Francis Baily—a name as well known in the scientific as in the monetary world—retired from the Stock Exchange in 1825, and the man who, in the midst of the most exciting pursuit in the world, was worthily chosen president of the Royal Astronomical Society, sheds an honor on the class to which he belonged, and should have been an exemplar to the men with whom he associated. As a boy, studious beyond his years, he was called—half jestingly, half seriously—the philosopher of Newbury; and, having left school at fourteen, remained in a mercantile situation until he was twenty-two, when, for the mere love of adventure, he embarked for the New World, travelled through a great part of the far West, and passed eleven months among the aborigines, without once meeting the shelter of a civilized roof. In 1800, he went on the money market, where he soon became conspicuous, publishing, within a few years, many works which were justly regarded with great favor; and, in 1806, defended, though unsuccessfully, the rights of the brokers. In 1814, he drew up the report of the committee on the great fraud of that year, arranged the evidence against the perpetrators completely and conclusively, and was one of those men of whom the Stock Exchange—from which he retired with a fortune won by uprightness and intelligence—was not worthy. The triumphs of Mr. Baily in his favorite pursuit are recorded in the minds of all who prize the science which he so dearly loved. A list of his labors would be misplaced in the present volume; but Sir John Herschel has recorded them in his memoir of the scientific member of that place which is too much open to the reproach, that it narrows men’s minds as much as it enlarges their purses. CHAPTER XII. _Review of the National Debt.—Opinions.—Bolingbroke.—Financial Reform Association.—Extravagance of Government.—Schemes for paying off the National Debt.—Review of them.—Proposals for Debentures._