The Sun.
London, England, 1830-03-17 00:00:00

wealth and power—by which its people rose to a pitch of
prosperity and happiness previously untnown. Our wealth
and capital are diminishing more rapidly than they were
accumulated. If we review the advantages which this
nation so pre-eminently possesses, of which do we now
duly avail ourselves—which have we not practically. sur-
rendered? Our agriculture, that great and sustaining
pursuit, the best field of advantageous employment, the
truest and most permanent source of real wealth, we have
discouraged by introducing a system of legislation, regard.
ing it which, while it throws upon it the odium of a large
ostensible protection, affords it no real one ; and we dis-
sipate large sums annually, furnishing a capital to foreigners,
which will, when accumulated, be most certainly em-
ployed even against our manufactures, which might and
ought to be principally retained, and which would thereby j
afford additional and permanent employment to hundreds
of thousands of our distressed people, and afford the
necessaries of existence more certainly, and relatively
cheaper, than they are at present. Regarding our fo-
reign possessions we surrender no inconsiderable part of
our colonial trade to foreigners, who, therefore, reap
the advantages without contributing an iota to the cost
of those expensive establishments. We even admit into
our home markets the products of foreign industry pre-
viously raised at home, supplanting, therefore, to a certain
extent, the labour of our own artisans, of whom the ca-
pitalists and the tax-gatherers make unceasing demands,
while the very competition lowers the value of home la-
bour till the rivalry is distressing, if not ruinous, to both.
At a period when we are listening with some degree of
complacency to wild and impracticable schemes of sending
forth those of our people whom we confidently pronounce
redundant, we admit the products of foreign labour without
the least stipulation as to a mutually profitable exchange,
whereby, to all intents and purposes, we receive, as to the
consequences of such a policy,foreign colonists at the moment
we wish to dispossess a part of our own people of their
native country. We reason, Sir, upon principles of free
trade ; we act upon contrary ones; we lay open our
markets to foreigners without a single stipulation for a
similar advantage; we talk of fair competition ; and we
allow distant competitors to start with Britons for the
prize and reward of industry, while we have laid upon the
latter a load which they can hardly sustain, and which
we have now doubled by our late operations on the
currency. Free trade, Sir, were an excellent thing,
a word of precious esteem in its just signification ;
but a greater and more fatal delusion was never prac-
tised than the fallacy which passes under its name.
I am quite aware that it is argued by political
economy that trade without such stipulations and
provisions will find its own level. Will our in-
cumbrances and taxes find their own level ? Are
these to be shared by our competitors ? Sir, I am well
aware things will find their own level. So ultimately
will England, under so anti-national a system, find the
level of the honest and most beggarly rivals with whom
her artisans will have to compete; the level not merely of
diminished wages, but that of wretchedness, from which
the artificial system, so much and so ignorantly inveighed
against, had, in a succession of prosperous generations,
elevated our people.—(Hear, hear.)—l say, then, return
to the principle of that system which in an evil hour you
have deserted. and ever since which desertion you have
ceased to prosper—ever since which you have over-wrought
and underpaid a wretched and debased population. Let
it be your purpose to develope and reward internal
industry, of all sources of wealth the most important;
of all them the only one necessarily permanent ; and
in doing thus am fully persuaded you would, at the
same time, extend and promote your foreign
commerce more profitably and more certainly
than you do under the present system.—(Hear.)—
On these topics, however, I shall not now dwell, hut ad-
vert, and 1 trust shortly, to the often discussed subject,
which has again been brought before our notice this night
—I mean the currency ; and I do this more to clear
myself and others from the absurdity often gratuitously
imputed to us, titan from any hope that the present •Go-
vernment will acknowledge themselves guilty of one of the
most unfortunate mistakes that was ever fallen into, or
that they will have the magnanimity to acknowledge or re-
pair their error.—(Hear, hear.)—But, Sir, I advert to
the subject of the currency with no hopes whatever of
making the slightest impression on 11te gentlemen opposite,
whether my views are right or otherwise. On this subject,
Sir, we are not, it appears, to enter. Principles of policy,
Sir, have been mutable enough ; but on the subject of the
circulating medium, we are to be fixed and unchangeable.
