lating the
institutions of both countries; in other words, of coercing Scotland
to adopt the habit of her neighbours--to excavate the foundation-stone
of our whole prosperity, and make us the victims of a theory which,
even if sound, could not profess to give us one tittle more advantage
than the course which we had so long pursued! We believe that if the
annals of legislation were searched through, we could not find a
parallel case of such wanton and unprovoked temerity!

We said then, and we say now, with even more emphatic earnestness, it
is the curse of the age that every thing is to be managed by political
economy and philosophy, and that local knowledge is to be utterly
disregarded in the management of local interests. CENTRALIZE and
ASSIMILATE--these were the watchwords of the ministers of that day;
and for aught that we can see, Sir Robert Peel is determined to
persevere in the theory. What excuse was there, _then_, for the
attempt of any assimilation between the banking systems of the two
countries? If it had been alleged that the Scotch paper currency was
surreptitiously carried into England--that it was there supplanting
the legal currency, and absorbing the gold in exchange, there might
have been some show of reason for a slight modification of the
system--at all events for a more stringent preventive check. But no
such allegation was made. The most determined hater of the Scottish
banks knew well that their paper never crossed the Border; for the
very best of all possible reasons, that the notes were not a legal
tender, and that five persons out of six to whom they might happen to
be offered, would unhesitatingly reject them. Again, to absorb the
gold would have been neither more nor less than partially to carry out
the views entertained by the supporters of a metallic currency, and
therefore surely, in their eyes, a venal, if not a meritorious,
offence. But such was not the fact. In Scotland there was no such a
thing known as a gold circulation. The fishermen, the cattle dealers,
and the small traders, would not so much as take it; and the stranger
who, through ignorance, had provided himself with a stock of the
precious metal, was forced to have recourse to a Scottish bank in
order to have it exchanged for notes. Beyond what lay in the bank
reserves, there was literally none in the country; and therefore any
idea of the interference of the currencies was too preposterous to be
maintained.

But it is no