comfortable

THE present year, as compared with the preceding one, opened under far happier auspices. That public distress and want, which had alone given to the impulses of the disaffected their efficacy and formidable character, had nearly disappeared. The prosperity of trade, and the extended demand for British manufactures, placed in circumstances those whom misery before had goaded to desperation. The agitators, discomfited in all their attempts, and finding no longer apt materials on which to work, either remained dormant, or made such abortive efforts, as served only to expose their weakness. The vessel of the state was to be guided now over a tranquil sea, no longer beset with those rocks from which shipwreck had been dreaded. This fortunate aspect of public affairs had a cheering influence, since it was

more

hailed as the earnest of that which Britain was now permanently to exhibit. Such a hope was premature and illusory. The absence of that extraordinary stimulus which war had given to various branches of industry, could not be so suddenly supplied. The present active production was destined, in a great degree, for a speculative market, and was marked by all that excess of adventure to which overflowing enterprize and capital too frequently stimulate British chants. It laid the foundation, therefore, for a redundant supply, which was to renew that stagnation and suffering from which the nation appeared to have emerged. But these evils were neither felt nor foreseen: The public is ever sanguine, and ever believing, that what is now, will continue to be; a propensity, after all, which, when duly modified, tends

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