The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1803-02-23 00:00:00

PRICr SI,XPENCE.

His Lordship then procee led to recapitulate the-
sev.•ral points he urged against the Bill on its first
reading, and enforced his arguments by references
to several papers which lay on the table. He
pointed out ateerror which appeared in r e Acton nt
respecting the Consolidated Fund, which he said
arnse from a laudable motive of itispirihg conti-
dence, by holdint oat a flatt•ring prospectto the
country ; but when the case was found to he other-
wise, the effeft of the delUsion would be more
severely felt. He then reasoned at considerable
length on the state of our finances, and answered
the Noble Sc:cretary of State's arguments respeding
the necessity of the measure. He said it was 1
proceeding which could not be justified on any
principle of justice; that it was a gross violation of
private property, and an heavy oppression on the
creditors of the Bank. For if any person who
holds the notes ofthe Bank of England has Occa-
sion to convert them into cash, he has no cipher
means of doing so, but by purchasing merchamlize,
and selling it rn another country ; and upon *Let
principle of equity canwe compel any person whd has
lodged his money in the Bank, cn the fahh of a
public contractsandlioned by Parliament, to hare
recourse to such an expedient for the recovery,..of.,
his property ? His Lordship next took a comprd-
hensive view of the paper-circulation of the country,
and its depieciated state, together with the extrzor-
din:try issue of Eschequet Bills, and inferred, that
the Course of Exchange, which was a principal rex. f-'• •
eon assigned fcr adopting this measure, was Mate-
Wally affeCted by the restrietion on the Bank, and he t •
was confident would continue so as long as that
measure remained in force. He concluded, by ea-
pressing his decided disapprobation cf the bill.
The Earl of WESTMORELAND arose, not, he
said, to go into any discussion of the solidity and
stability of the Bank, because no one Noble Lord
appeared to entertain any question about it, nor
should he feel it necessary to enquire whether the
first imposition of a restrietiori upon the Bank
was or was not a violation of property, a breach of
contrati—whether it was equitable or inequitable,
just or unjust. The necessity of it had been suffi-
ciently established; the peculiar run upon the Bank
in 1797, when the first Restriction Bill was intro-
duced, and the scarcity of bullion in the country,
occasioned by the large sums sent out of it to pay
the armies and fleets, and to discharge the large
subsidies payable to the Emperor and other foreign
Princes our allies, made it inahpensibly necessary,
and the beneficial consequences that had been felt by
all commercial men, as the result of its operation in
1797, and theseveral subsequent renewals of it, at once
proved that its expediency, its policy, and its wisdois
were equal to its necessity. He would not. therefore;
waste the time of their Lordships by going intoany
enlarged reasoning upon those points, which were
upon the face of them incontrovertible: all he should
aim at would he to endeavour 'to take off the im-
pression of some charges and insinuative§which the
Noble Lord opposite to him (Lord Rawdon) had
cast upon Ministers, and upon Goderainent ; but
the profound personal respe& Ire entertained for that
Noble Lord would induce him to speak in as tern-
perate and guarded a manner as possible. In the
first place, that Noble Lord had stilt contended in
support of a charge which he had brought forward
against Ministers in a ferreter day's debate, and which'
had been then most satisfaCtorily explained and refut-
ed, and again answered in the most dire& and explicit
terms by his Noble Friend near him (Lord Pelham),
viz. that the-Bill appeared to him either to be now
abbut to be renewed at the reqnisiticn of the
Directors of the Bank of England, or that it was a
compromise between them and Government, found-
ed on principles of mutual accommodation. This
was, his Lordship said, a pretty strong charge of a
sort cf corrupt connivance between the supposed
parties,, and the Noble L 6-41 opposite to him had
endeavoured to give it colour, by putting a hype-
thetical case of the sort cf bargain that Mightiest
been made between the Bank and Ministers. Ln
order, however, to lead the House to believe this
insinuation, he should have thought it would have
been necessary to have endeavoured to support it by
something like evidence, and not rest itw holly on mere
supposition. V here was the Houst to look for proof
of any such compromise ? Not one word about it
appeared in 'any of the various papers laid on the
table, -printed copies of which were in their Lord-
ship's hands. And did any proof arise from ;,ny
one of that House ? Who had heard a syllable
that tended to give it credibility ? Did it.
appear from any part of the conduct of the
Bank, while acting under the operation of the for-
mer Bills of Restriction ? Directly the contrary ;
the Bank had not immoderately multiplied the
number of Bank notes in circulation. They had
increased the circulation to no greater extent than
the necessity of the market indispensiblv required.
This being the case, surely a Noble Lord of so
much weight and authority as the noble Lord op.
posite, should have had something like strong co-
dente of the fact, before he had ventured to throw
out an insinuation so injurious to the credit of a
most respectable commercial body, a body not only
unimpeachable as to their solidity and stability, but
irreproachable' in every part of their conduct since
they were first granted a charter. With regard
to the course of the exchanges having been
against this country, that did not, in his mind,
amount to any thing like proof that the com-
merce and prosperity of this country were not, for
'he last five years,
.and at present, as high as they
had been stated to be by a :Minister elsewhere. On
the contrary, he and every man might see, that
where there was no influx of bullion into this coun-
try, the price must be consequently high in preper-
ticn to its scarcity; and this was the more felt hem
on account of the iromerix drains of specie that had
been experienced by us, in the venous and larat
sums exported to the Continent, and crt the difTerint
grounds which he had already mentioned. Cho
great reason, that hod occasioned the necessity of the
till being first natrodueed,vras the alarm of the Coun-
try Banks, which had circulated such a prodigious
number of notes, that en ,nalkaed run was

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