So prodigious and fatal a change in our financial system would be wholly inexplicable, considering the many able and patriotic men who, since that period, have been intrusted with its direction, if we did not recollect the vital change made since that time in the constitution of the country, and the new class which was brought up in overwhelming numbers to return representatives to the House of Commons. That class is the borough and shopkeeping interest, with whom the main object is to buy cheap and sell dear. Not only has this principle, since that time, formed the sole regulator of Government measures in general or commercial policy, but it has operated decisively on our finances, and is the main cause to which their present hopeless condition is to be ascribed. To cheapen everything became the great object; and this was to be done, it was thought, most effectually by taking taxes off articles of consumption. Under the influence of this principle, indirect taxes to the following enormous amount have been repealed since the peace, the magnitude of which renders it noways surprising that the sinking-fund has disappeared:— TABLE showing the Taxes, Direct and Indirect, Repealed and Imposed from 1816 to 1847, both inclusive. REPEALED. IMPOSED. Year. Direct. Indirect. Direct. Indirect. Year. 1816, £15,000,000 £2,547,000 £320,058 1816 1817, 36,495 7,991 1817 1818, 9,564 1,336 1818 1819, 705,846 3,094,902 1819 1820, 4,000 119,602 1820 1821, 471,309 43,642 1821 1822, 2,139,101 1822 1823, 1,860,000 2,190,050 18,596 1823 1824, 1,704,724 45,605 1824 1825, 3,639,551 43,000 1825 1826, 1,973,812 188,000 1826 1827, 4,038 21,402 1827 1828, 51,998 1,966 1828 1829, 126,406 1829 1830, 4,093,955 696,004 1830 1831, 1,598,536 627,586 1831 1832, 747,264 44,526 1832 1833, 1,526,914 1833 1834, 1,200,000 891,516 198,394 1834 1835, 165,817 75 1835