There is too much foundation, all must admit, for these complaints. On occasion of the dreadful monetary crisis of October 1847, when ministers were compelled to break through the Bank Charter Act, and nearly all railway labour and mercantile industry in the country was suspended from the impossibility of finding funds to carry them on, the government were besieged with the most earnest memorials from the chambers of commerce in nearly all the commercial cities of the empire, and especially London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Edinburgh, pointing out the ruinous effects of the Bank Restriction Act of 1844; but still they did nothing. They contented themselves with appointing a committee, in which the bullionists were understood to have the majority, in parliament, which, after sitting long, and examining a host of witnesses, and burying the question under heaps of blue folios, will probably end by reporting a year hence in favour of the present system. The most vigorous remonstrances have been made by the same commercial bodies against the threatened abrogation of the Navigation Laws; but that has not in the slightest degree shaken the avowed determination of government, to carry the principle of free-trade without limitation into that vital branch of our national industry. The West India interest demonstrated in a manner "_luce meridiana clarius_," that the equalisation of the duties of foreign slave-grown to home free-labour-raised sugar, would prove utter ruin to our West India colonies, and reinstate in frightful activity the infernal traffic of the slave-trade; but this did not produce the slightest impression on government, and they without hesitation consigned these noble colonies to destruction, and restored the slave-trade throughout the globe, rather than abate one iota of the dogmas of free-trade, or raise sugar a penny a-pound.[5] All the great cities of the empire have sent deputations or memorials to government, beseeching in the most earnest manner a grant of exchequer bills, or the aid of treasury credit in some way, to set agoing the unfinished lines of railways, and enable them to find a certain amount of labour for the unemployed; but they have every where, met with a decided refusal. We must have free-trade in every thing, in pauperism, typhus fever, and insurrection, as well as in corn, cotton, or sugar. _Laissez faire_ is the universal system: all government has to do is to hinder the competitors coming to blows. Every thing must find its level, though that level to one-half of the community is the bottom of the cellar. One thing only is to be protected, and that is gold; one class only is to be saved from competition, and that class is the great capitalists. [5] One of the oldest and wealthiest houses in Glasgow in the West India trade has just failed for £400,000, and in their circular announcing the suspension of their payments they observe:--