It is even a species of political blasphemy to call into
question the propriety of the late revulsion. The very
discussion is, as far as possible, interdicted to us. But,
Sir, we have little hesitation in expressing our views
upon this point, however hopeless we may feel regarding
their adoption.—( Hear. )—Those of us who hold that under
the circumstances in which this country is placed it ought
to have a very plentiful circulating medium, hold that
notion in reference to those circumstances only. The whole
of the circulating medium of the country, be it little or
much, or of whatsoever denomination, represents that
part of the property of the country, of whatever kind,
which is in iransitu. Tee amount of the circulating
medium, therefore, is the amount of the monetary value
of all that property, and the value of the floating pro-
perty fixed that of the stationary property of the country.
It is obvious that the circulating medium fixes the mone-
tary value of all the property of the empire ; and that
value is high or low as the circulating medium is plentiful
or the reverse. It therefore adjusts all the relative
values of property as well as the price of labour
throughout the community. If, therefore, an insulated
community had no other description of property than that
alluded to, or, to speak more plainly, no public debt,
or numerous private incumbrancea and engagements
between individuals, any alteration in the amount of
the currency would neither alter the position or yet the
relative values of property or of labour in such com-
munity. Were that mediutn multiplied tenfold, or
reduced to one-tenth of its present amount, the real
and telative value of all things would be as fully re-
presented and as accurately preserved. If, Sir, when
the crypt of the place where we are now deliberating was
built the circulating medium was only a few hundred
thousand pounds, the price of labour was, perhaps,
but a penny a day ; but then that penny bore the same
relation to the wants of labour and its consequent remu-
neration as the present wages of the same artisan does
now. But, supposing you had imposed on the country
a debt, the interest of which should have equalled in
its amount half the circulating medium of the country,
without increasing that medium, what then is ouid have
been the condition of the artisan and of the people at large.
Just what it is now, distress and ruin, for the circum-
stances are precisely identical.—(Hear.)—The immense
public debt, therefore, of this country, and private en-
g-agetnents to an enormous amount, remaining nominally,
the same as when the medium in which they were prin-
cipally contracted was so vastly greater, what is the con-
sequence ? The consequence is this—the diminished me-
dium increasing in its representative value in exact pro-
portion to its diminution in amount. You have awarded
by this revulsion an augmentation of the claims of the
public and private creditor to an equal extent—you have,
by an operation as sure as any mathematical problem, in-
creased at once these vast incumbrances, and lessened the
means of meeting them. Difficulties, confessedly great
before, by whomsoever estimated, you have, I fear, ren-
dered insufferable. And still, Sir, you talk of keeping
faith. Keeping faith with whom? With the public
creditor forsooth. Has he not been kept faith with ? A
debt lent at 50 or 60, and now worth 90. And, not
content with this, you would recognise every integral
period of this debt, contracted in paper, as due in gold,
though neither the borrower or lender took any thing into
account but the then existing state of things! Keeping
faith, Sir ! Has not Parliament to keep faith with the
poor debtor as well as with the overgrown creditor, think
you ? It is not enough that the sixty should be reckoned as
ninety, but that every pound of the ninety should pass,
as contrasted with its worth at the period of the loan, for
thirty shillings.—(Hear, hear.)----Sir, let us for a moment
consider the nature of the terms of their engagements.
What is capital? The accumulated products of human
industry. What is debt? An engagement to render, at
the time specified, that capital or that amount of human
labour. In simple terms, the product of so many months,
days, or hours of labour, according to the engagement. Sir,
the precise term of that labour was fixed by the then cir-
culating medium, which, measuring the value of the results
of human labour, measured the time it would demand to
create or produce them. But you have altered the amount
j of that medium, anti in so doing you have as advisedly
sanctioned the demand of so many more months, days, and
hours of labour front every industrious individual of the
people of England, in order to fulfil the original engage-
ment. You talk of keeping faith with the public creditor,
while you have cruelly broken it with the debtor, whom
you oblige, not to pay in full, but to pay 30s. in the pound
on the whole debt ; of fraud, when you have thus cheated
him, defrauded him of the value dins labour and of all the
comforts of litU which its due remuneration formerly
afforded.—(Hear.)—But to place these facts in a more
intelligible form. When the principal pat t of the debt
was contracted it was contracted upon such terms as that
you engaged to pay the creditor more than fifty million
bushels of wheat per annum. Now, how do you keep
faith between the agriculturist and him? Why, the
farmer, owing to your resumption of cash payments, has
at this moment to pay upwards of eighty millions of

bushels of wheat. If you turn to the manufacturers,
whether in the cotton, silk, iron, or whatever other
branch, I say, they have to deliver to the public creditor
(to say nothing of their private ones) nearly double the
amount of their commodities, and while you thus legislate
you.talk of keeping faith.—(Hear, hear.)—But, the effect
of any great diminution in the circulating medium begin-
ning to be seen, it is now boldly asserted that there has
been no such diminution, but rather an increase. Si,.,
this assertion amazes me, as it has every one else. The
only apology for it is its utter ignorance.—(Hear, hear.)
