, illusion, credulity, and infatuation, fell to the ground as
soon as the artful management of its directors was discovered."

In the hey-day of its blood, during the progress of this dangerous
delusion, the manners of the nation became sensibly corrupted. The
parliamentary inquiry, set on foot to discover the delinquents, disclosed
scenes of infamy, disgraceful alike to the morals of the offenders and the
intellects of the people among whom they had arisen. It is a deeply
interesting study to investigate all the evils that were the result.
Nations, like individuals, cannot become desperate gamblers with impunity.
Punishment is sure to overtake them sooner or later. A celebrated
writer[21] is quite wrong when he says, "that such an era as this is the
most unfavourable for a historian; that no reader of sentiment and
imagination can be entertained or interested by a detail of transactions
such as these, which admit of no warmth, no colouring, no embellishment; a
detail of which only serves to exhibit an inanimate picture of tasteless
vice and mean degeneracy." On the contrary,--and Smollett might have
discovered it, if he had been in the humour,--the subject is capable of
inspiring as much interest as even a novellist can desire. Is there no
warmth in the despair of a plundered people?--no life and animation in the
picture which might be drawn of the woes of hundreds of impoverished and
ruined families? of the wealthy of yesterday become the beggars of to-day?
of the powerful and influential changed into exiles and outcasts, and the
voice of self-reproach and imprecation resounding from every corner of the
land? Is it a dull or uninstructive picture to see a whole people shaking
suddenly off the trammels of reason, and running wild after a golden
vision, refusing obstinately to believe that it is not real, till, like a
deluded hind running after an _ignis fatuus_, they are plunged into a
quagmire? But in this false spirit has history too often been written. The
intrigues of unworthy courtiers to gain the favour of still more unworthy
kings, or the records of murderous battles and sieges, have been dilated
on, and told over and over again, with all the eloquence of style and all
the charms of fancy; while the circumstances which have most deeply
affected the morals and welfare of the people have been passed over with
but slight notice, as dry and dull, and capable of neither warmth nor
colouring.

[21] Smollett.

[I