All at once, and without sounding any note of preparation, the ministry announced, that after the expiry of a given season, the whole Scottish banking system was to be changed, all paper currency under the five-pound note abolished, and a metallic circulation introduced and enforced. If Ben Nevis had burst forth at once in the full thunder of volcanic eruption, we could not have been more astonished. What! without complaint or enquiry--without the shadow of a cause shown, or a reason assigned, except it might be that reason--to a Scotsman the most unpalatable of all--the propriety of assimilating the institutions of both countries; in other words, of coercing Scotland to adopt the habit of her neighbours--to excavate the foundation-stone of our whole prosperity, and make us the victims of a theory which, even if sound, could not profess to give us one tittle more advantage than the course which we had so long pursued! We believe that if the annals of legislation were searched through, we could not find a parallel case of such wanton and unprovoked temerity! We said then, and we say now, with even more emphatic earnestness, it is the curse of the age that every thing is to be managed by political economy and philosophy, and that local knowledge is to be utterly disregarded in the management of local interests. CENTRALIZE and ASSIMILATE--these were the watchwords of the ministers of that day; and for aught that we can see, Sir Robert Peel is determined to persevere in the theory. What excuse was there, _then_, for the attempt of any assimilation between the banking systems of the two countries? If it had been alleged that the Scotch paper currency was surreptitiously carried into England--that it was there supplanting the legal currency, and absorbing the gold in exchange, there might have been some show of reason for a slight modification of the system--at all events for a more stringent preventive check. But no such allegation was made. The most determined hater of the Scottish banks knew well that their paper never crossed the Border; for the very best of all possible reasons, that the notes were not a legal tender, and that five persons out of six to whom they might happen to be offered, would unhesitatingly reject them. Again, to absorb the gold would have been neither more nor less than partially to carry out the views entertained by the supporters of a metallic currency, and therefore surely, in their eyes, a venal, if not a meritorious, offence. But such was not the fact. In Scotland there was no such a thing known as a gold circulation. The fishermen, the cattle dealers, and the small traders, would not so much as take it; and the stranger who, through ignorance, had provided himself with a stock of the precious metal, was forced to have recourse to a Scottish bank in order to have it exchanged for notes. Beyond what lay in the bank reserves, there was literally none in the country; and therefore any