The Sun.
London, England, 1836-11-25 00:00:00

O'Connell, "I am Governor." There may be some
peculiarity in the character of the Irish people, dispos-
ing them to obey the admonition conveyed in Mr.
O'Connell's address. But there is no doubt that in
England, as in most other countries, such a letter, from
the governor of a bank, instead of preventing or check-
ing a run, would create or increase it, particularly if
the letter-writing governor should resemble Mr. O'Con-
nell in all points, and take care also, like him, to say,
" Every shilling of property I have in the world, all
the property of my eldest son and his family, all the
property of my son-in-law, is involved as security for
the notes of the National Bank." There is a natu-
ral tendency in mankind to distrust counsel with which
selfish and family interests are so closely connected.
Taking all circumstances into view, there is some-
thing highly amusing in the assumption of Mr.
O'Connell, that people ought to have unqualified and
unbounded confidence in the notes of a bank because
he has a share in conducting it. We venture to say
that Mr. O'Connell is the only banker in existence by
whom, and Ireland the only country in the world in
which, such a passage as we are about to quote could
have been produced :—" I did, indeed, think that the
people of Ireland ought, of themselves, to have shown
their confidence in me, and, to have testified their
conviction that I would not be one to circulate amongst
them any paper which would cause any loss or injury
to any body." Whatever may be Mr. O'Connell's
faults, it is evident that an excess of modesty is not
of the number. Mr. O'Connell, however, has so long
played upon large classes of his countrymen, and
with so much success, that he may be presumed to
understand his instrument. It is probable, therefore,
that his address may in some degree produce its in-
tended effect. Should it do so, there will be rea-
son to regret that it was deferred until a rival bank
to that of Mr. O'Connell had been compelled to sus-
pend its payments in consequence of a run, which
that gentleman now pronounces to have been wholly
gratuitous and irrational. We must remark, in con-
clusion, that for a gentleman who is the founder and
one of the managers of an extensive and important
bank of issue, Mr. O'Connell seems, from the whole
tenor of his letter, to be lamentably ignorant of the
relation which subsists between such establishments
and the community. The public have a right to ex-
pect, not merely that these banks shall be solvent, but
that they shall be at all times ready to pay. A com-
mercial man may be utterly ruined, a poor man and
his family may undergo the severest privations, in con-
sequence of a delay of payment, although no eventual
loss be incurred. And where delay is apprehended it
is natural, and it is right, that each holder of notes
should try to get first served ; or, in other words, that
there should be a run. With competing banks d
issue, unrestrained as to amount, except by their own
considerations of self-interest, the apprehension of a
run is the only check by which excessive issues and a
mischievous depreciation of the general currency of the
country can be prevented. Mr. O'Connell's admoni-
tion to the people of Ireland is, in effect, to relieve all
banks of which the solvency is undoubted from this
salutary apprehension.---Morning Post.