of every fixed engagement be violated; every lease, every annuity, would be rendered the instrument of ruin and injustice to one or other of the parties.

It is upon the certain and experimental knowledge of these principles, that we venture to assert, without fear of contradiction, that if any part of the system proposed were adopted, no pecuniary prospective engagement could be made without certain ruin to one party. Who would venture to grant, or take a lease, when the rent contracted for was as uncertain in its value, as though it were to be decided by the throw of a die? When the rent contracted for might be paid one day in a currency of a fixed value, in reference to real property, and the same currency might be of half that value in a week's time? These evils, wasting and destructive as they would immediately prove, would as certainly increase in the proportion that the proposed plan was successful. Let any amount of paper be pushed out this year, what is to prevent that amount being doubled in the next? and so on, in a progression, which could only issue in the production of confusion and embarrassment, of which, from want of experience, we cannot possibly form an adequate conception.

It may, perhaps, be inquired, how has it been, that the same temptations to an over issue by the bankers, have already existed, and we have not seen such a state of things brought about? For what reason has it been, since bankers could obtain an interest for their notes, even when secured on real property, without decreasing the profits of that property, whether in land or in the funds, how has it been that the country has not been deluged with paper, in the manner anticipated from the new plan? For the most obvious of all reasons, the prospect of the day of payment. All our readers know, that by the Bank Restriction Acts, the circulation of notes as a legal tender, was to cease with the war. The issuers of notes were made liable to pay promptly in gold, the total amount of their issues. This of course operated on the Bank of England, and especially on the Country Banks, in causing them to exercise some degree of discretion in limiting the amount of their outstanding paper, for which so pressing and embarrassing a call might shortly be made.

We will not exhaust our reader's patience upon the present occasion, by entering into a review of those proofs of the truth of our view of the proposed scheme, which may be drawn from the past history of our currency-The Bank Restriction Act-Mr. Peel's bill of 1819-the subsequent repeal of the most prominent part of the act, by permitting the issue of small notes. And again, the acts of the ministers in the session of 1825-6, who began by a vigorous crusade against paper in general, and finished by extinguishing it in one part of the kingdom, and fostering it in another part. These form the very essence of the question, whence have arisen our late and present commercial embarrassments? As we may possibly have another opportunity to recur to those subjects, we suggest them at present, only for the consideration of our readers, that by connecting them with the

proposed scheme, it may be distinctly seen in what an unusually superficial manner, the framer of that scheme must have viewed the question, in relation to our commercial history and practice.

Every part of the plan, it must be acknowledged, is strictly in harmony; the same weakness which did not permit the writer to see the first consequences, completely blinds him as to the ultimate results. No intelligible plan whatever is proposed by which this new currency is ever to be paid, if payment be demanded. Our author, indeed, supposes, that founded as the notes would be upon real property, no one, or rather no considerable number of the holders, would ever dream about payment. Of all follies, we doubt if this be not the greatest. Does he ask where would be the cause for such a monstrous demand as that of payment? What intelligible cause has ever been assigned, for what is facetiously called, the late panic? What cause occasioned men and maids, old and young, in town and country, to trample one another, to get something tangible, something of intrinsic value for their notes; even in cases where the final payment of them never was doubted by any? And with regard to the proposed security, what is more likely, in the case of a bare rumour of foreign war, or indeed any domestic cause sufficiently exciting, than that the holders of the notes should be influenced to demand payment, to require something to be in their possession more solid than paper! What is to prevent such a panic (phew, the staleness of the word!) as will lead holders to foreclose? The bare imagination of the consequences of such a state of public feeling, with an unlimited amount of paper afloat, is sufficient to scare any reflecting man, absolutely to terrify any one, but this very rash and short-sighted writer of the Literary Gazette.

Fortunately for us, most fortunately for all, we need entertain no fear that ministers will fall into any plan of the sort. They know as certainly as any past event can be known, that the effects we have witnessed on our affairs, may be distinctly traced to the shiftings in the value of our currency. It is certain, these events have taken place under acts of their administration, and awfully absurd have some of these been; but our great anchor of hope is, their distinct acknowledgment that they feel a weight of responsibility for the past, which will add caution for the future. Any apprehension on our parts must be groundless, that they will be induced by any outcry, to sanction an abundant, much less an unlimited, issue of such a delusive and ever varying currency. The profit and experience from the lessons of the past, are not likely to be obliterated by any such weak and inconsistent scheme as we have had under review.

Some of the details, as they are amusingly called, of the plan, degenerate into absolute fatuity and childishness. It is gravely proposed, for instance, that the crime of forgery, to which the adoption of this plan would open a most profitable field, shall be entirely annihilated by the counter-signature of individuals well known in the districts in which the notes are to circulate. As though any forger, who could ever describe pot-hooks and hangers, could not deceive those persons most familiar with the hand-writing of any

individual, not to say that the great mass of individuals who are to be benefited by the signature, may be entirely unacquainted with the hand-writing of the signer, or too ignorant to discriminate these autograhical niceties.

But we take leave of our writer and his vaunted scheme; we feel assured that if the main principles of the plan are so ill-founded as we believe them; and as we have endeavoured to shew them to be, very few of our readers will be tempted to waste their time in examining the details by which such a monstrous expedient may best be carried into effect.

EXETER BY MOONLIGHT.

