This system was adhered to through a series of disasters directly owing to its adoption, which would have destroyed any other nation, and levelled with the dust any other people. In vain was it represented that gold itself was a commodity, liable to change in price like any other article of commerce, according as the supply was or was not equal to the demand; that to fix a standard price for it was to cast anchor in the clouds, and that to make the circulation of the country depend entirely on the retention of an article of commerce, which could not always be retained, was necessarily to expose it to the recurrence of the most disastrous shock to credit. These warnings were systematically disregarded; the bullion system was adhered to amidst the most frightful calamities; and the nation, as the price of its adoption, underwent a series of monetary convulsions beyond anything recorded in history, and which entailed losses greatly exceeding in amount the confiscation and destruction of property which resulted from the French Revolution. Where are these dogmas about the immutability and indestructible value of the gold standard _now_? "Efflavit Deus, et dissipantur." The beneficence of Providence has come to the aid of a benighted and suffering world. As reason had proved inadequate to withstand the pressure of interest, the reserves of nature were let in: the floodgates were opened: the beneficent stream overspread the world. A few grains of gold are discovered in digging a mill-course in California, and the whole bullion system is blown into the air. The labour of a lifetime is undone in a moment: the citadel of the money power is blown up by a spark falling in its own magazine: the island on which the Bullionists had cast anchor itself begins to drift along. Farewell to all their dreams of cheapening everything: farewell to the boast of their able and principal organ, that they had made the sovereign worth two sovereigns! The sovereign is in process of becoming only worth half a sovereign. The ominous intelligence has been received from Paris that the English sovereign had declined fourteen sous in value; Holland has openly abandoned the gold standard; France is preparing measures to meet the altered value of the precious metals. The Bullionists are struck in the very heart of their power. True to their motives, though not to their principles, they are already in their journals decrying gold as a standard, and proposing silver in its stead. Everything has for a year past been rising in price in England except agricultural produce and sugar, still kept down by the unrestrained importation of foreign states. For long it was tried to write down California; but the gold-dust at length became too strong for them. The fatal truth could no longer be concealed, that the value of money had declined, was declining, and, as they thought, ought to be enhanced. But how to do that was the difficulty, amidst ceaseless