—Sir, the diminution in cash notes is vast ; that in bills
of exchange still more immense ; in the credit of the coup•
try the most efficient means of circulating the products of
human industry, most of all ; and the value of all the pro-
perty of the country, and of its labour, has fallen accord-
ingly, while that of its ineumbr•ances has, consequently,
proportionably increased and multiplied. But it is said
that the consequences of this return to cash payments has
slightly, if at all, altered the value of any thing in the.
country, or had little, if any, effect on the condition of the
country—at least I have so understood those who have de-
-1 fended the measure. Now, how does this confident asser-
tion coincide with another, which maintains that a return
to the paper currency would create an extraordinary and
artificial state of prosperity for a short season, which
would be followed by one of suffering and adversity? So,
it appears, the resumption of cash payments has had little
effect, but the resumptio❑ of paper ones would have a
most extraordinary one ! So utterly incongruous are the
arguments, or rather the defences, of those who have been
either parties or principles to this injurious measure.—
(Hear.)—l confess, Sir, I hardly understand the posi-
tions of those who are the warmest in favour of this me-
tallic medium. They talk of a paper convertible into
gold. Sir, as their own statements are now given
forth, the present medium, exclusive of bills of ex-
change, is not by possibility so convertible. They
descant upon a medium based upon the pret!ious metals,
and yet their base is vastly smaller than the superstruc-
ture on their own showing. As well might the architect
talk of placing a pyramid upon its apex as they to speak
of basing our circulation upon gold. They talk also of
the mischief of invading the King's prerogative in coining
notes of one pound. Will they please to inform us whe-
ther that prerogative is any less infringed in coining notes
of 51. each ? The assertion and the distinction is non-
sense.—(Hear.)—Sir, I equally dissent from the advocates
of the metallic currency as to the superior advantages of
that medium as they expressed them. If it curtails credit
it does mischief; it then serves the capitalist solely at the
expence of the industrious and enterprising part of the
community. That it is a preservation against panic I
deny; for the medium as at present constituted could not
do that; and speculation and panic were known in this
country, and to an extent not since experienced, before a
pound note was dreamt of. Witness that overwhelming
one in the former part of the last century. Sir, our no •
tions, I think, are very contracted if we conceive that a
gold medium is the sign of wealth, or the security of na-
tional prosperity. It is rather the proof of a semi-bar-
barous state of society. In thus expressing myself, it may
perhaps be allowed me to say, that I never did contem-
plate the indiscriminate issue of worthless paper by irre-
sponsible individuals. On the contrary, I always be-
lieved, and I still retain that opinion, that issues of paper
might have been tolerated, and even encouraged, on pro-
per regulations making such paper perfectly secure, and
consequently superior to any joint-stock or other mono-
polozing companies which perhaps may, in these times
of speculation, be established amongst us ; because
such issues so secured would, under individual su-
perintendence, have been preferable to any founded
on general and indiscritninate regulations. In a word,
they would have given a preference to those, and
those only, who were desirous of it. Sir, we are
often asked, it has been often put to me, even in
this House, what we would propose.—(Hear, hear.)—
There does still seem to be a plan open to the country,
but it is rather worse than superfluous to propound it.—
With not the slightest hope of due attention from those
who only wish us to state our views with a preconceived
determination to ridicule and reject them, be they what-
ever they may, who deny the urgency of the moment and
reject all inquiry, to propound our ideas is more, I repeat,
than a superfluous task. In the mean time, one thing we
may venture to assert,—the present plan of managing this
country will not do—the plans of our present Ministers
have failed, their predictions have been most lamentably
falsified. The country, Sir, the mass of the people, is
distressed, grievously distressed. The many are suffering.
