The undaunted courage and resolution of the Government, in the midst of this accumulation of difficulties, saved the country. The writ of habeas corpus was suspended. By an admirable mingling of firmness and conciliation the mutiny was quelled in the navy without serious consequences resulting to the state. To meet the financial difficulties, an act was passed by Parliament permitting the Bank to suspend specie payment--thus delivering the country, for a period of more than twenty years, over to a wholly inconvertible paper currency. From these strong measures the enemies of the country anticipated the most disastrous results. They were, however, doomed to disappointment. Even Napoleon at length grew weary of prophesying the bankruptcy of a nation which every year, from this time, gave more and more effective proofs of the stability of its finances. It was the singular fortune of Great Britain to have at the head of its finances, at this juncture, a man, who in a different sphere, exhibited a spirit scarcely less bold, indomitable, and comprehensive than that of the First Consul himself. This man was Mr. Pitt. The finances of Great Britain, even at the present day, bear witness to the extraordinary changes instituted by this statesman. The tax on houses, windows, etc., had failed. In 1798, Mr. Pitt, with a characteristic fertility of invention, brought forward a bill laying a tax on incomes. By this bill, which is the foundation of all those that have since followed, no tax was imposed on incomes that were less than $300; on incomes above this sum a small tax was laid, which gradually increased until it became one tenth of all incomes over $1,000. The income tax was designed by Mr. Pitt to be simply a war tax. According to his plan the interest upon the national debt, which he kept funded as far as possible, was to be provided for solely from the indirect taxes, leaving the direct tax to meet the extraordinary expenses of the war. The most original feature of the financial system instituted by this statesman, however, was the sinking fund. To prevent the rapid accumulation of the national debt, Mr. Pitt, even before the breaking out of the war with France, had obtained from Parliament permission to set aside six million dollars, with an addition, afterward made, of one per cent. of all the loans made by Government, as a fund to be expended in the purchase of Government stock. The rapid growth of this fund from the constant compounding of interest would, he declared, be sufficient, ultimately, to consume the entire debt of the state. The result seemed to justify his prediction. Constantly in the market, the sinking fund saved the state, by its timely purchases many times during the war, from the disastrous depreciation to which the public stock was liable at every unfavorable turn of the conflict. In 1815, so enormous had been the financial transactions of the state that this fund amounted to about $75,000,000.