ed outside the building, where they remained for several hours,
their numbers gradually augmenting. The opening of the outer door was
the signal for a general rush, and the crowd, for it now deserved that
name, next established themselves in the passage leading to the chief
cashier's office, where they had to wait another hour or two, to cool
their collective impatience. When the time arrived, a further contest
arose, and they strove lustily for an entrance. The struggle for
preference was tremendous; and the door separating them from the chief
cashier's room, and which is of a most substantial size, was forced off
its hinges. By far the greater part of those who made this effort
failed, the whole L7,000,000 being subscribed by the first ten persons
who gained admission.

In 1820 a very extraordinary appeal was made to the French tribunals by
a man named J. Costel, who was a merchant of Hamburg, while the free
city was in the hands of the French. He accused the general commanding
there of employing him to get L5,000 worth of English bank-notes
changed, which proved to be forged, and he was, in consequence of this
discovery, obliged to fly from Hamburg. He also said that Savary, Duke
of Rovigo, and Desnouettes, were the fabricators, and that they employed
persons to pass them into England, one of whom was seized by the London
police, and hanged. Mr. Doubleday asserts that some one had caused a
large quantity of French assignats to be forged at Birmingham, with the
view of depreciating the credit of the French Republic.

Merchants and bankers now began to declare that they would rather lose
their entire fortunes than pour forth the life which it was not theirs
to give. A general feeling pervaded the whole interest, that it would be
better to peril a great wrong than to suffer an unavailing remorse. One
petition against the penalty of death was presented, which bore three
names only; but those were an honourable proof of the prevalent feeling.
The name of Nathan Meyer Rothschild was the first, "through whose
hands," said Mr. Smith, on presenting the petition, "more bills pass
than through those of any twenty firms in London." The second was that
of Overend, Gurney, and Co., through whom thirty millions passed the
preceding year; and the third was that of Mr. Sanderson, ranking among
the first in the same profession, and a member of the Legislature.

A principal clerk of one of our bankers having robbed his employer of
Ba