The Express.
London, England, 1853-03-22 00:00:00

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L9NDON, TUESDAI; MARCH 22.

Tile news recently receiitd from Australia of
the quantity of gold alreadyeibtaineth and likely to be
obtained, has renewed the t xeitement railed when
gold was first discovered there. and men are again re-
flecting on the consequences. Itc: wee n October, 1831,
and the cad of 1832, it is calculated that in Victoria
alone the yield will be fuur million ounces, or very
nearly 16,000,0001. sterling. The yield of New
South Wales is also increasing, after a temporary
decline. on accnuut of unusual falls of rain and the
emigration of the diggers, now returning to the
richr fields of Victoria. There is no falling off, at
the same time, in the vied of California,
but rather an increase. It is estimated that
the produce from the new sources will not be
Ism than 38,000,0001.—vi5., 20.000,0e10/. from Aus-
tralia, and 16,000,0001. from California, and as the
total annual produce in the ten years prior to 1848
is not estimated by the best authentic' at 10,000,0001.,
the annual supply of gold is now more than three and
a half times as great as it was then. Such circum-
stances now compel statesmen to turn their attention
to the subjects of money, talue, and coinage. A
fereat change it is seen is impending, and
it is their business to meet it. Prescribe the
future they cannot ; prepare for it—in a way to pre-
vent antiquated regulations frem inflicting injury on
society, and save their own reputation—they may;
and that is what the discoveries of gold, affecting
all the coinage of the world, now call on them to
perform.
The scarcity of silver which has been felt in the
United States, as well as in England—where the
heavy seignorage levied on it prevents it being
exported, but has also hindered it from being
coined—has led Congress to pass an act to reduce
the quantity of silver in the small coins of the State,
while their denominations are preserved. The law
is not to come into operation till after June Ist, time
being required to make the necessary preparations.
But after that period the half-dollar of the United
States, which now contains 2061 grains of silver,
will only contain 192 grains, or 141 grains, equiva-
lent to about 31d., less; the silver in the quarter dollar,
the dime and the half-dime, is to be reduced in like
proportions, and it is enacted that these coins shall
be legal tenders in payment of dt bts for sums not ex-
ceeding live dollars. This is a real clipping or de-
preciation of the small coin of the United States, such
as was formerly, to the dishonour of the sovereigns of
the old states of Europe,frequently practised by them.
It affects, however, chiefly the money in which. wages
will be paid, and is which the elasses who live on
wages make their purchases, and they will be the
chief sufferers by a measure intended, we believe, to
provide them with coins. The statute enacts that
the " gain arising from the coinage of silver bullion
Into coins of a nominal value exceeding the intrinsic
value" shall, after paying the expense of the distri-
bution of the coins, be paid into the Treasury of the
United States. The law really imposes a tax on
silver coins, when the metal is comparatively dear,
and makes the lower dames, who chiefly use the
small coins, by some means or other pay the tax.
The pretext for this little paltry and cunning
kind of meddling is the present relative high price
or scarcity of silver. As gold has come into the
United States and England silver has gone out.
There is a great demand for it in all the countries of
the world. Much of the newly discovered gold has
already gone to augment the coivage of the world;
and one of the most striking effects of that is to in-
crease the price of silver and the demand for silver
coin. The appetite for money grows by what it
feeds on, and already the increased supply of the
precious metals has much enlarged the demand for
them. In the United States the scarcity of
silver is the more remarkable, inasmuch as gold has
already been substituted for it to • very great
extent. Gold dollars have recently been coined.
The number coined was—in 1852, 2,201,145; in
1851, 3,638,820; in 1830, 936,7b9; in 1849, when
the Act authorising them was passed, 311,30:. Alto-
gether, in the four years, there has been coined
7,308,055 gold dollars in the States, a number almost
equal to the total number of silver dollars coined in
the
four years previous to 1848. The coinage of gold
dollars is continuing, and amounted in January to
292,673, and in February to 208,433, making a grand
total of gold dollars coined since the Act was passed
of 7,899,163. Instead of that great addition to the
coin supplying the place of silver, making silver cheap
and abundant, it has become dear and scarce ; and, to
keep the small silver coins in circulation, Congress
has deliberately decreed that they shall be debased.
The evil it is so anxious to guard against can be
only temporary. The high price of silver encourages
enterprising men to open new silver mines, and causes
great exertions to be made in order to win more silver
from the mines already in ass. The discoveries of
gold, which lessen the value of old gold mines, are
enhancing the value of silver mines, and will cause
the production of a great additional quantity of silver.
The supply seems likelo increase almost as much
as the supply of gold; but whatever that may be,
as soon as the relative value of silver and gold is
adjusted, now disturbed by the sudden increase of
gold, the former will flow back to the States. We
care less, however, to dwell on this hasty. and unwise
meddling of American statesmen, when circumstances
demand very comprehensive measures, in • crimina-
tory spirit, than to direct altt..T.tr.".l tr addr conduct
as a proof that the new gold discoveries are com-
pelling, and will compel, statesmen to take their
comer' regulations into consideration.
Some few emotions and answers recently put in
the House of though they have elucidated
nothing else, show the interest beginning to prevail
on the subject. A Parliamentary Paper recently
published, No, 103, being an account of the gold and
silver coined by the Mint, points to the beginning of
a great and stern necessity for Parliament speedily
tee take up the matter in some sense or other. By
that it appears that in the last two years, 1831-
1852, the quantity ofgold coined at our Mint was no
has than 13,142A181. annually ;—more in the two
years than three times as much as the annual aver-
age of the three previous years. According to the
Economia of the sth inst., the Bank of England has
received in little more than two years 14,000,0001. of
coin, and has leas coin now in its vaults
than at the commencement of the period. From
the Parliamentary Paper, No. 118, "Specieand Be!'lies is the Bank of Eng!and,' it appears that in 1850
the Bank possessed 8,587,8501. of British gold coin,
and in 1833 only 3,123,9431. The inference drawn
by our contemporary that in the two years there has
been exported from England coin to the amount of
nearly 18,000,0001. is an under rather than an over
statement.
About the half of this sum has been sent to Aus-
tralia fur the purchase of bullion, but the other half
has been exported to various foreign countries, such
as Egypt, South America, the Continent of Europe,
&c., where English sovereigns either form a part of
the circulating medium, or are so well known that
they are readily and easily exchanged. While Eng-
lish coin has been diminishing in the Bank, notwith-
standing the great increase of the sums coined, the
gold coin of other countries has gradually increased
from 3,081,9711. in 1847 to 6,309,2011., and of
this increase nearly 3,000,000!. has occurred within
the last two years. Other coin, therefore, than
that of our Mint,—most probably American gold coin,
but the return which states the facts does not tell the
nationality of the foreign coins in the super-
seding our gold coin in the vaults of the Bank. fhe
United States, like England, coins gold of their
standard to any amount not exceeding l6O dollars
free of expense, and the consequence is that these
two countries, being now in possession of productive
gold mime, are supplying a gold coinage to half the
world lice of the expense of coinage. For " assay-
ing, refining, arid toughening" the gold the respec-
tive Mints make a charge, but for converting ingots
of thtir iespective standards into coin, they charge
nothing, and hence the additional value given to
their coins snakes them so much more desirable in
other countries, and kas hitherto catved them to be