the panic,--and then the crash. Commercial houses first failed, big, substantial firms, which were supposed to have the wealth of Croesus at their back, came down thunderingly. "Many a firm of unimpeachable honour and unquestionable solvency was compelled to bend before the storm." Then came the turn of the great banks: they had advanced their money to the merchants, and now that the security had failed, they also must bend before the blast. On the 5th of December, the news spread with the wings of the wind, that the banking house of Sir Peter Cole and Co. had failed; next day, Williams and Co. stopped payment; and from that time, without intermission, seventy country banks went down within six weeks.[53] How things were restored to their original condition, and how promptly the Government acted during the terrible panic, we need not stay to tell. Savings Bank deposits fell from about three millions in 1825, to less than half that sum in 1826. More money was withdrawn in the year of the panic than had been withdrawn altogether since the year 1820. It is not a little curious, as showing that depositors in Savings Banks are less inclined to speculation than other classes, to point out, that during the panic a sum equal to at least fourteen millions sterling must have been safely lodged in the different provident banks of the country; and that little money was hazarded in the speculations of the time is evident from the fact that only one-tenth part of the whole amount of deposits was withdrawn to supply emergencies. In this way were those people rewarded who preferred a safe deposit with a reasonable interest to "cent. per cent." and unlimited risk. Nor can we stop to describe the result of the panic on the industrial classes. The picture of that terrible time has often been drawn, when thousands of hungry, infuriated men, roused by the sorest distresses, went about robbing shops, breaking machinery, rick-burning, chased by the constabulary, and fired upon by the soldiery. The time was a most disastrous one, but it was full of lessons for all classes. Many of the provident poor suffered little, and never had anything to fear, on account of having prepared themselves for such calamities. Those of the poor who acted less wisely, and ventured their little surplus in some speculation or other, met with few condolences. When a portion of them petitioned the House of Commons for relief, they were rather roughly told that they ought to have deposited their earnings in Savings Banks. It was on this occasion that Sir Robert Peel replied to this taunting, and recognised the imperfections of the existing machinery, by asking, indignantly, how the House could expect this to be done in cases where "the Savings Bank was perhaps twenty miles from the working man's home."