The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-09-11 00:00:00

THE MANSELS : A TALE OF TIIE LATE
MONETARY CRISIS.

CHAPTER VI.
We have already referred to the sacrifices which had
been submitted to by William Mansel, in the effort to
sustain the credit and solvency of his father's house. The
most readily available and less depreciated descriptions of
property produce and merchandise both in foreign
markets and at home, had been already disposed of at
ruinous prices. The real property, however, of which Mr.
Mans .1 was possessed, has been thus far left untouched, as
well as the sum invested in the funds. It had been hoped
that the crisis could be worked through, without having
to part with either ; but the loss recently experienced, and
the possibility of its not being a solitary oue, imperatively
suggested an effort to realise the whole, or a portion.
There was a cruel task, however., to be performed before
this could be effected. The funded portion of the pro-
perty had some years previously been transferred into the
names of Mrs. Mansel and her two daughters, to provide
them with means for their private expenditure, and their
unostentatious little charities; and it would be necessary
at length to lay before them, what had all along been en-
deavoured to be withheld—a knowledge of the sad change
which had been wrought in their position and prospects.
The property so invested was, moreover, naturally the
most ready for Gale, and its disposal was attended with the
least sacrifice; for to sell freehold property in the open
market, however eligible, was attended at tins period with
enormous loss, and the necessary publicity of the trans-
action was to be avoided, if possible. A loan upon mort-
gage it wan impracticable to procure, whilst money was
worth ten to fifteen per cent to the capitalist. Mr. Man-
sell's, broker was therefore instructed upon the subject;
and in the course of a few hours a sale of three per cents
was effected at 854. They had cost, when originally pur-
chased, 98.
The young merchant sate alone with his mother on the
evening of that day, after Mr. Mansell and the rest of the
family had retired to rest. There was a constrained
silence between them at first ; for the interview Lad been
requested by William to take place alone. A sense of
some impending announcement of evil hung upon Mrs.
Mansell's spirits ; for such a request was unusual. Never
had there been, in their communications, anything of
secrecy or reserve. Yet she remembered, that, for months
past, her son had been moody, at times; that his wonted
gaiety had deserted him ; the hue of health had left his
checks, and his form had become thin, and occasionally
betrayed languor and even debility. Her husband, too,—
how often had she felt certain that a weight was preying
upon his mind—a weight which " murdered sleep," and
appeared to be dragging him rapidly to his grave ! She
had heard him sigh in his dreams, and occasionally she
bad imagined that tears filled his eyes, when her own sud-
denly met them fixed upon her face. She had read, in
the columns of the public journals, of monetary difficulty
existing ; of the effects of overspeenlation ; of men,
reputed wealthy, having been laid prostrate, and of suf-
fering being spread abroad amongst the entire industrial
community ; but s:le could not imagine that her husband's
firm—so cautious in its transactions, one which had never
speculated in the bubbles of the day, but had preferred
the longer and the safer path to the acquirement of com-
petency—could have suffered severely, or be seriously
involved in the difficulties of the times.. She knew no-
thing, in short—what woman does ?—of that mysterious
agency which, ever and anon, snatches the result of years
of enterprise and thrift from its possessors. She knew
nothing of that far more fearful instrument of torture than
any which ever worked in the dungeons of the Inquisition—
" the screw" of the Bank of England ; and had been ac-
customed, like the majority of the world, to attribute com-
mercial disaster to individual misconduct alone, and to
regard it as a disgrace, scarcely to be effaced. Hence her
apprehensions were the more confused and the more
painful.
The brief silence was at length broken by William, who
entered at length into a detail of the sad sacrifices and
losses of the last few months, and laid before his shocked

parent the exact position of affairs. Need we say with
what pain the effort was gone through, or describe the
mental agony with which the disclosure was listened to ?
A more heartrending scene than that unburdening of the
mind between parent and child, in that still midnight hour,
whilst some dear to both were dreaming, perchance, happy
dreams, beneath the same roof, can scarcely be imagined.
What fond aspirations were dispelled in that hour! What
recently bright vistas of the future were then darkened !
What hopes dashed to earth ! At one moment Mrs.
Mansel felt as if the trust and confidence of a life were
fled for ever. The idea that years of patient industry and
unwearying painstaking. such as she had spent with Mr.
Mansel, could be rendered fruitless, without some impru-
dence on his part, some unfortunate omission, some
blameable error, was incompatible with all her precon-
ceived opinions of mercantile matters. The explanation
offered was unintelligible to her woman's mind. But the
misgiving was only for a moment. When she looked up
to the sad, truthful face of her son ; when she remem-
bered his undeviating affection, his early developed steadi-
ness of purpose and maturity of judgment, and listened
more calmly to his clear and perspicacious explanation of
the causes which had brought difficulty and sorrow to his
home, her heart smote her for her doubts and her unwor-
thy suspicions, and her mind was at once strung to a sense
of the effort to be made by her to do a wife's and a mother's
duty in the evil days which had fallen upon her and hers.
" Bear with me for a moment. dear William," she said,
" I will be myself again after I have had .a little time to
reflect upon this sad calamity," and she relapsed into
thought : and, by the working of her face, by the throb-
bing of her closed eyelids, and the convulsive heaving of
her breast, her son saw that the thought was very bitter.
" Your poor father !" she murmured, after a while, " I
know it will kill him."
" No, mother !" William interrupted, in a re-assuring
tone; "his thoughts are all for your sufferings, and for
those of my sisters and my brother. In any event, we
cannot lose our honour. I will toil, my father's name
and experience will preserve us from the unkind censure
of all, except the ignorant and the worthless ; and though
we may be poor, we shall be happy, and love each other
still."

