Again, as to the European revolutions of 1848, although, undoubtedly, they largely contributed to interrupt the commerce of this country with central Europe, and may fairly be considered as the principal cause of the decline in the exports of that year, yet it may be doubted whether the influx of wealth, from the distracted monarchies of Europe, which they occasioned, did not more than counterbalance that disadvantage. England, during the convulsions of France, Germany, and Italy, became the bank of Europe. Wealth flowed in from all quarters, for investment in the only capital left which held out the prospect of security. The solid specie which then was brought to London for purchase into the British funds, in the course of 1848, has been estimated, by competent authorities, at £9,000,000 sterling. Beyond all doubt, this great influx of the precious metals from continental Europe--at a time when it was so much required, in consequence of the enormous exportation of specie which free trade was inducing, and the monstrous monetary laws which contracted the paper circulation in proportion as it was withdrawn--had a powerful effect in counteracting the evils we had brought upon ourselves, and sustaining the currency and national credit, which the Free-traders had done so much to destroy. And as this was an alleviation of the evil at its fountain-head, it is next to certain that the European revolutions of 1848, so far from having occasioned the distress in Great Britain in that year, had a material effect in abating it. It is vain, therefore, for the Free-traders to push forward extraneous and separate events, as the cause of the dreadful calamities which have overtaken the country since October 1847; calamities which all the witnesses examined in both Houses of Parliament, in the committees on commercial distress, described as _altogether unparalleled_. They arose, evidently, not from the failure of crops in a particular place, or the temporary stoppage in the foreign vent for a particular branch of manufacture--causes which only touched the extremities--but from some great cause affecting the heart of the empire, and which through it paralysed all its members. And when it is recollected that, after having landed the nation in extra domestic engagements, for the next four years, to the amount of £360,000,000, the government adopted the most decisive and effective measures to contract the currency, and, after making it mainly dependant on the retention of gold in the country, they took steps which sent that gold headlong abroad--in exchange for enormously increased importations, the fruit of free trade--it is not difficult to discover what that cause was.