The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1826-02-08 00:00:00

even upon the weakest mind.' But it would seem that we were
mistaken. It to Said that many indiv!duals have been frightened
almost out of their wits, and are preparing to remove themselves
and their effects not of the reach of the expected mischief. It is
perhaps impossible to Invent anything of the mavellous, however
stupid and improbable, that will not gain credit with a certain por-
tion if the human race. It is much to be regretted that any per.
son or persons can find amusement in propagating such roily and
falsehood, for the mere purpose of alarming the fears or the weak,
the timid, and the auperatitieuir. They ought to know that there
is neither wit nor wisdom in such a hoax—that they are producing
much uneasiness among& class of people who are incapable of rea-
soning on such • subject ; and that their conduct meets with the
contempt of all sensible people.
A letter from a Senator or the United States. received in Balti-
more, says, " The British Minister has been spoken to on the sub-
ject of the stop intended to be put to our intercourse with the
North American Colonies, by the Comptroller General or the
Custom', at Halifax. lie approves of it, and has written to the
Governor, requesting hint to obtain a suspension until the opinion
of the British Government can be ascertained."
MEXICO.
Extract of a letter to a respectable house in tins city, dated
Alvarado. Dec. 10, llaff :
" Foreign vessels are allowed to take freight from this to Vera
Crux, and are making a very handsome business of it—for Instance,
the Cato Is chartered for 1,000 dollars the trip; vessels of 60 to 80
tons. MO to COO dollars; and those of 140 to 209 tons, 1,600 to
1,600 dollars.
" The government allows all goods that were landed here pre-
vious to the 14th inst. to he removed free of internal duty, say lie
per cent. and those goods that arrived or are landed alter the 14th,
are subject to this charge. Vera Cruz influence is bent upon fixing
trade there, and many think that this port will be closed entirely to
foreign vessels, and that too very shortly. Even now merchants
buy but very little, and brokers say nothing more can be done here,
all must go to Vera Crux. They will not even take samples, or
make an effort to effect sales.
" Arrivals from Europe are very frequent at this port and Vera
Cruz, and as far as we can learn very few sales are male at the
litter place (and bore nothing to speak ofd, Co that unless a demand
soon takes place, prices must go still lower, and even now they are
in general ruinous to the importer."

Mr. Hums last night brought forward his; motion re-
specting the Horse Guards. His principal complaint was
that the Guards are on a different footing from the regi-
ments of the line, and that new officers have been appointed
instead of the vacancies being filled from the supernume-
rary list. Lord PA LSI ERS TON very satisfactorily. ex-
plained the circumstances under which the appointments

had taken place. The only instance in which a new
officer has been appointed in the Blues was that of the
brother of the Major who was killed at Waterloo. The
appointments in the Foot Guards have consisted merely of
Paged of Honour, who aro entitled on retiring to a com-
mission in the household troops. As to the difference be-
tween the constitution of the army generally and the
guards, it has always existed, and so long as the distinc-
tion continues, must remain. The papers moved for by
Mr. Hums were ordered with the full consent of the Se-
cretary at War, who observed that he could with con-
fidence " leave them to speak for themselves."

On all that relates to the depresaed state of commercial
' credit, and to the difficulties which have embarrassed the
mercantile world, CPDBET9'.II Register and the Times
have consented to become the echoes of each other. With a
politic forgetfulness of their former mutual abuse they have
agreed to make common cause, and to carry on their views
in concert. Mr. Coast rr, with hie usual sagacity, in his
comments on the King's Speechdiscovers the cause of all the
mischief at a single glance—the Govsaxuewr. He does
not Wirer a single syllable in the way of proof; but having
recourse to his usual tactics, he takes it as a fact too clear to
be disputed. "Il it notorious to the world," says he,
" that their measures produced the masses of paper-
money, the foreign loans, the dealings in cotton, all those
things which have finally bursted as so many bubbles." His
coadjutor of the Times, in its leading article of yesterday,
after repeating what they have both said in substance fifty
times before, winds up in exactly the same strain:—
°
While GovannioEnihas been pitinde,ing US on the one
hand for the support of a peace establishment more than
sufficient to carry on s war, we, on the other, have been
converting our fictitious credit into paper, and lavishing
the flimsy currency upon schemes of wild speculation, by
which we were to be suddenly and wonderously enriched in
substance. The bubbles have burst, and we are distressed."
The great purpose for which this sort of language is perpe-
tually chimed on the public car is no other than this—to de-
stroy the common bond of union between the people and the
Government, by tracing every evil which may fall upon the
one to the perverse prodigality of the other. Neither the
Times nor Wu. COHBETT have ever developed, or attempted
to develope, the real causes of that distress which they take
such incessant pains to aggravate. This is a task to which
they both have shown themselves utterly incompetent.
They cant and chatter about " bubbles of speculation,"
and." fictitious credit," and "fraudulent paper curreney;'
and these phrases, interwoven with a proportionate share of
abuse against bankers and the bread tax, is the substance
of all their dissertations, from the first to the last.
That the pressure of commercial embarrassment has been
as great as perhaps this country ever witnessed, there is no
doubt. But never has the enterprising spirit of British
merchants been more ignorantly misrepresented, or their
character as a body more unfairly traduced than by the
li-
bellous Register and the Stockjobbing Journal, by which
they have been so warmly and scandalously attacked.
Much the greater part of the prevailing distr.• , has been
occasioned by the return of Bills from South America, and
the disappointment,—for a time at least,—of those pro-
spects which the recognition of the independence of the New
World, and the establishment of those important commer-
cial relations which arose out of that event, had fairly war-
ranted. Goods bought in the nearer markets of Europe,
on short credit, and shipped to so distant a market,—al-
though the returns may be in the end extremely profitable,
—must occasion considerable inconvenience in the long in-
terval of perhaps two years, which must elapse before the
proceeds can be received, and capital be replaced. If the
foreign market is overstocked, and these investments lie in
the warehouse, the length of credit on what is sold, and the
loss on what is not, both combine to increase the loss to the
merchant, and to multiply, of course, tile perplexities of
mercantile credit, and the stagnation of trade in our home
manufactures. It must necessarily take some time before
these distant speculations can be wound up. But in the
speculations themselves there was nothing fraudulent—
nothing in the nature of a bubble—nothing that can justi-
fiably incur imputation or reproach. They were entered
upon in the honest spirit of enterprise, and bade fair to be
both gainful to the adventurers and advantageous to the
nation. If too great a portion of capital has been directod
in the same channel, or employed in the same species of
investment, that evil will work out its own remedy. To a
certain extent it is, in its nature, temporary; commerce will
gradually revive,. and the brightness of her best day will
be again restored. • Our calamity in the interval may have
been severe, but no part of it will justify the charge against
the British Merchants,—which the enemies of the country
basely endeavour to fix upon them—of being the unprin-
cipled agents of their own ruin. No merchants on earth
manage their capital with greater thrift than our own, or
conduct commerce on principles more conducive to their
fair profit and the prosperity of the nation.

CITY, TUESIVAY EVtlllllO.

There was a variety of reports abroad this morning,
which caused considerable agitation on the Stock Exchange•