held at that time, drawn by one of its customers upon a
Liverpool house, four bills for L20,000 each, and one for L10,000. It
held besides heavy draughts upon the same firm by other houses,
and the acceptors--failing remittances from America--were in great
straits. Mr. Charles Shaw, the chairman of this bank, saw the
Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England,
and averted the impending calamity. But for timely aid, the Liverpool
firm must have stopped, to the ruin of half the country. The bank had
another sharp turn of it from 1842 to 1844, when bar iron fell from
L12 per ton to L6; but it overcame all its difficulties until the
retirement of Mr. Shaw and the death of Mr. Beaumont.

From this time forward there seems to have been great want of a strong
head and a steady eye amongst the directors. The plausibilities of Mr.
W.H. Beaumont--who had succeeded his father as manager--seem to have
put them off their guard, and they followed where he led until it
ended in ruin. It is useless now to say all one knows, or a quarter of
what has been said; but it has always been my opinion, and always will
be, that if Charles Shaw, or a man with half his courage and ability,
had been at the helm, the Bank would not have closed its doors. Had
they only sought counsel of their larger shareholders, there was
amongst them one man, still living, who not only could, but would,
have saved the bank from shipwreck.

Few men in Birmingham are likely to forget "Black Saturday," the 14th
of July, 1866. Had a French army suddenly opened a bombardment of
the town from Highgate, it would possibly not have caused greater
astonishment and dismay. That very week shares had been sold on the
Stock Exchange at a high premium; and now, by the culpable weakness
of a few unquestionably honest and well-intentioned gentlemen, the
hard-earned life's savings of aged and infirm men, the sole dependence
of scores of widows and hundreds of orphans, was utterly gone. No
wonder that pious, God-fearing men ground their teeth and muttered
curses, or that women, pale and trembling, tore their hair in wild
terror, while some poor sorrowing creatures sought refuge in suicide.
No wonder that even now, more than eleven years after, the memory of
that day still rises, like a hideous dream, in the minds of thousands.

I have been shown a copy of a lithographed daily newspaper, printed on
board the "Great Eastern" steamship, then engaged in laying