The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-10-11 00:00:00

strange indeed

Science is rarely prized, until it becomes too
complex to he universally understood. And in

this way we may account for the extravagant
fallacies which pass current all over the world
with regard to currency. That mighty Empires
should be raised up, and left to exist on the
scarcest of all commodities, appears to be a most
glaring absurdity. Extracting hundreds of
millions of grandeur and prosperity out of the
smallest modicum of metallic wealth, is repeating
the abortive, though very popular experiment, of
getting a quart of stout out of a pint bottle;
and it is really very comical to witness the hard

squeezing, and wry faces, of the believers in
such delusions, when they labour to convince
their dupes, that all currency heretics say is
trash. The " scarcest metal," and " least fluctuat-
" ing of all commodities," is now on its trial. The
peace, happiness, and existence of a great
Empire is staked on the issue of an experiment
in which true patriotism, sound practical know•
ledge of the first principles of the metallic
currency system, and long experience in all the
details of banking and movements of circulation,
have been brought to bear with an alacrity and
disinterestedness never before known, The

present peace and future welfare of no less a
Power than France is pending on a mighty effort
thus ably conducted. That all that has been done,
or can be done, will prove futile, may be gathered
from the various remedies which our London
currency 'quacks are already propounding. The
London Times anticipates, and therefore suggests,
a suspension of " cash payments," or promises to
pay gold on demand. And while our cotemporary
admits that large additions must be made to the
note circulation, and sees nothing for it but a
depreciation of 75 per cent. in the purchasing
power of the paper currency, he leaves totally out
of sight the propriety of making the paper of the
Bank of France legal tender at par in the coaptation
of all debts, and receiveable in payment of all the
demands of the State.

" If a 100 f. note," says the journal in question,
" would not purchase more than 50f. of gold, and
" the Government, with a view to relieve the
" people, were immediately to double the existing
" issues, the discovery would then be made that it
" would purchase only 25f. of gold, or a still smaller
" sum, in proportion as faith might be destroyed
"by their increasing recklessness. The national
" credit would be entirely extinguished, and at
" the same time, as all the Government employes,
" the public creditors, proprietors of lands or
" houses let on lease, and annuitants of
" every kind, would be paid only in this paper,
" their starvation would depend simply on the
" point to which the depreciation might be limited."
This is a monstrously gloomy picture of what
France has to expect ; but we cannot understand
why a people who want to buy food, to pay rent,
and taxes, should barter away their 100 f notes for 25f
worth of gold. They have surely had enough of
such rampant insanity. They owe their present
dangers and prospective miseries, to this very species
of folly, coupled with ill-advised reactionary move-
ments. The masses of the French people have lost
all faith in everything but gold, and unless the note
issues of the National Bank are enlarged and made
legal tender, all the London Times foreshadows,
and a great deal more, will most assuredly come to
pass.

Great scarcity of food may also help :to swell
the tide of the people's sufferings, notwithstanding
that the EMPEROR has swept the granaries of
France of their stores of grain. This is said to
have been done for some ill-defined and by no
neans intelligible object. It may have been
devised for the exclusive benefit of the army, or
to give the Government the power of keeping
down the price of grain below a famine level. But
these are mere expedients which neither time nor
experience will ever justify. They amount to
nothing when a people are starving or a national
crash comes. If the suspension of " cash payments" ,
must be resorted to, it ought to take place before
all the gold in the Bank of -France has been carried
away, and the confidence of the public has wholly
disappeared. We have repeatedly stated in the
columns of the NORTHERN TIMES that, currency and
banking on our highly-lauded principle, would test
the Emperor NAPOLEON'S power as a ruler, and the
sequel of the present crisis will, we fear, convince
him and his subjects that the difficulties we have
to struggle against will strangle France, and over-
throw the Empire, without the aid of foreign
enemies. But can the suicide of one member of
the great bullion family occur without dragging the
w holelcircle with her into a premature grave? This
is a question which must be answered before many
days have passed over our heads. We are evi-
dently apprehensive of the worst consequences;
and it remains to be seen whether the means we
have adopted for protection will prove as fatal to
England as a commercial country, as the move-
ments going on in Paris will be found among a
people whose wrath assumes a political and terrible
character when the machinery of state deceives
them, or suddenly break s down