The Sun.
London, England, 1837-06-06 00:00:00

n''sfortur7-----7--s to heye had, either commercially or politically.
lh e
ue Alv,a Hon. Bart. the Member for Tamworth were
Present he could assure the Noble Lord that he (Mr. A.)
q;_ad.ti.nore Opportunities commercially and politically of know-
-5 the state of the nation ; and he (Mr. A.) could state that
Laare sufferings of the people were not then one-half what they
for"c°W' Ile Noble Lord had rebuked the Hon. Member
eat Caithness the other night, for anticipating some great
d 311'43% He did not know what the Noble Lord would
jical a calamity. If the clouds opened and swallowed up
London, the Noble Lord might not consider it a cala-
ttaiivlty, if
he himself escaped ; and if in these six months
e,,millions of families, many of them as respectable as that
of e Noble Lord himself, had been plunged into a state
r'a
a_ Pauperism and distress, that might not be consi-
i)ered a calamity. One-third of the population had
eel? thrown out of employment, and therefore he felt
;:ftns duty to intrude upon the House. Ile had been
"n urged to bring forward what was his peculiar
subjeet. He was gratified to think that it was
euliarly his, because he could say, with great
_Nth, that from the year 1810 he had paid
;13 much attention to that subject as any other man ;
therefore, seeing that ruin was spreading into every part
_‘f.
the
Commercial and manufacturing world, he thought
it right to call back the attention of the House,
t(1)11'e he believed it had never paid any attention to
Reformed
interests of the nation since it had become a
Parliament, nor for many years previously.
Honourable Gentlemen might say that they were not an-
erahle for the consequences of imprudence or indis-
cretion
; but he (Mr. A.) denied that the commercial
se ale n
91L had been guilty of any imprudence or indiscretion.
been
unhappy merchants were not to blame—their ruin had
"Zen brought upon them by the bad laws adopted by the
e-uouse, which had compelled them to purchase goods at an
4::317n0us price, and to pay for them in another state of
lugs- They were compelled to purchase cotton at
and to pay for it by selling the same at 4d. It was
same with sugar, tobacco, and all the other great
e articles of trade. The Government by their Bank laws of a few
°hair ago raised the price of all commodities. Merchants were
the ged to go on, and when the gold was all leaving England
Y compelled the Bank to contract their issues, and the
AbpeclUence was a great and ruinous reduction in prices,
tih had caused the ruin of a hundred merchants of Lon-
of" a thousand manufacturers in the country, and millions
the now starving population. He was endeavouring to
prove
himself the best friend to the country by advocating
e happiness of the great mass of the population. He
defied
all alarms—but he said that all the merchants of
London and Liverpool, and all other places, were tarred
*lth the same stick which had ruined the one hundred
merchants who had already failed. It was this system which
Mad defrauded and ruined, and almost killed two late Hon.
embers of that House, Messrs. Marjoribanks and Oswald,
and it would ruin many more. He contended there was
cllO overtrading in the country. They had been told once
ur Lord Liverpool that the curse of the country was the
:.8° of abundance. He denied that such could be the
Zre. What they wanted was to establish a proper organ
communication between property and labour. If the
people were well employed, wall fed, well clothed, and con-
", Med, they would never have beard of the Reform Bill ;
the Speaker would not sit %shore he did at present ; they
Would never have heard of the repeal of the Test and Cor-
poration Acts, or of Catholic Emancipation, for the people
live
ld be indifferent to matters of that kind, and would
e, in happiness under the shadow of the Throne. The
effect of the system which he now sought to remedy was
t° reduce the value of property. He believed that many
merchants who twelve months ago were worth a hundred
thousand pounds could not now command ten thousand
runds. For the last twenty years the country had had
47e convulsive fits, and the present was the sixth under
Which it had to suffer. When gold fell to 4/. 2s. the
farmer could no longer get 61. 1 lse:for his wheat, and a
bounty of 40 per cent. was given upon their imports, while
the exports of the country were taxed in a similar propor-
ti°n. This it was which pniduced the calamities of 1816.
Lord Liverpool, with the view to mitigate the disasters of
the period, brought in a Bill to enable the Government
to borrow six millions from the Bank, in order to increase
the circulating medium. In June, 1818, he (Mr. Attwood)
bad a conversation with Lord Liverpool relative to the
Condition of the country, and the Noble Lord then stated
that. he believed no greater distress might be apprehended
than existed at that time. When 'he heard this statement
he at once returned to set his house in order, and in the
autumn of that very year another convulsion took place.
It was after this that Lord Liverpool brought in a Bill to
reduce the circulation of Bank notes by one-eighth.
The shock produced by this limitation was so great that
the Governor of tile Batik and the Directors who were
examined before the Committee of the House of Commons
declared it to be their conviction that a further reduction
of one-eighth could not be borne by the country. The
Committee, acting on these suggestions, did not venture to
recommend the immediate adaptation of the Right Hon.
