The Express.
London, England, 1847-10-06 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, WEDNESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 6, 1847.

nature of capital entertained by the right hon. gentleman
and his party; fee when the Chancellor of the Exchequer
said there woe not capital enough for the amount of speeds.
tion which had been carried on, he did not mean that there
was not means enough and wealth enough in the country,
but he meant there was not gold enough; he meant
to say, so far en the people arc concerned—starve or
thrive, gold shall ho the only medium of exchange.
(Applause.) He had never concealed tree fact that
he was an °ler ^-• e
idleonvertibility but he
say that a Mitt woo bigoted indeed who was; incapable 0 1
surveying calmly and dispassionately the vast interests of the
country in suck a time as the present, end who would see
these sacrificed for the sake of one crude theory. (Hear.)
He feared too first until a much greater amount of misery
was experienced and truth wee brought home thereby to the
great body of the people, the legislature would never
become complet,ly convinced of the diustroue consequences
that would result from an adherence to the present system ;
but until that system was thoroughly revised, and
adapted to the circumstances of the country, he (Mr. New-
degate) had no hopes fur its permanent prosperity. (Ap-
plause.) In conclusion, the hon. gentleman said he hoped
that when the people speroached the Prime Minister, he
would not be deaf to their representations on this import-
ant subject, but that that distinguished personage
would give to those who were so deeply interested a patient
hearing. He pirticipated is their prayers that due conside-
ration might be given by the government to the afflicting
condition to which the commercial interests of this great and
enterprising and wealthy country had been reduced.
Mr. Altana, M.P., was the next speaker. The hon. gen-
tleman commenced with the declaration that of one thing he
was quite conk-lent—that at present the people were not half
famished, or they would be more zealous in their endea-
vours to bring about a remedy. Before any very long period
had elapsed, however, they would be mute to see this was
the question upon which all their prosperity and all their ad-
versity hung. (Hear, hear.) Free trade, with all its
advantages, and sound as it was in principle, under
the present monetary system, cnly :ncreand their difficul-
ties, lie admitted it was a very plausible argument to say
that the failure of the potato crop, and the 'bad harvest, had
had something to do with their present condition ; but their
commercial derangements hail been increased in a tenfold
degree by the operation of the money laws. He was con-
vinced, too, that nineteen-twentieths ay, ninety-nine
hundredths of the evil* which had befallen us since the end
of the war, were attributable to the grossest ignorance on
the part of our rulers of the principles of government.
(Hear.) if these had been rightly understood, the corn-
laws would never have been enacted, for they would
never have been wanted. lie was prepared, too,
to maintain that in the position they then were
the pressure might be cased in a day—it might be re-
lieved iu a week, and in twelve months the country might be
in a greater degree of prosperity, and continue to be so.
(Hear.) But where were the men to do this? There was
the Chancellor of the Exchequer ; a very good-humoured
man, certainly, but the most flippant, and he should say, at
the same time, one of the most self-sufficient men to be met
with. (Laughter.) When the committee of the House of
Co1:111110111, to consider this very question, sat in 1840, the
present Chancellor of the Exchequer was selected to preside,
and one day the right hon. gentleman intimated to him
(Mr. Monte) that they purposed examining him; but
(ho said) remember there are two things you must
net touch ; the first is the standard of value ; the
second, the corn laws ; and what was his (Mr. Monte's)
*newer ? Why, he said, " Oh, but you can't help examin-
ing me on those points—you'll be into them at once you
might as well try to play ' hamlet' without Munk ;"
but they tried it on, and after a quarter of an hour they
found themselves stopped ; and then, after sending him out
of the room and debating tor an hour they found themseives
compelled to examine him on those very points. And every-
thing he stated on that occasion had come to pass, and was
in fact then before their eyes. (Hear.) lie remembered
that during the discussion in parliament on the bill of 1844,
a very. sapient person in the House of Commons thought fit
to deugnate his evidence as of a very superficial character.
