was gradually brought into extensive domestic use, and was exchanged for many millions of specie. Successive portions of this great metallic stock were afterwards applied to redemption of parts of the public debt. But a substantial metallic reserve was still kept on hand, and experience proved that even five or ten millions, available in this way, were more effective against crisis than fifty millions scattered amongst the public. The amounts thus saved were strictly and steadily applied, on the accumulative principle, by a commission specially intrusted with the business, and the funds in hand were solemnly placed beyond reach of the temptations incident to any future "First Lord of the Treasury." In this way, with the aid of repayments at times out of surplus revenue, the entire debt was finally redeemed within a century.
It was something for the State to be able at last to boast that there was difficulty to discover anywhere a poor youth, needing, or willing to accept, help, and who would thus confer upon it the luxury of helping one of its sons forward in life's struggle. That condition was indeed substantially attained. But towards its high attainment a good deal had been done, in preceding generations, as to the suppression or extirpation of crime, mendicancy, tramping, gipsying, and so on, as we shall have occasion to see further on. The time arrived when the State could not only give a free education to all its youth, but could help forward into the successes of their maturer life any
