On the contrary, the hostile and absurd legislation which has obtained in most of the commercial countries of Europe, so dams up and confines the natural tendencies of commerce to level and arrange its own transactions, that, whenever a sudden and large demand for any article occurs, it is accompanied by a Pecuniary Crisis, often perilous in the highest degree, and this crisis injures, not merely the importing country, but spreads its baneful influence over every other with which that country is in communication.

When the crash happened which was then apprehended—namely, in March, 1826, Lord Liverpool, referring to what he had said in the former year, reminded the speculators of the timely warning which he had given them; and Lord Lauderdale at that time stated that there was no wonder that a Pecuniary Crisis, that a mercantile convulsion, should have taken place, when, the consequence of these joint-stock companies, in the year preceding there had been no less than seventeen millions sterling withdrawn from the ordinary sources of circulation, and from the ordinary commercial employment of the country, and sunk in those speculations.