Baronet the Member for Tamworth's measure, and that
the shock might not be too sudden the pressure of the
barthen was scattered over a period of four years. Lord
Castlereagh, in the midst of the difficulties in which the
country was plunged, returned to England from his
foreign mission, and proposed five Bills to remedy the
state of things which then existed. The first was a Bill
to legalize one-pound notes for eleven years, or to the
termination of the Bank charter, which was tantamount to a
legalization of them for ever. Lord Liverpool afterwards
brought in a Bill to undo what Lord Castlereagh had done,
and one-pound notes were altogether,abolished. The next
Bill brought in by Lord Castlereagh was for the establish-
laent of the dead weight, and the increase of the circulat-
ing medium ; the third was to empower the Government to
borrow three millions from the Bank to pay off the dissen-
tents to the Three per Cents. ; the fourth, to enable the
Bank to lend money to the East India Company ; and the
fifth, to enable it to lend money to the landowners. These
be
the measures brought in by Lord Castlereagh, and had
!le lived, he (Mr. A.) entertained no doubt they would have
.been carried into full effect. The next three years, 1823,
1824, and 1825, he admitted, was a period of unexampled
Prosperity ; but in the summer of the latter year, when he
Was at Bath, he read in the Globc newspaper that eight '
millions 0-gold had been expo:ted during the t year and he
immediately returned, to set his house again in order. He
i
!mew full well what the result would be, although it would
gave been impossible for Binh to convince his friends of the
(crisis which was approaching. Well, the panic of 1825
!ante, and it passed away, nobody could tell how. Those
rauctuations must be expected so long as the present sys.
;ern was allowed to remain. But the farmer, or the land-
lord, or the merchant, were not to blame. They were the
mere creatures of the law, and the law was the creature of
that House. Until, therefore, they revised the law, and
restored the country to its natural position, it was out of
the question that there could be anything like permanent
security. If, after six successive warnings, they persevered
in the same mad career, determined to fit the man to the
standard, instead of the standard to the man, upon their
own shoulders the responsibility must fall ; for, to speak
in the language of Scripture, when God wills that a na-
tion should perish he blinds its rulers.. In America Jack-
son was playing the same infernal pranks as the Right
Hon. Baronet the Member for Tainworth was playing
here, and both, acting in concert, lied produced the calami-
ties under witich the two countries we're suffering. Twelve
months ago this country was comparatively prosperous, and
the labourers perfectly contented, until the Bank com-
menced its attack on the American merchants and the
joint-stock Beaks. The American Banks were guided in
their operations by our standard, and, finding they could
fret bills discounted in this country at two per cent., they
enlarged their sphere of action, and gave extensive accom-
modation. The Bank of England, seeing the gold going
abroad, took the alarm, and determined, to pull tight the
vela. They refused to discount the bills of the American
merchants or the joint-stock Banks, and this it was, in con-
junction with a similar line of policy, on the part of Jackson,
en the other side of the water, which eath'ed the shock \ h.ch
bad recently been produced. In the town of Birmingham
be (Mr. Attwood) knew one American merchant who paid
6250,000/. annually amongst the working classes of that
town, and the same individual would not now, under the
existing state of affairs, be able to pay more than 20,0001.
Per :annum..---( Hear, hear.) The Bill, commonly called
reel's Bill had destroyed most of the old merchants, but
ththe
a zsew class sprung up in their places, who adopted
.7 Plan of purchasing goods for cash in the manufacturing
towns of England for the AmeriCan market. Bills were
drawn for a portion of the value of the exported articles
On
cottonshipment, and on the arrival of the goods in America
and tobacco were shipped for Liverpool in
return. On receipt of the Dill of lading the merchants
at Birtniereham were allowed to draw upon the consignees
at Liverpool, and thus the remaining portion of the
vai,dlne of the exported articles was redeemed.--(Hear.)
losises at New Oilcans were estimated at forty
nhillions sterling ; and yet the nines and 'Earning
—2lenicle—remoreless idicts—are ceiling on the Bank fur
11. further reduction of two millions, as a remedy for exist-
a. Fie did not blame the Bank, for the Bank was
the victim, of the law, and of the Right Hon. Gentleman
11'e Chaßceller of the Exchequer. In 1321 he foresaw
and
foretf)id what would be the consegmenees which had
Since ensured. When at that period he shtesed that tide low
ilies of a agricultural prodidc,- ewes owing to the state of tl:a
currene
Le was met by the "Oh ! imva come
t° -a reolutiun." There scculed to be a dusk on sterious
,
's°gaednotas on the subject. In 1626 there was great, dis-
Zn,tent, ivhich was id some degree removed by the Reform,
'''eh, after all, was hat punv bmali idg• ins: cad of a
Beal gaba_ribut-7,e. Two other measures whieh con-
tx_e ~ck to the prosy city of 1. . manufacturers
t the hand-loom v:cavers en;oyed some prosperity.
Tließank Charter Act and the repeal of the usury laws