FROM THE NORTHERN-HAYS,

The sun's departed, and the blue serene
Is color'd by the moon-beam's purest light,
Above the wanderer who, night after night,
An ocean of dark clouds alone hath seen,
With dense and murky billows intervene.—
But now all's loveliness around him-bright
The city lies beneath the bowery height,
A mass of roofs and towers with smoke between,
All soften'd into beauty by the ray;
While thro' the vale beyond the glist'ning stream
Of Exe, thro' fields and forests winds his way,-
O'er all the proud Cathedral's turrets seem,
Like spirits of the past-ag'd, worn, and grey,
But still in melancholy grace supreme.

ZARACH.

WEST INDIA CONTUMACY, AND COMPULSORY
MANUMISSION.

The grounds upon which ministers resisted Mr. Brougham's motion*, of the 19th of May, 1826, were principally the hopes which they professed to entertain that "in the course of six or eight "months, which might intervene between the (then) present and "ensuing session, the West Indian legislators might adopt measures "in the spirit of the recommendations sent out to them." A large majority of the House of Commons acquiesced in the wisdom of delay, and their decision was so congenial to the feelings of the country at large, that the Abolitionists have this year been compelled to abstain from those inflammatory measures which they adopted with too much success in 1823 and 1825. However frequent may have been the meetings of their secret conclaves, for the purpose of concerting the means for renewing the attack, and however assiduous the labors of their auxiliaries in endeavouring, through the press, to keep alive sentiments of public hostility against the West India name and interest, the disinterested voice of East India Cropper has not lately been heard from the hustings upon the enormity of consuming West India sugar; nor have the ladies of Norfolk had another opportunity of admiring the grace and delicacy of Lord Suffield in retailing garbled stories of colonial atrocity. Dr. Lushington has been compelled to solace his disappointment at present in silence, by indulging in visionary ideas of future debate in the society of his two imprisoned negroest; and "young Macauley" has sighed in vain at the remembrance of that glorious day, when his eloquence so dazzled the senses of an admiring Saint, that he was hailed, in the face of applauding multitudes, as a special delegate from heaven to aid the Abolitionists in their "holy task."

There is no gratitude due to the Abolitionists for this abstinence, occasioned solely by the fear of again meriting the rebukes of Mr. Canning, for embarrassing instead of assisting the operations of government; and for rendering more difficult the execution of the duty which the nation has confided to other hands than theirs. Conscious that the chief secret of their success on former occasions was the idea which they so carefully promulgated, that the Government would feel obliged to them for their support, they possess infinitely too much tact to exasperate Ministers into another denial of their assertions, by openly disturbing the armistice which was determined upon until the result of the deliberations of the Colonial

"For taking into consideration, early in the next Session of Parliament, such 66 measures as may appear to be necessary for giving effect to the resolution of the House "of Commons, of the 25th of May, 1823, touching the condition of slaves," &c.

It is currently reported, that this gentleman is keeping two negroes in a sort of luxurious confinement, until they shall have furnished him with the materials of weaving some dark woof of accusation against the West Indians.

Assemblies should be known. Whatever that result may be, it cannot be doubted but that the moment it is communicated in England, the measures, which are now being prepared in anticipation of it, will be immediately carried into effect, and another grand effort made to goad Government, by popular tumult, into the violation of the chartered independence of the Colonies. On the passions of the people they will rely for assistance, as they have always done; and it may not, therefore, be uninteresting to those who wish their judgments to influence their conduct, to give, as a preparatory to the conflict, a short sketch of the present situation of the West India Question, as regards the Government, the Abolitionists, and the West Indians.

The Government is at present in the situation of a neutral party; but it appears, to a certain degree, pledged to give its support to the Abolitionists, in the event of a contumacious resistance, on the part of the Colonial Legislators, to the recommendations sent out to them. From the increasing temperance displayed in their recent proceedings, and the frequent expressions of the determination of the principal West India Proprietors to do all that can be safely done, an unreasonable resistance cannot be anticipated. The opposition that will be met with, we are persuaded, will be grounded upon the plea, that compliance would be destructive of the welfare both of master and slave; and, even so grounded, that opposition will be decorous and respectful to the Ministers of the Crown. There is every reason to believe that the Assembly of Jamaica, in particular, will consent to every measure proposed to them for the improvement of the condition of the negroes, except those which they consider to be as ruinous as an earthquake that should swallow up their island. It is more than probable that Government would remain satisfied with these partial concessions, and would willingly trust to time, to conciliation, and to the modifications that might be suggested to them of the most obnoxious regulations, as the surest means of obtaining an ultimate compliance with its measures. Ministers know that it would be no very light thing to embroil the country with her Colonies in a contest which must terminate in the destruction of one, and the most serious injury to the other; nor is it the clamours of either saints or oppositionists that would precipitate them into such an act of madness. Unless the voice of the people call upon them to go forward, although we do not hope, nor scarcely wish, that they will retrace their steps, prudence would teach them to pause where they are, if they receive but a modified degree of concession from the West Indians.

If the Government, on the one hand, are disposed to forbearance, the Abolitionists, on the other, are determined upon aggravation. Not even actual contumacy would, we think, induce the former to adopt coercion-the most unlimited compliance would not make the latter desist from urging it. Their hostility and violence are not to be mollified or weakened by submission. They would find hypocrisy in the wish to comply, and assert that laws in favor of the negro