es no calculation and no
foresight to see, that the mere amount of deposits required for the
new schemes must erelong lock up the whole available capital of Great
Britain. Let those who think this is a bold assertion on our part,
attend to the following fact. We have taken from _The Railway Record_,
the amount of _new railway schemes_ advertised _in a single week_, at
the beginning of October. The number of the schemes is FORTY; and they
comprehend the ephemera of England and Ireland only--Scotland, which,
during that period, was most emulously at work, seems, by some
unaccountable accident, to have been overlooked. Of the amount of
capital to be invested in no less than ELEVEN of these, we have no
statement. The promoters apparently have no time to attend to such
trifling details; and, doubtless, it will be early enough to announce
the capital when they have playfully pounced upon the deposits. But
there is some candour in TWENTY-NINE provisional committees, and their
accumulated nominal capital proves to be--how much, think you, gifted
reader, and confident dabbler in new stock? Why, merely
this--TWENTY-FIVE MILLIONS EIGHT HUNDRED AND THIRTY THOUSAND POUNDS!!!
Now--for we wish always to speak and write within the mark--let us
calculate the eleven Harpocrates Companies and the Northern Schemes,
(which are more than eleven,) at fourteen or fifteen additional
millions; and you thus have parties engaged, _in the course of a
single week_, for FORTY MILLIONS STERLING, or _about one-twentieth
part of the whole national debt_; which, according to this rate of
subscription, may be extinguished by our surplus capital in the short
space of five months. And this is the country, where, three years ago,
the manufacturer and miner were starving, Manchester almost in a state
of siege, and Staley-bridge in absolute insurrection! Happy Britain,
where every man has discovered the philosopher's stone!

After this, need we say any thing more upon the great topic of
capital? Were the nation now in its sober senses, the facts which we
have stated, and for the accuracy of which we pledge ourselves, would
surely be enough to awaken it to a true conception of the vortex into
which it is plunging. But as every man will no doubt think--with the
ordinary self-delusion of our kind--that the scheme in which he is
individually embarked is an exception from the common rule; let us ask
each speculator candidly to make answer, whether he has minutely