The national debt at the close of the war with France amounted to a little more than $424,000,000,000. Of this, $300,000,000,000 had been added by the war. During the last years of the contest the annual expenditures of the state were $585,000,000. The population of the island was at this time 13,400,000, from which $360,000,000 was annually collected in taxes. It is important to notice the condition of the people during this epoch. For nearly twenty years the country had been under the uncontrolled influence of a paper currency. It had been a period of remarkable prosperity, coupled with unparalleled changes. And here we find many points of resemblance with the present condition of our own country. The rapidly expanding currency, the enormous demands of the war, and the spirit of speculation engendered by the sharp alternations of hope and fear, and the extraordinary fluctuations of the markets had stimulated in every branch of business a preternatural activity. Manufactures, which the beginning of the war had found just rising into prominence, rapidly developed in an age of financial profusion. No such progress had ever been made in a corresponding period. Exports were doubled. The shipping rose from one to two and a half million tons. The whole nation exhibited the singular spectacle of a country constantly advancing in wealth and prosperity in the midst of one of the most exhaustive wars that the world has ever seen. To this, however, there was apparently, at least, one exception. Prices rose steadily from the beginning of the war. This was true not merely of unimportant articles, or those which, by the exercise of a more severe economy, could be in part dispensed with. The cost of the necessaries of life doubled. Wheat rose from forty-nine shillings per quarter in 1797 to one hundred and forty shillings in 1813; while the beef which was sold in Smithfield market, at the beginning of the war, at three shillings per stone, constantly advanced in price, until the same quantity in 1814 could only be bought for six shillings. Malt, coal, wages--everything rose proportionately. Few questions have been the subject of more discussion than the cause of this remarkable rise of prices. Two diverse explanations have been given, each put forth by men whose habits of thought and opportunities for observation qualify them to speak on the subject with authority. One large party attribute the rise of prices that took place at this period, entirely to the influence of the suspension of specie payment by the Bank, which, as they say, flooded the country with an inflated and depreciated paper currency, and thus necessitated a corresponding rise in the price of the articles given in exchange for it. So strongly does this reasoning commend itself to the minds of those familiar with the first principles of political economy, that it has been very generally accepted. And it is worthy of notice that these are almost the only arguments which can be heard in