In the sixth place, the depreciation of property and ruin to individuals which has ensued and is going on from the present crisis, is so prodigious, that the mind can scarcely apprehend it, even by the aid of the most ardent imagination. Not to mention the extreme embarrassment to merchants which must ensue from the present extravagant rate of interest and discount, and which must in most branches of commerce _entirely absorb the profits of stock for this year_--not to mention the vast number of the most respectable houses which have sunk under the pressure of the times--not to mention the prodigious burden imposed on landed proprietors and debtors in mortgages and bonds on personal security, by the general rise of interest to five per cent. and often above that sum, from three and a half or four _per cent_--let us endeavour to estimate, on something approaching to authentic data, the depreciation and destruction of property which had taken place even so early as 26th October last, when Government most properly stepped in to arrest the ruinous effects of Sir Robert Peel's currency bill of 1844. We estimate the National Debt, funded and unfunded, in round numbers at £800,000,000; the railway property, which now produces a revenue of above £9,000,000 a-year, of which half is profit, at £100,000,000;[12] bank and other joint stock at as much; and the capital embarked in commerce and manufactures at £500,000,000. Thus, the loss on the moveable property of Great Britain by the present crisis, may be estimated as follows:--The three per cents. in August, 1845, were at £100-7/8, and for a considerable time were about 100: when Lord John Russell stepped in by his letter of 26th October, 1847, to arrest the consequences of Sir Robert Peel's bill of 1844, they were at 79; and the effect of that partial remedy, even with the bank advances for a month after at eight per cent., has been to raise them to 85. The depreciation of funded property, till the Act of 1844 was broken through, had been in two years from 100 to 80, or a fifth. Take the depreciation of all other moveable property engaged in fluctuating employments, on an average at the _same amount and no more_. We need not say how this understates the matter. How happy would a large part of the railway stockholders, merchants, and manufacturers of the United Kingdom be, if the depreciation of their property could truly be estimated at no larger an amount! But take it on an average as a fifth only,--the strength of the argument, as Mr Malthus said of his famous arithmetical and geometrical progression, will admit of almost any concession. The depreciation and destruction of property since 1845, will then stand thus:--