The Press. — London, England, 1857-12-05 00:00:00

1170 the level of the mutterings of a Pytho ness, to be read in any sense hereafter, as events may happen. Such a proceeding we do not hesitate to denounce as an insult to the Queen, an insult to her people, and an in sult to either House; and if the whole king dom,he not reduced tolthe level of the lacqueya of Lord PALMERSTON, we hope to see him com pelled to alter his language to the great council of the nation whose aid the Sovereign in her difficulties has invoked. _ _ But, however indignant we may feel at such an abuse of his position by the Premier, we know that after all no insult of any kind was meant. His absolute refusal to explain arises not out of any disrespect for the Sovereign or the Legislature as the nation ; he simply refuses to tell the House what he means, because he does not happen to know himself. He has just as much idea of what his course will be in February as he has of the events which February will bring forth. His knowledge of India and its affairs may be gauged very readily by the anecdotes which Lord DERBY gave to the House of Lords regarding his India Minister, Mr. VERNON Smith. It may be equally tested by his speeches and those of his subordinates in the earlier part of the present year. It may be judged of by the measures he has taken since. By his sending out troops in such a manner as to take the longest possible time in getting to their desti nation ; and by neglecting to send them at all for mouths after they ought, if he possessed any foresight, to have left these shores. By his sending out cavalry without horses, artil lery without their batteries, and infantry without tents. By his trusting to finding all these things in readiness for them at Calcutta, which in the existing state of India was like expecting to find a London tavern at Thn buctoo. By making no provision in conse quence to meet the wants which are for the present rendering the majority of the troops in Calcutta useless now that they have got there. By leaving the Calcutta Government unsupplied with those funds which must be disbursed by it like water if it would make war with effect. By sanctioning all the measures of Lord CANNING which have alienated from the Government of India its natural and best support. By delegating to the Company the work of raising the European cavalry so emergently required in India; thus wasting the public money in the enlistment of a parcel of homunculi who, without horses to learn to ride on, or men to drill them, or buildings to accommodate them, encumber the barrack floors at Warley, and will be utterly useless for the purpose for which they are embodied. The public in England are accustomed to laugh at Mahomedans and their doctrine of fate, which serves them with a ready excuse for their shortcomings or blunders on any point. If good or ill fortune is decreed to them they say it will certainly happen, and acts !of caution or prevision are alike unne cessary and ineffectual. But if this be not the system that has been adopted by the Govern ment in regard to the Indian revolt, we shall be glad to know on what other principle its proceedings have been based. The plan from first to last has been pretty nearly to allow the outbreak to settle itself Whatever has been done, has been done admittedly without assist ance either from the Governor-General or from the Government at home; whatever re mains to be done finds its progress barred in limine by the want of money, and huts, and hitteriea, and transport—in short, of all that it was the duty of the Government both here and in India to supply. If, in spite of these wants, the superhuman energies of our com manders shall make the work of restoring order progress satisfactorily, the Government will take credit for their victories as if won by itself. But if reverses should be our lot, then some scapegoat will be fixed upon, which it will of course declare answerable for all its mistakes. In that event the paternal and bent fieent Company will, of course, be held up to tie country as the real authors of its ills, and the Direct( es offered as a sacrifice to propi tiate the national cry for vengeance that will then arise. The Premier knows by experience (as can be vouched by all who have ever been connected with him) that it is a most conve nient thing to have a Jonah to throw over. THE PRESS, DECEMBER 5, 1857. board when the political tempest rises to any dangerous height. On the present occasion the part is clearly reserved for the Company, whose unpopularity and position generally so eminently fit them for performing it with effect. This, no doubt, is the secret of the ambigua votes which the Ministerial organs have lately been casting among us. The Com pany are doomed, but, like the human sacri fices among savages, they are to be fed and petted till the day of their destruction shall arrive. Wo know not how far the Legislature and public of Great Britain may be content to tolerate trifling of this kind amid the perils that surround us. We know not how far they may be disposed to continue to place trust in a Government which has clearly no fixed notion on any subject, and is disposed to leave the future entirely to chance. If its own future were alone concerned, we should have no objection to its doing so ; for nothing can be more damaging to its character for states manship than the exhibition of such vacilla tion and uncertainty as this. No one, indeed, in his senses can suppose that any satisfactory issue can be arrived at as regards the destinies of either England or India by a set of men who evidently do not know their own minds for two consecutive days together, and whose whole scheme of policy consists in making the most the events will admit of that in the chapter of accidents may turn up. Who have never comprehended the crisis—who have shown themselves incapable of comprehending it—and who would longjsince have brought ruin on us but for the superhuman efforts of our commanders in India, whom they neither appointed in the outset nor have aided since; but it is not the fate of the Ministers that trouble us—it4is the fate of the country ; and every day does it become more and more imperilled while it remains in the hands of such men as these. These are times iu which it is not sufficient for a Premier to be able to shuffle the cards