He (Mr. Mimic) then told that right hon. gentleman that he
had better read it, and he rejoined " Oh, yes, I'll read it ;" but
he did not rend it, because it did not suit his purpose to do
so the result had shown that that right hon. baronet's
opinion was falso and that his was correct; and great
oracle as the individual to whom he referred thought him-
self, he, for one, felt convinced that he had never under-
stood the subject of the currency in his life. (Hear.) The
people of this country had paid dear for their mi eatery sys-
tem, but they would have to pay dearer yet not one-half of
the mischief, inflicted by the bill of 1819, had yet passed
away. (Hear.) What were the corn-laws sought to be re-
peeled for? Why to bring back pekes to what they were in
1790. People agitated for the repeal of that law, thinking that
it would be the salvation of the country; and now they
had got them repealed they found themselves so bad off as
ever. For flee-and-thirty year. they had been peddling
with the money laws, and now they were in a more wretched
plight than seer. The bill of 1819 had never been tho-
, roughly worked, for they dare not work it ; but they were
compelled to work the bill of 1844, and the result had been,
MI he bad told Sir Robert Peel at the time it was enacted,
that it would never do fur this country ; that it, in conjunc-
tion with the bill of 1819, would be the means of bringing
about mach a low state of remunerating prices as would make
them all beggars. (Hear.) He (Mr. Manta) agreed with
Sir Robert I'eel that notes should be payable in geld ; bat
he differed with him as to the definite quantity ; and there
hinged the whole question. The hon. gentleman next de-
tailed the circumstance.; arising out of the 'expulsion
of ; cash payments in 1797 and their resumption in
1816, explaining, too, the effect of this last mea-
sure ; thereafter be went on to say that it had
been the fashUn hitherto amongst a certain party in the
. country to hold up every man to ridicule—in abort, to toe&
upon him as half n madman—who declared opinions adverse
' to the present money laws: for his part, however, he tarried
, into prune.* in his priests concerns the views he had advo-
cated publicly, and he was quite satisfied now that if
he hail not door so he should have been a beggar long
ago ; whereas, as it was, be had never suffered amidst all the
changes which had taken place. With such a fact before
his eye+, he was not likely to change his opinions, believing
as he slid that the system which had served him would serve
others. (Hear.) He felt quite satisfied now that there must
be an Alteration before long ; and the course he roma-
. mended to be taken was this: that whilst the sub-
ject was under discussion there should be a tees-
' porary suspension of cash payments. Then for the
remedy: he suggested, first, an alteration of the
standard of value ; tam the connexion between the govern-
ment and the bank should be done away with, and that the
bank should be deprived of the power to regulate the circu-
lation of the country. (Hear.) In his opinion a more
monstrous thing could not ;be conceived—posterity would
scarcely believe such a thing possible—that we could permit
four end twenty common-place commercial men in London
to regulate the money affairs of a great country like this.
(Herr.) In addition to the changes he had suggested, he
proposed that there should be a national bank, not to be
managed by government, who might make bad use of
its purer ; but by commissioners appointed by parlia-
ment, and responsible to parliament. By these he
would have the note circulation regulated and extended
until the price of all articles gravitated to the necessary price,
and taking silver as the standard of value, to be regulated by
the price of wheat. Supposing they fixed its value at 75.
an ounce, he would give the Bank the power, in cases of
emergency, to redeem its notesat as high et rate as is. 6d. He
denied that there was any real difficulty, if the question was
fairly grappled with, and prejudices were laid aside, in allay-
ing the existing dangers, and placing the country in a posi-
tion for permanent prosperity. He insisted, however, that
if we attempted to go on as we had been going on, that the
existing pressure was childish compared with that which will
be felt ; that if the present law was attempted to be carried
out, the country would inevitably be plunged into a
state of revolution, and that the Queen's crown would not be
safe on her head. The hon. gentleman at some length ad-
verted to and ridiculed the assertions made by the Chancel-
lor of the Exchequer, to the effect that the present distress
had been produced entirely by over-speculation. The quern-
tion (he said) was one of the simplest calculation, which any
man might understand in a few minutes ; but (he said) it
was a remarkable fact that all those who were opposed to
the present laws were practical business men, whereas those
by whom they were fostered were the feelosophers who had
no experience whatever of commercial transactions. After
some further observations, condemnatory of the present sys-
tem, the honourable gentleman concluded by observing that
a great deal more pressure would be required before they
would remove the prejudice and conceit, that prevents any-
thing being done in the shape of a remedy of the present
system. (Hear.)
Mr. TATLOR, of Bakewell, a banker and trader, next
delivered a long speech also condemnatory of the present sys-
tem. Ile anticipated (he said) much good from this move-
ment, and from the present crisis; he hoped that thee:ea:mit
afforded by such times would not be lost even upon those
who had blindly adhered to the theories of Sir Robert Peel,
although there was some truth in the proverb,—" You may
bray a fool with a mortar and he will not learn wisdom."
He was ;satisfied (he said) after deep study that it was not
essential money should possess an intrinsic value ; but that
in a country like England, possessed of such an amount of
media symbolic money wuallthatwu required. Re entered
into lengthy arguments in support of his viewa in the course
Of which he complained that this question had been ridiculed
and not argued in the Timis ; and he summed up
with the expression of an opinion that if we had
a well-regulated credit currency it would so liberate
the precious metals as to make them cheaper with- I
out diminishing the specific quantity in the coin. By a
continuance of the present system the poorer classes would
soon be unable to live; whereas we could produce enough ;
and all we wanted was a medium to float us on from ante
year to another independently of foreign aid.
Mr. SPOONER commenced by observing that for special
reason, he would rather have been spared entering into a
discussion of the question on that occasion; but in the
peculiar peril of the times he thought that every man was
yawed it offer hi! 01,10101 Is upon this important question.
From the years 1810 and no nu wwv.e. the subject of
the currency his meet anxious study. With the pzlie-
mentary discussions of that time he was perlectly
as he was with those of 1819, and the circumstances under
which the fatal bill of that year was passed into a law; and
having given to the subject the most thorough in-
vestigation of which his mind was capable, every
day brought the more conviction to his mind that
our [present system was one of the most erroneous
that could have been adopted. In the year 1810, when a
great depreciation in the value of paper had taken place, an
effort was made by one of the most talented men who over
sat in the House of Commons to check that depreciation.
He (Mr. Spooner) admitted to that individual at the time
that there was a depreciation, but he disagreed with him as
to his remedy, which was by a return at that moment to the
ancient standard of value. The subject was debated et that
time for eta or seven nights in parliament, and it afforded a
curious proof of the consistency of Sir Robert Peel, for on
that occasion the right hon. baronet thought tit to deny by