We are not only hopeful but sanguine as to the power of Great Britain in extricating herself from a difficulty, not transient as before, but settled in its character, because we believe that the downfal of a wretched, presuming, and ignorant faction cannot be much longer delayed. We have been cursed, for many years back, by the predominance of a race of quacks, impostors, sham economists, and political adventurers, who, through favour of the Reform Bill, have forced their way into Parliament, after having failed in the ordinary occupations of trade, and have succeeded in palming their crude and pestilential doctrines upon Ministers too occupied with individual ambition to care much for the public welfare. Does any one believe that such men have any interest in maintaining the public credit, or that they would not, did an opportunity occur, attempt to defraud the creditor, as they have already succeeded in diminishing the means of the debtor? Surely a thoughtful review of the political events which have occurred within the last five years is enough to remove any lingering credulity on this point. We do not ask any one to adopt our views, or to accept our construction. Let him deliberately reflect upon the language of these men in 1845, when the political and commercial fever was at its height—when private individuals were persuaded that they might rear fortunes without the drudgery of industry, and when statesmen were preparing to recommend the same false principle for the general guidance of the nation. How the upstart economists swaggered, strutted, and cackled then! Not a whit less incompetent and treacherous, as guides in their own path, than were the mushroom clerks and pimpled adventurers of the Stock Exchanges in another, they stood forth like so many political John Laws, proclaiming that unbounded wealth, increased demand for labour, and endless influx of capital would be the immediate result of their magnificent free-trading schemes. They had figures and blue-books, returns, calculations and balance-sheets, painfully concocted by plodding theorists, ready at hand to back up their asseverations, and to satisfy the doubts of the most sceptical. This is peculiarly an age in which men are befooled by figures. A century ago, it was enough that a statement should pass from writing into print, and be included in the columns of a journal, in order to secure its currency as a point of popular belief. The increase of journalism has in some respects remedied this, most men being now alive to the fact that typography possesses no peculiar immunity from falsehood. But figures are—or at least were a few years ago—untainted in their reputation. Few people were cautious enough to resist a tempting calculation. It never entered into their heads to suppose that there lay gross error, radical fallacy, and often deliberate fraud, in the imposing array of cyphers which were ostentatiously paraded for their inspection. If half-a-dozen