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194 utility of the former, yet I was glad to find they were likely to take effect at all, and, chiefly, that they would be carried into execution by British energy and British capital. The unfortunate money crisis, it is well remembered, put a stop to these plans, and has nearly paralysed every other scheme of advantage or emolument in South America: — good or bad, they have all been condemned alike: men lost the faculty of reasoning, so great was their terror; and, in proportion as the tide of public opinion ran strong and buoyant in favour of those speculations, so it, all at once, ebbed down into a state of stagnant imbecility.

In the mean time, I lament to say, that as far as regards the country of which I am writing, its importance, however overlooked by British capitalists, has attracted the serious attention of other European nations. His majesty the King of the Netherlands, with a view of patronising and extending a commercial intercourse with it, has subscribed half a million of guilders