paper in place of specie; country banks in Britain; system of banking in Britain; mode of settling the daily transactions of the banks in London; disadvantages incident to a currency of paper; policy to be adopted by the Bank of England in a disordered state of the circulation; dangers to which banks of circulation are exposed; interruption of credit in 1793 and 1797; suspension of cash payments by the Bank of England, and reasons for continuing that suspension; chartered banks of Scotland;[1] Bank of Ireland; and Bank of France.
Of the article on Banks for Savings we forbear to say any thing at present, as the merits of that article have already been adverted to in our former Number, and we believe the subject will soon be resumed.
In the account of the Barbary States, which our limits allow us merely to mention, there is some recent and curious information, particularly with regard to the condition of Christian slaves.
To the article Barometer our attention must be more particularly directed. The able writer of this article, beginning with a concise and elegant summary of the opinions of the ancients concerning the system of the material world, and shewing how the mutual opposition of the academicians and peripatetics discouraged the application of mathematical reasoning in physical research, then proceeds to trace the progress of experimental science from the wild but beneficial projects of the alchemists, through the more sober and regular steps which have raised her to her present commanding elevation. In this enlightened survey, he is led to mention some of the most curious and instructive facts in the history of knowledge and of the human mind.—It is well known how much, after the restoration of letters, a reverence for antiquity, and particularly for the tenets of Aristotle, repressed the ardour of philosophical adventure. It was a maxim of ancient philosophy, that nature abhors a vacuum; and to this abhorrence were ascribed all the effects which result from atmospherical pressure. An incident, apparently trivial, first led to the refutation of that absurd opinion. Some artisans in the service of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, having been employed to construct a sucking pump for a very deep well, were surprised to find, that in spite of all their care in constructing the pump, they could not raise the water higher than 32 feet. For an explanation of this perplexing fact they applied to Galileo, whose ingenuity had already prepared a complete revolution in science. Galileo had, by some interesting experiments, obtained a tolerably correct notion of the weight of air; but the horror of a vacuum was an established principle, which he had not the boldness to question; and he endeavoured to explain this seeming anomaly, by supposing the influence of the horror to be confined within certain limits, not exceeding the pressure of a column of water 32 feet in height. He was dissatisfied with his own explanation; instituted an experiment which brought him almost within sight of the truth; and communicating his doubts and his conjectures to his disciple Toricelli, led him into the tract of more successful experiment.
The celebrated experiment of Toricelli, and the still more decisive experiments of Pascal, one of the finest and most original geniuses that France ever produced, at length exploded, though not without a violent struggle, the long received maxim of the abhorrence of a vacuum; and proved, with the evidence of demonstration, the pressure of the atmosphere.—"On the whole," says the author of a well-written article on the same subject, in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, "the history of this research affords a signal instance of the slow and gradual progress of human knowledge. Galileo proved that the air was possessed of weight; Toricelli conjectured that this fluid caused the ascent of water in pumps, as well as the suspension of mercury in the tube, which bears his name; and Pascal converted this conjecture into a demonstration." We have been led so far beyond our limits, by the interesting nature of these facts, that we can barely mention the other subjects
- ↑ There are at present in our metropolis three banks incorporated by charter; namely, the Bank of Scotland, established by act of Parliament in 1695; the Royal Bank of Scotland, established by royal charter in 1727; and the British Linen Company, originally incorporated in 1746, with a capital of £100,000, for the encouragement of the linen manufacture.