There was an indescribable fondness in the look which
he cast upon his mother, as he took her hand and pressed
it in his own. It was responded to with a flood of tears,
as she threw herself upon his breast, and sobbed forth—
it was all that she could utter for a time—" My son !
my dear boy !"
Another hour passed by, during which the pair talked
calmly over the prospects of the future, and the means to
be resorted to for repairing the disasters of the past.
• Not a word of repining escaped from Mrs. Mansel's
lips. She was, indeed, the more composed in manner of
the two—more fertile in resources than her son—and more
thoughtful with respect to every expedient by which pain
might be warded from those who were destined to suffer
along with her. She could point to many modes in
which expenditure could be lessened in her household
affairs, frugally as they were administered, without
sacrificing comforts ' • and, although some of these were of
a nature at which William could barely refrain from
smiling, it was gratifying to be thus assured that her
best endeavours would be directed to ward off thc blow
which was being dealt against those dear to both. The
dying fire at length reminded them that it was time to
retire • and they passed up stairs together until they
reached the bedroom of Mr. Mansel, the door of which
he had left open. The chamber candle bad burnt down
into the socket, and threw a gloomy light over the room.
With a gentle hand she drew her son, on tiptoe, up to the
bed, and gazed sorrowfully on the face of the unconscious
sleeper. " He is changed, 'William," she whispered,
" his hair is whiter, I think, than it was a few months
ago, and his face has furrows, which I never noticed in
happier days. God give us both strength to lighten the
load which is pressing upon his heart ! You shall see by
his looks in the morning that he knows I am willing to
bear my part. Good night !"
CHAPTER VII.
•

It was as Mrs. Mansel had promised. On the following
morning, when they met at breakfast, it was clear to
Wiiliam Mansell, by his father's restored ease of manner,
that all had been explained—that there was no longer any
concealments between two, who had vowed at the altar to
go hand in hand to the grave, as they had gone hand in
hand through life, together. Gladsome thing it is whom
there is this perfect confidence between parties, when
God's holy ordinance has joined ! Another cheering cir-
cumstance it was to William, when his mother and his
two sisters called, during the forenoon, prepared to make
the necessary transfers. There were no reproaches from
the lips of those two amiable girls, as they consented to
resign their little store of personal wealth, beyond the
1111 simple chiding exclamation of Mary, the eldest,
" How could you, brother, doubt our willingness to suffer
with you and our dear parents ?" The sacrifice required
was duly made ; and it was with some degree of pride
that William Mansel was enabled that day to withdraw
the bill of the suspended house, which had been dis-
counted by the friendly capitalist referred to in a preced-
ing chapter.
We must now glance briefly at two scenes which were
occurring at this period, in portions of the empire many
miles apart. One of these exhibits the effects of mone-
tary crises in humbler walks of life than that of the
Mansel family. It has already been explained that, at the
outset of his mercantile career, Mr. Mansel was in the
habit of supplying foreign produce to retailers in various
parts of the country ; and that, after his rise in fortune,
and the consequently larger scope of his business trans-
actions, he still continued to supply a few houses, con-
sisting of his most attached and tried friends. It is to
an occurrence in the domestic circle of one of these that
we shall first draw the attention of our readers.
Mr. Wilson—we use a fictitious name of course—was a
grocer and general dealer in the flourishing principal town
of a county in the north of England, through which a
railway had been recently projected, and had been for
some months in course of formation. He was not a
wealthy man, in the sense that the word is received in the
larger marts of the world's commerce. lie was, however,
in his own sphere, what is called "well to do." His family
was large, and his name and credit, with a little pecuniary
assistance, had been sufficient to place them around him
in respectable callings. The employment in his neigh-
bourhood of three or four hundred railway labourers,
smiths, masons, &c., had given greater extent to his busi-
ness avocations ; and his stock, and the amount for which
he was induced to draw upon his hitherto unsullied credit,
had been largely increased. Mr. 'Wilson was indeed re-
garded:by all, with whom he dealt, as a man upon the
high road of competence. But the same reverse came
upon him, which had come upon the bulk of the indus-
trial world. Week after week had seen suspension of
the works of the --- Railway ; cessation of the
labour of hundreds of the working class ; the approach
of poverty to many families, and the partial depopulation
• of a recently busy and flourishing locality. In such an
emergency Mr. Wilson found himself called upon to meet
a heavy acceptance. given for goods supplied to him by
his friend, Mr. Mansel. He had striven to avail him-
self of every resource upon which, in ordinary times, he
could have safely depended,—but it was only to meet with