The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-09-22 00:00:00

THE NORTHERN TIMES.--LIVERPOOL, MONDAY.

figures are employed, showing the stocks on hand
on the first of the present month, and at the same

period of the two preceding years :

STOCKS.
Articles. Sep. 1. 1856. Sep 1.1855. Sep.l. 1854.
Cotton, in U. K., bales 799,000.... 637,700.... 988 550
Sugar. tons lO7 000.... 87 000.... Isg.lioo
Tea lbs
Indigo, in London, chests 25 637.... 19.434.... 27.75*
Hine, tons.
Sbk, hales.. ..... .....
Coffee. tons..
Sa' tpetre, tons . 5,337.... 7,700. 8,051
Hides, N 0...... 9O 100.... 90.09 1.... 150 00,)
Tallow, casks 8450.... 35,568.... 31,903
Cocoanut 011, ton 5....
Rum, punc eons. . 26,795.... 24,619.... 16 631
Pepper, black, tons ... ...... 1,919.... 1,335.... 1,398

.. .
Now, these returns do prove most clearly, that,

with the exception of silk, coffee, saltpetre, tallow,
and cocoanut oil, our supplies are larger than

:hey were this time last year. But what was the

commercial 1855? Was it not a year of scarcity

in cotton, sugar, indigo, rice, silk, coffee, and
bides, and a year of usury, high prices, and panic ?
Was not 1854 a year of great •mercantile embar-
rassment and general depression, when we had
incomparably larger stocks of cotton, sugar, indigo,
silk, coffee, saltpetre, hides, and tallow, than we
had on the first of this month?

The figures we have extracted from the columns
of our cotemporary will best answer these import-
ant interrogations. We are in a far worse plight

with regard to stocks than we were in either 1854
or '55 ; and yet the London Times says :—" The
" opinion entertained regarding the favourable
" character of the financial position of the country

at the present moment appears to require only

one additional fact for its confirmation." We

have given the " confirmation" above, and now we

shall give the preceding facts. The first assump-
tion propounded is, that the increased yield of
gold will only render the settlement of new regions
_ _

more attractive, and disturb the relations of debtor
and creditor, by turning the scale in favour of the
former in an extraordinary degree. There is

nothing new in this announcement to the readers

of the NORTHERN TIMES. We have repeatedly,
within the last three years, stated that this would
be the inevitable result of the augmented produc-
tion of bullion. But the enlightened commentator
goes on to prove his case in a still more luminous
strain :—" As the value of gold depends entirely
" on its scarcity, no addition to the quantity held
" will be attended by any corresponding addition
" to the worth of the total ; that is to say, if the
" world possesses one hundred millions of gold
" to-day, and another hundred millions are dis-

" covered to-morrow, it will find itself no richer,
" because gold, in relation to other articles, having
" thus become twice as plentiful, it will then require
" two sovereigns to purchase the amount of goods that

" in the first instance might have been obtained for one
" sovereign." Knowing the vital import of such
changes in our economic system, W 3 have
endeavoured, week after week, for more than
two years and a half, to keep this subject
before the public, in the hope of inducing the
commercial community to consider it well before
it was taken up as a party or ministerial

question.
We have incessantly pointed out the extreme
dander of allowing the subject to sleep
too long. The London Times, in its usual spirit
of self-contradiction, after stating that when gold
becomes depreciated seventy-five per cent, or when
it would take two sovereigns to purchase as much
as one does now, the purchaser would obtain as

say
to the
gold,mon goes as
onhe dol.('
indiusechovefroyr
ohfis
:—" A person
g' with 5001. a year, if he could obtain now no more
"than was procurable for the same money half a
"century back, would be in a disagreeable posi-
" tion, and it is an effect of this kind that the
" holders of fixed incomes must henceforth be
" expected gradually to experience." This is the
random way in which our " leading" writers prepare
the world for what has been constantly poured into
the counting-houses of Liverpool and the North
day after day for years. Staleness, however,
robs truth of none of its force. And we are glad
to see our cotemporary finds that gold having
ceased to be the scarcest commodity, and conse-
quently liable to fluctuate in value as much as any
other commodity, is no longer a safe and reliable
basis for our national currency. It will be neces-
sary, nevertheless, to pay strict attention to the
remedy proposed to relieve the Empire from its
present organic derangement.
in adopting a new currency scheme, we must
see that the debtor interest—landed proprietors,
manufacturers, mine owners, shipowners, and muni•
cipalities, whose property is heavily mortgaged.
and all who contribute towards the payment of
the National Debt—are not sacrificed by the per-
petration of another national fraud similar to that
of 1819. We must take care that those who have
always been on the side of that phantom, called
" The Creditor Interest," do not gull us into pay-
ing two sovereigns in reality for the same quantity
of breadstuffs and other necessaries of life we can
now purchase for one. The London Times has
recently proposed a debased coinage for the ills of
France, and it may probably suggest something of
the same sort for England. It will resort to
any folly before it will say to the Whigs, " Your
" love of usury, your alliance with convertibility,and
" the sham of I promise to pay gold on demand,'
"have brought incalculable misery and dangers
"on your country. And you must forthwith
" abandon all your twaddle—remove the mint
" standard of value, find some means of supplying
" the money and labour markets with a sufficiency
"of legal tender, and let gold come into and
" leave the country as every other commodity
does." Our cotemporary must adopt this course
at last. It is impossible to keep up 880,000,000/.
of stock against its own specific gravity. It will
fall, like the column of mercury, when the political
and organic horizono are overcast with clouds.
There is no Bullifying the Stock Market, or
inflating tr ide by having recourse to fallacious
hopes. The country has been relying on an
hypothesis which is about to brand its authors
with the infamy of dishonesty or the disgrace of
ignorance ; and we would have all who are inter-
ested in the future of money, to beware of the
false doctrines promulgated by one, and the
dangerous remedies proposed by the other, while
we say to the merchant, look carefully to the
returns of our stocks of produce on hand, and
take the exports' statistics of the Board of Trade
as a vague approximation to the truth.
It would be well, also, for the trader to remember
that, while " the amount of gold held by the
" various banks of the world has never, perhaps,
" been equal to a twentieth part of that in circula-
" tion," and the quantity held by the Bank of
England may be less than a twentieth of the
aggregate amount of bullion held by our other
banks, still we are called upon to pay a rate of
discount, and to contract our trade and employ-
ment in proportion to the stock of metal lying in
the vaults of that one bank. These are matters
which ought not to be forgotten when the self
evident object of the trade-puffing movement is to
seep things active, when the heart of the nation
is nearly without blood, and its brain has become
congested. The London Times has shown just
enough to encourage speculation in pertain
deseriptions of produce, but it has not adduced