Now whatever we may think of the extreme candour of the Right Honourable Baronet, it is perhaps rather too much to expect from human nature that an individual who has been the cause of all this monstrous mischief, should stand forward at once, and manfully plead guilty to the charge. Sir Robert Peel has not yet played out his full hand of political cards; and he is perfectly well aware that after such an admission, very few persons indeed would be inclined to cut in with him for a partner. In short, were he now to acknowledge himself in the wrong, it would be at the sacrifice of his sole remaining qualification as a statesman--the _prestige_ of his financial sagacity. If he loses this, faint though the recommendation be compared with the far higher qualities of consistency and open dealing, he is indeed a bankrupt in his fame! Need we wonder then that he clings to his darling measure, with a tenacity absolutely startling when we reflect on his former degrading versatility? Need we wonder that he eagerly attempts to fasten the blame of the monetary pressure upon the railroad speculators, the Bank Directors, or any other body of men who can at all be brought into question? As to the Bank Directors, we quite agree with Lord Ashburton that it is most unfair to make them the scape-goats in this matter. Had they not been bound down by stringent statutory fetters--had they been allowed to use the common caution of every commercial dealer by measuring the amount of their accommodation by the known responsibility of their customers, there would have been no financial crisis. But Sir Robert, in his infinite wisdom, would not suffer them to retain the prerogative of thinking and rational beings. He made them mere machines for contracting the circulation, and prohibited them from supporting credit: and surely they are not blameable if they shaped their conduct according to the clear letter and distinct direction of the law. In dealing with the railway shareholders Sir Robert Peel cuts even a sorrier figure. He talks about absorption of capital and over-trading, as if these things had in reality any thing to do with an arbitrary restriction of the currency. Now we do not require to be told that there is a certain limit at which accommodation must stop; but we maintain that it is the function of the banker to decide when that limit has arrived in the case of each particular customer. If a man has embarked the whole of his available capital in undertakings which are not yet profitable, or which do not speedily promise to become so, it is unquestionably in the option of the banker at his own risk to refuse or to increase his credit. But, as matters presently stand, not only has the banker no such option, but he cannot afford the required accommodation even to parties whose capital and property are undoubted, for the very simple reason that the law, as amended by Peel, deprives him of the means of doing so. If gold goes out