discriminate between customers urgent for and deserving of discounts, and another class whose need of accommodation is not so sore, and a third class who are sure to fail if the Panic stalks forward. A permission given of the Government to the Bank of England to overpass under these circumstances the Discount-limits laid down by the Bank Act of 1844, has on three several occasions acted like a charm to still the ragings of a commercial storm. On each of these occasions, 1847, 1857, and 1866, the Bank was forbidden by the Privy Council to discount for less than 10%. As the inclined plane of rising prices is slowly ascended before a Crisis, so the fall of general prices afterwards seems to be rather gradual also till the lowest point of them is reached, from which another ascent is apt to commence. The following table taken from the _New York Public_ of the first week of November, 1881, is instructive on both these points. Taking the prices in 1860 of 43 articles of prime necessity, which constituted then and afterwards about 3/4 of the commerce of the country, as the normal standard or 100, the table gives the comparative gold prices of the same for four years previous to 1873 and for seven years subsequent, as follows:-- 1869 116 1870 118 1871 120 1872 122 1873 113 1874 115 1875 107 1876 100 1878 81 1879 98 1880 103 1881 111 (5) A penultimate Disadvantage of Credit may be noted in the facility which it offers for contracting great national Debts. There are certain aspects, under which a Nation may be properly regarded as a moral person, and as such person may pledge the public faith for the present and the future, becoming a debtor to its own people or to foreigners, and thus a public debt may be made a sort of mortgage on the national property and income. Now, it cannot be fairly denied, that incidental advantages may spring up in connection with such a national debt: for example, the bonds, which are its evidences, may open up to the people a convenient form of investment for presently inactive capital, and for trust funds of all kinds; there can be little doubt that certain classes of persons holding these national obligations are won thereby to a stronger patriotism and become better friends to stability in government, although this consideration applies mainly to new governments and to those temporarily endangered; both England and the United States now make a portion of their public debt the basis of a national system of Banking, but it is perhaps questionable whether this can be justly put among the incidental benefits of the Debts; and again "a moderate debt adds to the credit of a Nation, and its ability to raise money in an emergency, for bankers and capitalists are more ready to take such securities as they are in the habit of dealing in" (Sidney Homer).