do or suffer
to the last extreme of theatrical effect; and for that reason it might
be supposed that the tremendous revulsions we have alluded to were owing
in part to national temperament. But similar effects have been wrought,
by similar causes, among the slower and cooler English, with whom
commercial disturbances have been as numerous and as disastrous as among
the French, only that they have been distributed over wider spaces of
time, and controlled by the more sluggish and conservative habits of the
nation. Some twenty years before Law made his approaches to the French
Regent, another Scotchman, William Patterson, had got the ear of
Macaulay's hero, William, and of his ministers, and laid the foundations
of the great Bank of England. It was chartered in 1694, on advances made
to the government; and gradually, under its auspices, the vast system of
English banking, which gives tone to that of the world, grew up. Let us
see with what results; they may be expressed in a few words: every ten
or fifteen years, a terrific commercial overturn, with intermediate
epochs of speculation, panic, and bankruptcy.

We cannot here go into a history of this bank, nor of the various causes
of its reverses; but we select from a brief chronological table, in its
own words, some of the principal events, which are also the events of
British trade and finance.

1694. The Bank went into operation.

1696. Bank suspended specie payments. Panic and failures.

1707. Threatened invasion of the Pretender. Run upon the Bank,--panic.
Government helped it through, by guarantying its bills at six per cent.

1714. The Pretender proclaimed in Scotland. Run upon the Bank,--panic.

1718-20. Time of the South-Sea Bubble. Reaction,--demand for
money,--Bank of England nearly swept away,--trade suspended,--nation
involved in suffering.

1744. Charles Edward sails for Scotland, and marches upon Derby. Panic.
Run upon the Bank,--is obliged to pay in sixpences, and to block its
doors, in order to gain time.

1772. Extensive failures and a monetary panic. The Bank maintains the
convertibility of its notes for several years, at an annual expense of
L850,000.

1793. War with France,--drain of gold,--Bank
contracts,--panic,--failures throughout the country,--universal
hoarding,--one hundred country banks stop,--notes as low as five pounds
first issued,--general fall of prices.

1796. An Order in Council suspends specie payment by the Bank.

1799. N