to be more liable to 'panic' than a soldier should; for his
name should never be on more paper than he can at any instant meet the
call of, happen what will. I do not say this without feeling at the same
time how difficult it is to mark, in existing commerce, the just limits
between the spirit of enterprise and of speculation. Something of the
same temper which makes the English soldier do always all that is
possible, and attempt more than is possible, joins its influence with
that of mere avarice in tempting the English merchant into risks which
he cannot justify, and efforts which he cannot sustain; and the same
passion for adventure which our travellers gratify every summer on
perilous snow wreaths, and cloud-encompassed precipices, surrounds with
a romantic fascination the glittering of a hollow investment, and gilds
the clouds that curl round gulfs of ruin. Nay, a higher and a more
serious feeling frequently mingles in the motley temptation; and men
apply themselves to the task of growing rich, as to a labour of
providential appointment, from which they cannot pause without
culpability, nor retire without dishonour. Our large trading cities
bear to me very nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in which
the roar of the mill-wheel and the crane takes the place of other
devotional music; and in which the worship of Mammon or Moloch is
conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety; the merchant
rising to his Mammon matins with the self-denial of an anchorite, and
expiating the frivolities into which he may be beguiled in the course of
the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers. But, with every allowance
that can be made for these conscientious and romantic persons, the fact
remains the same, that by far the greater number of the transactions
which lead to these times of commercial embarrassment may be ranged
simply under two great heads--gambling and stealing; and both of these
in their most culpable form, namely, gambling with money which is not
ours, and stealing from those who trust us. I have sometimes thought a
day might come, when the nation would perceive that a well-educated man
who steals a hundred thousand pounds, involving the entire means of
subsistence of a hundred families, deserves, on the whole, as severe a
punishment as an ill-educated man who steals a purse from a pocket, or
a mug from a pantry.

[Note 21: Or rather, equivalent to such real property, because
everybody has been accu