There was contemporaneous distress enough and to spare in Great
Britain: failures in Lancashire alone to the amount of £16,000,000;
failures equally heavy in Birmingham, Glasgow, and other great towns;
capital was absorbed by the mad speculations in railway shares; and
even Heaven's gift of an abundant harvest, by at once lowering the
price of corn, helped to depress commerce. Many banks stopped
payment, and even the Bank of England seemed imperilled, saving
itself only by adopting a bold line of policy advised by Government.
At the same time, the Chartist movement was gathering the strength
which was to expend itself in the futile demonstrations of 1848.

[Illustration: John Henry Newman. _From a photograph by_ Mr. H. J.
Whitlock, _Birmingham_.]

But as if it were not enough for every department of political or
commercial life to be so seriously affected, there was now arising
within the English National Church itself a singular movement,
destined to affect the religious history of the land as powerfully,
if not as beneficially, as did the Evangelical revival of the last
century; and the National Kirk of Scotland, after long and stern
contention on the crucial point of civil control in things spiritual,
was ready for that rending in twain from which arose the Free Kirk;
while other religious bodies were torn by the same keen spirit of
strife, the same revolt against ancient order, as that which was
distracting the world of politics. The bitterness of the disruption
in Scotland is well-nigh exhausted, though the controversy enlisted
at the time all the fervid power of a Chalmers; men honour the memory
of the champions, while hoping to see the once sharp differences
composed for ever. But the "Catholic Revival," initiated under the
leadership of Newman, Pusey, and Keble, has proved to be no transient