as a short one--"We have prospered through OUR BANKING
SYSTEM."

It was some time--not until ten years of peace had elapsed--before any
open attack was made upon that system, which had proved, if facts can
prove any thing, the greatest imaginable boon to the nation; and
which, be it always specially remembered, did not originate with the
state, but with private individuals--upright, honourable, and
patriotic men--who better deserve a monument to their memories, were
that required, than the most successful conqueror whose march is on
humbled thrones. During that period much was done with regard to
internal relations, of which we, in common with every Scotsman who
retains one spark of patriotic feeling, most heartily disapprove. The
tendency towards centralization in London--the inevitable consequence
of the Union treaty--was not only not counteracted, as we maintain it
ought to have been, by a wise and paternal government, but forced and
hurried on by an excessive exercise of power. Every remnant of our
ancient institutions that could be rooted up, and all our local boards
with hardly one exception, were transferred to the seat of
government--regardless of the drain that was thereby made from the
proper resources of the country, and the deep heart-burnings that such
a system must necessarily create amongst a proud, observant, and
jealous, though enduring people. These things we shall not dilate
upon--though the temptation is triply strong, and we know how keenly
that subject is felt by many of the best and most loyal of the
land;--but in the mean time we shall pass over this period of gradual
humiliation, and come at once to the first great attack that was made
upon the source of all our national prosperity.

At the close of the year 1825, there arrived a period of public
distress, followed by a panic which fortunately has but rarely been
felt in this country. We attributed it then, and we attribute it now,
to an unexampled glut in the money market, which we hold to be in this
trading country the most destructive of any, saving and excepting a
glut in agricultural produce and labour; and for this very plain
reason, that a glut of money resolves itself sooner or later into a
glut of goods, thereby carrying the amount of production in the
country far beyond the amount of the consumption and demand, and so
necessarily for a time closing the door against all the outlets of
industry. But it is of very little consequence to