from taxes, for the taxes will all be paid in Bank Notes and should the government refuse Bank Notes in payment of taxes, the credit of Bank Notes will be gone at once. No cash will arrive from the business of discounting merchants' bills; for every merchant will pay off those bills in Bank Notes and not in cash. There is therefore no means left for the Bank to obtain a new supply of cash, after the present quantity be paid away."-This is clear at the present day, wherever the notes of a bank are brought in in quantities sufficient to exhaust the gold of the bank, it breaks, or in common phrase, stops its payments, and for the best of all reasons-it has nothing left wherewith to pay. The facility of issuing Bank Notes has made the managers of the Bank to feel themselves weighty men. They speculate beyond their real means, and, when pressed, feel the arrival of a time which they have not anticipated and which they scarcely thought possible.

The political changes produced by a failure in a system of finance are not the least important part of the matter, and, on this head, Mr. Paine narrates his experience thus:-" It is worthy of observation, that every case of a failure in finances, since the system of paper money began, has produced a revolution in government, either total or partial. A failure in the finances of France produced the French Revolution. A failure in the finance of the assignats broke up the Revolutionary Government, and produced the present French constitution. A failure in the finances of the old congress of America and the embarrassments it brought upon commerce, broke up the system of the old confederation and produced the present federal constitution. If, then, we admit of reasoning by comparison of causes and events, a failure in the English finance will produce some change in the government of that country." There is not a question but it will do so: and the sooner the better; for it is much wanted.

The Sinking Fund Bubble, for paying off the debt of the government, was thus aptly illustrated by Mr. Paine, in 1796. We have seen the effect as here stated:-" As to Mr. Pitt's project of paying off the national debt by applying a million a year for that purpose, while he continues adding more than twenty millions ayear to it, it is like setting a man with a wooden leg to run after a hare. The longer he runs the farther he is off." And yet, what solemn saws have we heard from our legislature about this ridiculous sinking fund! Where is it now? The very name was a pun upon the reality of the thing-a sinking fund! All government funds are sinking funds.

This little pamphlet of Mr. Paine's is quite sufficient to communicate a full knowledge upon its subject. I never before read it with the same effect as at this moment. Almost every paragraph has its peculiar beauty and force. In proceeding, he observes:-"Though all the approaches to bankruptcy may actually exist in circumstances, they admit of being concealed by appear

ances. Nothing is more common than to see the bankrupt of today a man of credit but the day before; yet no sooner is the real state of his affairs known, than every body can see he had been insolvent long before. In London, the greatest theatre of bankruptcy in Europe, this part of the subject will be well and feelingly understood." Particularly at this moment.

The following paragraph is beautifully illustrative of the subject: "Do we not see that nature, in all her operations, disowns the visionary basis upon which the funding system is built? She acts always by renewed successions, and never by accumulating additions perpetually progressing. Animals and vegetables, men and trees have existed ever since the world began; but, that existence has been carried on by succession of generations, and not by continuing the same men and the same trees in existence that existed first; and to make room for the new she removes the old. Every natural idiot can see this. It is the stock-jobbing idiot only that mistakes. He has conceived that art can do what nature cannot. He is teaching her a new systemthat there is no occasion for man to die-that the scheme of creation can be carried on upon the plan of the funding system-that it can proceed by continual additions of new beings, like new loans, and all live together in eternal youth. Go, count the graves, thou idiot, and learn the folly of thy arithmetic!"

My last extract is made to show how strongly it was corroborated in the last week, by the connection of the Ministers with the Bank Directors. We are told, that they were in consultation by night and day, and the result we find to be an issue of papermoney. Mr. Paine has the following remark:-"There has always existed, and still exists, a mysterious, suspicious connection, between the Minister and the Directors of the Bank, and which explains itself no otherwise than by a continual increase of Bank Notes." This is their panacea; but still their patient must die and their medical applications go on to be less and less availing. RICHARD CARLILE.

DIALOGUE

BETWEEN THE GREEK PHILOSOPHER EPICTETUS AND HIS SON.

Epictetus. I feel death fast approaching, I have not many minutes to live. You may retain a pleasing remembrance of me my son, for I have employed my time and all the talents I possessed in trying to improve the world and in endeavouring to diminish the extent of human suffering. I expect, however, that you will not dishonour my memory by giving vent to useless tears and lamentations-I expect you will follow the path I have traced out, and lend your assistance towards banishing vice and misery from the world by enlightening the multitude. I die con

tented and with feelings of satisfaction, when I think my means of doing good will not be ended by my death; as I shall leave behind me in the person of my son, a willing and sincere agent in the great and good cause of exterminating ignorance; and in teaching people to exert their understanding; and to think and judge for themselves. Let me hear you declare that your sole aim will be to ameliorate, by dispelling ignorance, the condition of mankind.

Son. You may die happy my honoured father, for rest assured after the noble example you have given me, I shall think no other pursuit worthy of my attention and time. But you seem to have no apprehensions at the approach of death, do you feel no regret at quitting all sensation?

E. Wherefore should I feel regret at a circumstance beyond all human control. Could I avert it by regret, there would be some reason for regretting, and I should make no scruple to use those means of prolonging my stay here, since I can still employ But as I have no conmyself usefully for my fellow creatures.

trol over the event, I suffer no whining to disturb my last few hours of existence-But let me ask you, wherefore should I feel any apprehensions at dying?

