The Express.
London, England, 1848-08-25 00:00:00

by Young Ireland, from smouldering end bursting
forth in some months into a rebellion of privation and
amine.

TIER Man esTv's ministers and their immediate me-
ioses/ors have made up their mind, to resist any
alteration in the Bank Act. So we gather from the
veoches of Tuesday night. We are sorry for it ; and
whether or not they thank as for our opinion, we beg
to say that they have fallen into a serious error, and
into an error al the more ser:ous because they have
entirely failed to fortify by reasons an announcement
so awkwardly at variance with experience and autho-
rity.. Sir ROBERT PEEL has a dexterous knack of
making more baste than good speed in his currency
speeshee, and as he does not happen at the present
moment to be oppressed by the responsibilities of
°dice, nor cond.tuned to walk with a minister's
apprehension of the potato rot before his eyes, he may
ofely afford to be jocular and superficial. He is at
perfect leisure to exercise his wit upon the philoso-
phers of Birmingham, and there is no good reason
why he should not be super& ously eloquent upon
those parts of the subject which nobody calls in ques-
tion. But Sir ClLtitLEn WOOD'S temerity is an expe-
riment possessing none of these advantages, and we
must confess that when, by an effort of courtesy and
patience, we have nailed to the bottom of his speech,
end we begin to read that " for all these reasons; &c.,
her Majesty 's government will resist every attempt to
modify the law, we are not entirely free from those
untoward sensations with which the ancient squire
beheld his redoubtable master enter into conflict with
the windmills.
If Sir C. WOOD and Sir R. PEEL have said
all they intended to say in their speeches of
Tuesday night, they have had the singular infelicity
of leamig the main allege' ions of the other side not
only unretuhd, but absolutely unmentioned. Sir C.
Wool) said a great deal about the influence of the cir-
culation upon prices, and Sir It. PEEL was exceed-
ingly. emphatic, as ho ntways is, upon the general
questioa of the convertibility-. No donbt the-e ore
matters which hare a good deal to do with the sub-
ject. But they are not the precise and pertinent
questions which now press for an answer. 'I he reply
to Sir C. WOOD is simply that the notion about
prices and circulation has become as notorious a
Egment as the notion about the social contract,
or the Anthropophagi ; and to Sir ROBERT PEEL it is
eufficient to say that the statute in debate is not the
law of 1819, but of 1841. IVe will remind these
distinguished controversialists of a few of the vital
lessons which are urged upon them by their opponents.
in the first place, we want some reasonable def.. nee of
the new regimen which enjoins precisely the same
treatment for an external and an internal drain upon
the Bank—which regards equally as • national
calamity an export of sovereigns to America and to
Suffolk, and can see no difference botween an applica-
tion from Mr. GLYN for his country customers, and
&demand from Baron ROTII,CRILD for the supply of
some remote cornerol the continent. In the next place we
want to know why the notes are to enjoy an unt.ue,
and, equitably speaking, an unfair, preference over
the deposits ? Why the recipients of the public di-
vidends are to wait the convenience of casual note
holders? In the third place, we want to know what
is meant by a preservation of convertibility at a time
when there was no apprehension of inconvertibility to
allay? Upon this particular point we confess to an
especial curiosity. There would have been no difficulty
if we could have recalled to mind any instance in
which a Bank note for dl. has sold for 41. or 4/. 10s.,
oat of sheer disbelief in the power of the corpora-
tion to pay twenty shillings in the pound, or if
it had ever happened during the last twelvemonth
that the thoroughfares of Cornhill had been effectually
relieved of a plethora of applicants for gold by the
comfortable bulletins of the issue department. The
facts, however, are all the other way. The difficulty
has been a difficulty about notes, and not about gold,
from the very beginning, and hence the persuasion
that this perpetual rejoicing over the preservation of
convertibility will after all resolve itself into a mere
confusion of phraseology or the introduction of some
new-fangled nomenclature which calls old things by a
new name. And finally, we want to know what are
the immense advantages resulting from a law which
in ordinary times is a dead letter, and in extraordi-
nary- times can only be preserved by a temporary
abolition.
To these leading inquiries we may reasonably add
a few seasonable questions as to the real functions of
the Bank of England ander the new economy. Where
is the use of all this paraphernalia of a charter and
exclusive privileges, and a state connexion, and a
aedit which can boast the unsullied luxurianc. of a hun-
dred and fifty years, and an immense capital, and as much
serplus profit under the modest name of the "rest,"
as would buy up three-fourths of all the banks scat-
tered over any half dozen degrees of continental latitude
—where is the advantage of all these things, if the Bank
is to be of no more use in sharp and sudden collapses
of confidence than any other money dealing concern,
which has neither the means, the credit, nor, above all,
the traditions of the Bank of England ?
Sir ROBERT PEEL would very possibly reply to
this by saying that capital and paper money are two
different things, and that tke business of the world is
carried on by capital and not by paper; and that it
is a palpable fallacy to expect relief from paper when
you have no capital at the bottom of it. These are
exactly our own doctrines. We have never held any
other. We have always confessed, and confessed
emphatically, that to send a nation paper without
capital was exactly the blunder of the benevolent
peer, who
" Sent a man eagles when wanting a shirt."