—(Hear, hear.) And it is my settled conviction that i❑
this state of things, not only the prosperity, but the in-
stitutions of the country are at stake. " Distresses," sees
Lord Bacon, "are so many votes for sedition." I would
have his Majesty's Ministers attend to this, and pus down
such seditious by removing their cause. The country de-
mands inquiry. His Majesty's Ministers ought not to
resist it ; it is due to their character ; it is due to the cha-
racter of this House to enter into a patient investigation of
the causes of the present distresses, with a view to their
rows val,—a course, Sir, which will console the people
with the certainty that their condition engages the anxious
attention of their representatives.—( Hear, hear.) I beg
pardon for trespassing so long on the House, and will press
upon its earliest attention, in three words, what I think
essential to the relief of the people of England, namely,
a snore effectual protection of British labour—a larger
reduction of taxation—a fuller and securer circulating me-
dium.—(The lion. Member sat down amidst loud cheers.)
Mr. IRVING explained. The letter he had read was
not from Leeds, but Manchester. He had stated that the
cloth-trade at Leeds was in a state of activity, and that the
petition presented to the House—(Here the Hon. Member
was stopped by a cry of " Spoke.")
Viscount HOWICK rose to explain his reasons for
resisting the motion. He complained, in the first place,
of the rather severe language which the Hon. Mover had
used towards those who differed from him in opinion.
He (Lord Howick) was a party to no conspiracy to resist
the line of policy the lion. Member recommended. It
was a line of policy, which, if he (Lord Howick) could
separate his own interests from that of tht country,
would be highly to his advantage. He did not resist the
motion because he thought there was no distress in the
country; nor because he wished (to use the Hon. Mem.
bees words) for an excuse to blink inquiry. His objection
was to the form of the inquiry, which would be highly
inconvenient in practice. What was meant by an in-
quiry by a Committee of the whole House?—(Hear,
hear.)—and what were the subjects proposed ? The
currency, taxation, protection to agriculture. These were
the subjects to be discussed, and not the only subjects.
Such an inquiry he held it to be the duty of his Majesty's
Ministers to execute, and that every Member should prose-
cute similar inquiries, and if he could devise remedies,
should come down to the House and state there.—(Hear.)
—With respect to the policy of his Majesty's Ministers,
he thought that their internal policy, in spite of occasional
errors, was entitled to the thanks and approbation of the
House. The Hon. Mover had said, that he proposed no
particular measure ; but every Hon. Member must have
perceived that there was such a measure in view,—the
currency was the beginning, the middle, and the end of the
Hon. Member's speech. —(Hear.)—A measure of this
kind would, in his opinion, be a breach of faith, and
benefit one class of the community at the expense of
another. Amongst the errors and fallacies in the lion.
Member's speech, there Wes, however, he must admit, a
mixture of truth and sense. He (Lord Howick) agraed
with him, and svith the lion. Member for Newark, in
thinking that our circulation was not sec•arely fixed.
He threw it out for the consideration of his Ma•
jesty's Ministers whether the best means of depressing
extravagant hopes, and of tranquillizing the country,
might not be an inquiry into the condition of the currency,
—an inquiry which was distinct from that proposed.
Mr. lIERRIES, from the turn the debate had taken,
was relieved from the task which he had anticipated, and
from soliciting the indulgence of the House whilst he
entered fully into the details of what ire had expected
would be the topics of discussion. The Hon. Member for
Shaftesbury (Mr. Davenport) had sapported his motion by
so little argument, and had advanced so few topics which
required an answer, that it was unnecessary for him (Mr.
!Jellies) to dilate upon the subject. He was prepared to
show that those who attributed the great portion of the
distress of the country to the variation that had taken place
in the currency, were altogether mistaken. But while he
felt it right to abstain from this long detail, he must re-
quest the indulgence of the House while he made a few
remarks on the main point of dispute between Honourable
Members at opposite sides of the House—he meant the
existence of distress, and the extent to which it prevailed
in the country. It had been said by an Hon. Member on
the other side, that great respect was to be attached to the
testimony afforded by the number of petitions which had
been laid on the table of the House, calling its attention to
the state of the country. In this he fully concurred. He
believed that all imaginable respect was to he paid to the
petitions of the people, but he also believed that every respect
was to be paid to the testimony of those lion. Members who
undertilek to state what was their opinion of the state of
those parts of the country with which thee were! best acquaint-
ed. lie could see no reaeon why the statement of the Hon.
Member for &saltier (Mm'. Irving) was not as much entitled
to respect as any of the statements contained in the petitions
which he or any Hon. /sionistr felt it his duty to present.
He (Mr. Henries) was in possession of inlOrmation as to
the state of the country from private sources (dello greatest