A Commercial Crisis--Suspension of the Bank Act--The Fall of Lucknow--Sir Hugh Rose in Central India--Last Days of the Rebellion--The Operations in China--The Queen’s Personal Direction of Affairs--Palmerston’s waning Popularity--Attacks on Lord Canning--The Orsini Plot--French Menaces to England--The Conspiracy Bill--Defeat of the Ministry--The Second Derby-Disraeli Government--Abandonment of the Conspiracy Bill--The Queen’s Opposition to the India Bill--The Oudh Proclamation and Ellenborough’s “Secret Despatch”--A Tropical Summer and an Exhausted Legislature--Confirmation of the Prince of Wales--The Queen at Birmingham and Leeds--The Dispute between France and England about the Principalities--The Queen’s Visit to Cherbourg--The Royal Visit to Prussia--The Meeting with the Princess Frederick William--A Royal “Middie”--The Indian Proclamation--The Queen at Balmoral--Donati’s Comet--The Controversy over the Indian Army--Abdication of the King of Prussia--The Queen’s Letter to the Prince of Wales--France and Portugal--Failing Health of the Prince Consort. Towards the end of 1857 the commercial credit of the country was severely shaken. The great railway companies in America sank under the burden of debenture debts: when they failed to pay their creditors, the banks were unable to give gold in exchange for their convertible issue of notes, and then private firms of the highest standing rapidly tumbled into insolvency. The effect of these disasters on English commercial credit was most serious. Houses engaged in American commerce that had been rashly over-trading on the capital of their creditors, fell in rapid succession, dragging down others in their fall. The Western Bank of Scotland stopped payment, and spread ruin far and wide through the districts of which Glasgow is the business centre. The failure of this establishment revealed the fact that gigantic frauds had been perpetrated by the auditors, who had certified the existence of a fictitious surplus of £2,000,000. A panic in Ireland, together with these disasters in Scotland, brought the crisis to a head in England. The sudden demand for gold at the Bank of England alarmed the Government, which, on the 12th of November, suspended the Bank Act, limiting the issue of notes.