the generality of those persons who owned sailing vessels in Great Britain. Indeed, on the 1st January of the following year, there was not a single vessel building on the stocks of New York for the mercantile marine, and, for many months previously, the shipbuilders throughout the United States had been at a complete standstill.
Disastrous years of 1857 and 1858. But all branches of trade throughout the world were now suffering to a greater or less extent, and 1857 and 1858 will long be remembered as gloomy years. The outbreak of the mutiny in India, the consequent suspension of remittances from the East, and the demand for specie, together with an uninterrupted outflow of the precious metals to the Continent, led to an alarming drain of the bullion in the Bank of England.
Many banks stop payment. After a long struggle to maintain cash payments without pressing unduly on the mercantile classes, the rate of discount rose so high as to render necessary, for the second time, the temporary suspension of the Bank Charter Act of 1844. The effect of this twice-repeated measure was disastrous to many merchants engaged in the trade of the United States; not a few of whom were obliged to suspend payment. The stoppage of the Northumberland and Durham district Bank, with liabilities amounting to 3,000,000l. sterling; as well as those of the Western Bank of Scotland, which had been engaged in wild speculations in the United States and elsewhere, with liabilities to the extent of 8,911,000l., and that also of the City of Glasgow Bank for 6,000,000l., tended materially to increase the depression.
The Liverpool Borough Bank, which had been
