bank account in State or Wall streets for one half-eagle, and a red mark is placed against your name. Not so with the joint-stock banks. Let a man possess a good name in the commercial world for business character and morality, and he may check away for thousands-his only collateral, his promise to pay, his honesty, and known integrity.

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Show yourself worthy of the confidence of an Englishman, and there is nothing he will not do for you your word is his Our bonds, therefore, command his money! Really, they are a wonderful people! What other people would submit to paying income tax of sixteen pence in the pound, levied in order to meet the expense of a most unprofitable war? England's commerce is on the increase the nation prospers, and the national debt

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stands at four thousand millions of dollars! How, then, must it be with America, who can sleep soundly, without national nightmare of mammoth notes to pay? If in thirty years we have caught up with the old mother land in commerce, how will it be in 1886? Shall we not leave her far behind ? England's orthodox policy with her oldest son made America; her surplus and criminal population organized Australia; in all, three Anglo-Saxon nations, each commercial, each financial. But the old man watches with anxious eye the progress of his precocious boys-the elder has already passed him, the other is in sight!

Have I made too many figures? For fear of taxing your space, I will rest awhile, although I wanted to talk of France and her railways, and of Russia, and what she wants to do; but must wait another month, and in March more changes may be chronicled; for we are to have another Congress! What a sarcasm-what a commentary on the peace! I could laugh, but the peace of the world disturbed is not a subject for merriment.

Steam across the Atlantic was once the exciting topic of the world; now it is the telegraphic cable. Only three hundred and fifty five-thousand-dollar shares! London takes 101; Liverpool, 86; Glasgow, 37; Manchester, 28; other English towns, 10; and the

balance, 88, in America :--one-fifth, or 20 per cent., to be paid up; and Mr. Field tells us that on the 4th of July, 1858, England and America-separated on the 4th of July, 1776-are again to be united! Stand back, Columbus! and you, Vespucius, and Ferdinand de Soto, retire! and you, old Miles Standish! You never dreamed that Franklin was to chain the lightning, and that Morse was to extend the chain across the surging Atlantic Ocean! Shakspeare was the only man in early times who thought of putting "a girdle round the earth in forty minutes!" What food for contemplation in the ocean telegraph ! The grain market rises in the morning in England, and in the afternoon the ships are filling up in the East River. Cotton advances 1-4 d. in Liverpool at noon, and in New-Orleans, an hour later, thousands of bales change hands.