with sufficient dexterity to blind the public till too late to the consequences of his acts. It is a policy of publicity, and not of reticence, that we require. It is only by coming boldly and openly before Parliament, and explaining frankly to it his views, that the Premier will escape the suspicion of being a charlatan, whose silence arises not from caution, but from utter ignorance of the question with which he has to deaL That such is the true solution of it is clear from the fact that Mr. VERNON SMITH is his Indian Minister ; aril that of all the ignorant talk that has been put forth from the beginning on the subject of India nothing has ever equalled in ignorance and absurdity the speeches of Mr. VERNON SMITH. THE REAL PRESSURE OF THE ACT OF 1844. " MY belief," said Lord DERBY, in the House of Lords on Thursday night, " with that of " the Committee which your Lordships ap " pointed in 1848, undoubtedly is, that though " certainly the Act of 1844, had no share in " producing the calamities to which we are " now, and were in 1847, subjected, yet that " that Act has a very strong and important in " fluence in agg►avating such difficulties when " they arise." This was exactly the position which we strongly maintained last week ; and to the more detailed explanation of the manner in which the Act aggravates the pres sure of a commercial crisis we purpose to de vote the present article. There is a general impression abroad that at such times of com mercial embarrassment more circulating me dium than usual is needed for the current operations of the country. This, however, is not the case. The additional pressure pro duced by the Act of 1844 is not from its in flexibility in resisting the demand for more circulating medium, but in the imminent danger that its provisions will forcibly con tract the actual circulation within its natural and average supply. It is not the absence of an elastic power in the Act of 1844—for there is sufficient elasticity in it for all cases where more circulating medium is, in fact, needed— that is, for times of prosperity, when transac tions are multiplied,—it is the existence of a contracting force in it, just at the very time when credit is also contracted, that produces the great embarrassment to which Lord DERBY draws attention. " When," he goes on to say " the country sees the publication of the Bank " accounts, and that the Bank is approaching " the period at which it will be necessary for " them to contract their circulation," it not unnaturally experiences the most vivid alarm. A certain fixed circulation is needful for the exchanges of the country—say about twenty millions of bank-notes in addition to the coin and country notes. Sir R. PEEL'S Act provides that for all notes beyond the 14,500,000 for which Government securities aro held—that is, for the 5.500,000 extra notes that are almost always needed and for all in excess of these—bullion shall be kept in the Bank coffers. The bullion dwindles down to six millions, which is close on the verge of the minimum extra supply of notes needed. The public know that within a week or two more they may have much less circulation than they actually need for their regular exchanges, and panic begins. We find the notion so rooted in many men's minds that a much larger circulating medium is needed at these times of commercial trouble, that it is well worth while to go more minutely into what actually takes place. Lord ASHLEY, for instance, told his constituents the other day that one great remedy for these troubles would be for "the Bank of England, with " the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to come to an " agreement to hare a great circulation of bank " notes." This is certainly to treat the subject with the wise and reverent gene rality of phrase which becomes the simplicity of a childlike faith, nay to pay a sort of idolatrous worship to the paper-symbol. And, indeed, Lord ASHLEY represents a considerable portion of the most intelligent population in England when he thus oracularly hints that an " agreement " to have " a great circulation of bank-notes" would in some way satisfy the yearnings of the mercantile world pining ob scurely under a sudden growth of passion for paper money. Let us attempt to explain briefly and clearly what it is that really takes place in stead of this imaginary demand for more circulating medium—what it is that is the real source of inconvenience to the Bank, and the real cause of panic to the commercial world. (1) It is true, then, that what the commer cial world fear, and what in the end causes the panic, is want of the means of realising in medium of exchange the value of property over which traders have an undisputed title. Many firms, no doubt, at such periods, stop payment, and many more are in great fear and danger of stopping payment, which are per fectly solvent and even in a satisfactory state as regards their assets, but which, from some cause or another, have difficulty in disposing of such of their assets as would give them sufficient floating capital to go on with. There is, therefore, a dread in the mercantile classes lest there should be no adequate means of realising their property soon enough for the purposes of trade. Now, this is a real cause of commercial difficulty ; but it has nothing to do with the amount of circulating medium—it has to do only with the amount of credit. The " accommodation " needed in this case is not at all more likely to be got if the country is full of convertible bank-notes than it would be if there were only a metallic medium. The obstacle here is the doubt as to the nature of the security offered, not as to the power of supplying a medium of exchange supposing that security be good. The difficulty arises in the affairs of the person to be accommodated, not in the affairs of the accommodator. The money value of the security inspires distrust, and this, not the want of money, in return for the money value causes the hitch. This difficulty of accommodation, therefore, does not arise in a straitened circulation, but in a straitened credit. But (2) a panic does no doubt ultimately arise on the other side also. Not only do those tremble who cannot produce perfectly trust worthy securities, but sometimes also those who can, !not so much lest they should be obliged to pay a yet higher rate of interest for