Old Mr. Lefevre, the father of the present Speaker of the House of Commons, and the principal founder of Curries and Co.'s house on Cornhill, illustrated this theory of Banking one day to a customer in a significant manner. The customer in question was one of those men who find it very convenient to have bad memories. His account was almost always over-drawn, and whenever spoken to upon the subject, his answer was the same - lie really had forgotten how it stood. At last Mr. Lefevre, who had watched his opportunity, caught him one day at the counter, and said to him, "Mr.---------, you and I must understand one another something better than we seem to do. I am afraid you don't know what Banking is; give me leave to tell you - It's my business to take care of your money; but, I find, you are always taking care of mine. Now that is not Banking, Mr.----------; it must be the other way: I'm the Banker, not you; - you understand me now, Mr.----------; I'm sure you do 1 !"

According to the definition just given, Banking would seem to be a very simple operation, and easily susceptible of good and profitable management. The reverse, however, generally turns out to be the case. It is so very easy, that.no one seems to conceive he can go wrong with it. Our state of Banking is bad in the extreme; it has been every thing by turns but what it ought to be, and nothing long. It is not only bad in itself, but it communicates evil to everything around it. There is no trade, manufacture, profession, or condition of life, that has not suffered from it. It is an epidemic that arrests and afflicts all classes; a plague that corrupts and kills high and low, poor and affluent, without distinction: - a thousand incidents have taken place in the city within a year, which exhibit our monetary affairs in a most deplorable condition, but they will not be brought before Parliament. The secret committee system will not permit it. I have seen, last spring, a bill-broker go from house to house of an afternoon with the bills of a country Bank, accepted by first-rate firms in Lombard-street, and cash was not to be got for them at five per cent. interest and one and a half per cent. commission. I have known, about the same time, a man with 10,000l. exchequer bills, unable to raise 5000l. upon them at his Banker's, and that Banker one of the best in Lombard-street. I have known a city Banker, at the beginning of last year, confess in a mixed company that he would be glad to allow ten per cent. for money, for six months to come. At the same time, I have known another Banker in Lombard-street pay eight per cent. for an advance of money on exchequer bills; and ten per cent. to be charged on the discount of a bill of exchange, the acceptor of which was then, and still is, a Bank director!

1 Mr. Lefevre, though a very silent and reserved character, was not without his vein of sly humour. One day he happened to have at dinner a great talker, - one of those monstrous bores who will speak always without ever saying any thing worth listening to; who seem to think it an essential condition of existence that a man should never cease to hear the sound of his own voice, and who continue talking incessantly, as if the hidden principle of perpetual motion lay in the tongue. After enduring this volume of sound signifying nothing for some time with exemplary patience, Mr. Lefevre, to the astonishment of the company, very quietly suppressed the nuisance, by taking advantage of a short pause in monopolylogue, and simply observing, - "You need not talk any more, Mr.----------, if you don't like it."

These are facts that tell the true story of our Banking system - these are the realities that prove our distress - these are the circumstances which Parliament ought to establish in evidence, and put upon record as a warning to merchants and manufacturers; these are the evils for which we have a right to demand a cure; and yet not a trace of them is to be found in the big book ordered to be printed by the Commons at the end of the session; they will remain unexplained, unaccounted for, and unprovided for! And yet these are the things, which, if they continue much longer, will seal the fate of this country, and put a period to our career as a great commercial community: for no man can contend against them. While they last, credit is prostrate, labour fails of its market, and property almost ceases to be wealth.

If we contrast this state of hardship with that prevailing thirty years ago, we shall wonder how the same country, convulsed by two such extremes, has been able to maintain its position in the scale of nations. During the war of the French Revolution, as it is called, there were neither bounds nor limits to credit; money flowed through all the various channels of commerce as rapidly as mountain-streams in wet weather tumble into the plains below; the Bank of England, unrestrained by a liability to pay in specie, diffused its notes with a prodigal hand; and every man who could get a bill accepted could get it cashed. He who made thousands one week was in the Gazette next; and, before he had got his certificate, stood forth adventuring his thousands again as confidently and boldly as if he never had been a loser. Downing-street and Threadneedle-street pulled wire for wire; and the people danced and capered like puppets to the music of a barrel-organ. The minister had hundreds of millions to borrow in loans, and tens of millions to raise in revenue; and loans could not be raised, nor taxes paid, unless trade was lively and the circulation full and free; and accordingly, when the prime minister winked his eye, the Bank governor nodded his head, and bank-notes were dealt out like cards at a gambling-table; every man who would give an I O U to the marker, being at perfect liberty to play the game he pleased, and take his chance of ruin in the general sport.

But, as the Frenchman says, Nous avons change tout ca. Thirty years ago we were surfeited into a fever, and now we are fallen upon Lenten times, and made to fast until we are half-starved. There is a great cry raised about the strong tendency of the times to Romanism; but this is the most Roman Catholic sign of the times I know of, and, in my opinion, it is the worst we could fall upon. There is room to doubt whether the country has a constitution strong enough to bear so severe a change. Very fine things are promised in the next world to penance and mortification here; but the latter, meritorious though they be, seldom fail, by a happy adaptation of means to an end, to cut a man's career rather short in this world. The sinner who has lived high in the hey-day of youth, when he turns serious, and, repenting him of his gaieties, practises an abstemious rule of life, is sure to waste away in flesh, and soon makes food for the worms. While he is taking his final leave of the stage of pleasure, never to be renewed again, the doctor and the priest are at issue, - the one persuades, the other dissuades; and the penitent dies, if he is sincere, with this consolation, - he has the priest's word to assure him he will live for ever. Be that as it may, I am of the doctor's way of thinking; for besides being not in the least irreverent and more human than the other, it has this decided advantage, - it is reasonable in either alternative. The priest cries, "Live for ever!" "Agreed," says the doctor; "but first live where you are while you can; for you know the worst of this world, which is more than you can flatter yourself you do of the next."

But this is playing truant with the subject. There is, unfortunately, no euthanasia in Banking, no spiritual future for lost money. When a Bank dies, the Banker goes through the Gazette; and however he may become a nine days' wonder in consequence of the millions for which he has failed, he will abandon all ideas of immortality the moment he crosses the muddy puddles of Basinghall-street, with an official assignee as the Charon of his passage.