But then there is one decisive answer to this train
of general reasoning. The conjunctures when you want
the intervention of a great body like the Bank of
Doglaod are not conjunctures where the mischief is
produced by want of capital, but by want of paper.
This was the case in 1825 ; and no body, as far as we
know, denies et this time that such was the case in
the panic of last year.
We are not to be intimidated by the perpetual bug-
bear of inconvertibility. The truth is, that this is a
apexes of terror which has been reduced to common-
place by indiscriminate exhibition ; and it is also
trae that latterly there has been a re-action, and that
men have begun to discover that they. were running
ham a phantom, and sacrificing their pretence of
mind to a good which has been desperately magnified.
It is quite clear that you must have a regimen of con-
vertibility at the bottom of your system of currency, or
there is no reason why a five pound note should not
et last be required to pay the fare of a Paddington
omnibus. But there is something even more import-
aotthan full and instantaneous liquidation in gold
under all circumstances of the paper part of the circa-
Wien. The last generation thought that, of the two
evils, it was better to submit to paper guineas than to
BONAPARTE, and we are quite sure that if we, as
their successors, do not repudiate their common sense,
•e shall follow the safest, as well as the wisest, line
of oonduct

Sir It. PEEL says that all oar experience goes to
show that those countries which possess a circulation
resching nearest to the purely metallic type are
2e most exempt from the evils of fluctuation in the
state of confidence and the rate of interest. We very
greatly doubt this. We are not sure that the facts
Arend the very reverse of the representation. At all
treats, we can appeal to one conspicuous example.
Of ell the specie-paying people of the world the
people of India are probably the most decisive illus-
tration. On a moderate computation 90 per cent. of
11 the plyments in Bengal are made in gold and
elver. But what are the facts as to the rate of in-
terest? Simply these, that within the last twenty-
frer months the merchants at Calcutta bave experienced
aeries of fluctuations, which range between the ex-
treme points of seven and five-and-twenty per cent.

the fourth report of the Commons' committee on
the slave trade is now before the public. It contains
the resolutions adopted by the committee, and the
Protocol of the res gestee at its meetings. It is no
more than justice to the committee to say, that, in
°lots of strong and obvious prepossession., influencing
(Wsbelieve unconsciously) some of its members, its
IMliries have been characterised throughout by an
Quest endeavour to elicit the troth, and that the re-
!°lotions ultimately adopted evince candour and sound
went. But it is no less true that the conclusion
proceedings in committee betrays a lamentable
infirmity of purpose.
The resolutions adopted by the committee are
twelve in number, the twelfth being merely a decla-
i re
lmn that the committee ought to be -appointed at
.o
.1% commencement of next session. Of the eleventh
resolution we w ill speak presently ; the remaining ten
are mere affirmations of facts, but these facts viewed
%combination amount to an entire condemnation of