The pulse of the people was feverish, and easily excited; and the papers of the day display the intense anxiety which hung over the public mind during the eventful years of 1814 and 1815. The prices of the funds dropped and rose like a barometer. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that they were regarded as an oracle; and, while the public professed to disbelieve all Stock Exchange rumors, simply because they were so, they continued to inquire the variations in the price, and almost regarded them as a cause rather than a consequence. The annals of the world contain no more exciting period. For years, the English had seen battle after battle won by the great conqueror. They had seen disciplined armies vanquished by raw levies; veteran troops cut to pieces by young conscripts; and the prestige of his name had haunted them for the fourth part of a century. To destroy his power, they had submitted to painful privations; they had borne with taxation which almost amounted to tyranny; they had levied loans which enriched the few and impoverished the many. The national debt had increased to 800 millions; and now the reward had come, and the people read with undisguised and unlimited pleasure, of field after field yielding to British prowess; of towns stormed; of achievements which made them proud of the name they bore; until that prophecy, which had been derided for years, became a lasting fact; British troops paraded in triumph through the streets of Paris; and men felt that their sufferings and their sorrows had not been vain, but that the treasure they had lavished had reaped its reward. So important to our financial department was the close of this war, that the decrease of the expenditure was at once declared to be two millions per month; and, accustomed as the money power of England had been to loan succeeding loan, the Stock Exchange could scarcely understand the declaration of the Chancellor, that he neither intended to ask for money, nor to touch the sinking fund. The immediate effect of the battle of Waterloo on the funds was only three per cent., nor was it until the capture of Napoleon became positively known, that they rose to their previous price. It is not unworthy of remark, that, from 1688 to 1814, sixty-three years witnessed bloody and expensive wars, while only sixty-one years were employed in recovering from the effects of so demoralizing a system.