Son. Because it appears to me, that you are on the brink either of total annihilation, and that sensation shrinks from; or you are It is the total ignorance on the eve of a new state of existence.

of what is going to happen to you, that should raise the feelings of apprehension.

E. If I am, as you say, in total ignorance upon the subject there is not the shadow of a reason for alarm, for no alarm will dispel that ignorance-What is death, my son? wherefore should the death of a man cause more anxiety than the death of any of the other more intelligent animals? All the knowledge that we can gather from experience, tegarding death, is, that we are deprived of all sensation. Now without sensation what have we to fear? Death can only act in three different ways. I must either have a continuation of the sensation which I have already experienced in this life, or, I must be deprived of sensation altogether; or lastly, I must have other and new sensations. Now, if I have a continuation of the sensations of this life, I am not in ignorance by being able toappreciate them, cannot possibly have any alarm, since by possessing such sensations my life will be merely in a state of prolongation. If, as in the second case, I am totally deprived of sensation, what have I to apprehend? Nothing can happen to me, that can be of any consequence, since, I shall no longer possess the capability of feeling, and therefore pleasure or pain will be equally negative in their efforts upon me. If, as in the last case, I have other sensations given to me, perfectly different from any of those I have hitherto experienced, I am again relieved from all apprehensions; because to feel those new sensa

tions, I must be remodelled, must become a different creature altogether. Why then should I feel any apprehensions for entering into a state of which I cannot have the remotest idea? Son. Your reasons are unanswerable. To the philosopher, death has no more terror, than his nightly slumbers. But this new sect who have come out of Palestine, and who preach a continuation of existence after death, seem to think that the present sensations will also continue, and it is through these means that punishment will be inflicted for bad conduct here.

E. What! is there any sect of people from Judea reviving the superstitions and fables of the poets? I thought it belonged exclusively to the poets to wander beyond the limits of real knowledge.

Son. You have always taught me that the word virtue had no meaning attached to it, without it meant a course of actions beneficial to mankind, in extending the general happiness, by pointing out the paths that lead to the pleasurable sensations, and by teaching others to avoid the roads that conduct to the painful sensations. But this new sect from Palestine makes virtue to consist in very useless and I might add mischievous actions. In fact it is quite of a new species that I never have heard of before.

E. Do these people inculcate doctrines that do not tend to promote human happiness? What is this new sect?

Son. It is composed of Jews who sell rags and love charms, and who were notorious at Rome for passing bad and false money.

E. Do they teach virtue by the same rule, as they weigh their money?

Son. They do not make virtue to consist in a train of actions useful to promote human happiness, they place it in circumcising themselves; and they say you cannot be a good man unless you are dipped in or sprinkled with water, by one of their priests, who repeats certain magical words over you, as "I put you in the water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." But even upon this point they are not agreed. They have partly divided into Circumcisers, and water sprinklers: some say cutting off the foreskin makes the party a virtuous character, others say, there is no need to perform this operation. One party affirms water to be absolutely spiritual to form the good man; the others ridicule this, and say it is of no consequence. But they all agree upon one point, they unanimously preach that we must give them money.

E. The ceremonies you have been telling me, only merit laughter and contempt. But wherefore do they require money? Dothey perform any labours that merit the reward? Do they ask for money in order to employ it in acts useful to society?

Son. Ah! my father, this sect makes a very different applica

tion of it. They apply it to purposes of self aggrandisement. Not only do they exact our contributions, but they require we should deliver up to them every thing we possess even to the last obole.

E. Nay, do not joke with me, nor try to impose upon me. There is but one class of people in society who act in this manner, and they are thieves by profession. Such people it is our duty to bring before the tribunals of justice. Has any person denounced this sect according to its deserts?

Son. Your question makes me smile! they do not call themselves thieves, but they would rather compare themselves to merchants who give the finest commodity in the world for money; for they promise in exchange for it, a never ending life. If, in bringing your wealth to them, you keep back only enough to subsist your wife and children with the commonest diet, they pretend to have the power to make you drop down dead instantly. By the influence of fear, they work so upon the timid minded and uneducated part of the people, that they are believed.

E. These people are worse than absurd, they are assassins to the peace of society. The authorities should cleanse the city of such propagators of vice and misery.

Son. By dealing in the marvellous and mysterious they have obtained a strong hold over the imagination of the ignorant people. It is believed that they are great magicians who hold human life at their command; that they can kill by a word; and this sect declare they have such power, and that they obtained this power, from the person whom they stile the father, through the medium of the Son. One of their proselytes, who smelt most offensively, but who preached in the suburbs and out houses of the city with much success, told me, that one of his relations called Ananias having sold his farm, to please the son in the name of the father (this is the magical term these people make use of) brought the money to one of their head priests called Barjona; but, as Ananias had not lost his appetite, because he had been sprinkled with water, and had had the magical names pronounced over him, he kept back a small portion of the money produced by the sale for food for his family, and for doing this, Barjona punished him with death upon the spot. His wife came in afterwards, and Barjona made her die also, only by pronouncing a single word.

E. My son, if you are speaking the truth to me, these people are the most abominable and barefaced criminals upon the face of the earth. But it strikes me that you have been imposed upon and that these stories are too ridiculous to be true.

Son. Oh no, my father, all that I relate to you is openly taught and implicitly believed by this sect. Moreover they have the impudence to try to persuade people that if they obtain from