The Sun.
London, England, 1825-12-10 00:00:00

THE LONDON JOURNALS.

DAILY

_Extracts from the Morning Papers,Dec.lo, 1825.

THE TIMES.]
-.The city authorities most to be respected, ap-
pear, from the accounts of yesterday, to have a
conviction that:so much of the recent alarms as
*ere caused by an apparent scarcity of gold and
silver, may be securely laid aside, gold having
linen below the Mint price—a proof,"undoubt-
Idly, that there is no lack of the precious metals
its: this country. But if there had 'been such a
itart;'Whyshould any apprehension have arisen?
Could skill, or industry, or their joint produce—
manufactured property--=-be at once annihilated ?
If not, then the means of bringing back gold, to
whatever amount of it might be called for by the
public convenience, were still in our possession;
and,the gold would have flowed in upon Great
Brain as quickly and as naturally as it had
ebbed away from her. But, for the famous
" alarms," the" agitations," the " forebodings"
of disaster, which have been•harped upon for so
many weeks, we feel them not, and have never.
felt them. We knew the public credit was se-
cure that individual credit, where it reposed on
solid property, was intangible ; that no man had
reason to be-intimidated, but the adventurer who
Thad ':previously dared too inuch4 that let the
storm rage as it might, when the clouds should
disperse, and the horizon resume its customary.
brightness, all the great landmarks of the national
wealth and prosperity would'be seen to occupy
their, • stations undisturbed, and 'Commerce and.
confidence to-pursue their march, no Longer op
pressed by those unsound incumbrances which
the fury of the crisis had detached and utterly
dissipated. This- was our view; from:the first, of
the late embarrassments., In..,the city. We de-
clared. that the distress complained of in certain
quarters was no disease whatever, but the synlp-
tom of a past disease, which " was working its
own cure," and ought not _therefore to be tam-
pered with. In truth, the whole turmoil is no-
thing more than a re-action, . the-falling to the
earth of a balloon, after it has exhausted
the power which buoyed it. Who is it, then,
that, accuses The Times of having propagated
unjustifiable fears for public - credit ? No
man, ,we boldly affirm, who rightly understands
his own interest, provided he be one whose inte-
rest it is, that property managed with prudence
should be kept secure from the incursions of Avild
speculation and .extravagance—that a system
should be checked which places for a time the
mercantile desperado on a level-with the man of
pubstauce and honour, and that public confidence
should be limited to the resources on-which alone
it can be legitimately founded, or by which, so
far as is in human discrimination, it ought to be
calculated and measured. There is no truth more
thoroughly unanswerable than that the fictitious
credit by which the rash speculator struts his
-short ,hour upon the stage of enterprize, must,
.when it can proceed no further, fall 'upon the
means of those who have indulged him with it.
-There is little doubt that credit, unscrupulously
given,,has; at no distant period, been perverted
to wild. and unsuccessful objects. The cotton
speculations were urged onwards by it—joint
.stock companies without number were encou-
raged, and even generated by the facility with
which money was raised on paper of small in-
trinsic worth. The Pound-note Bill of the coun-
try banks helped to spread the rage for gambling
to the remotest corners of the island. If not these
.circumstances, what, let us ask, is it that has
produced -the failure of so many banks,. and the
embarrassment of so many traders ? The fact
cannot be denied—the distress did take place—
the bankruptcies in the west and north of Eng-
land were notorious before the London press be-
gan any reasonings upon the subject—the gold
was 'exported, and we wish the export had con-
tinued long enough to effect a fall of prices ; but
vehat stupidity or malice is it to charge the pro-
duction of :an alarm upon thbse who have never
.ceased to assert that the mitigation of the evil
was to be obtained only by retracing the steps
which had iu reality. produced it ! A few weeks
hence it may lw seen who was right. It is hardly
necessary to-say, that for the opinions of our city
correspondeot's we hold ourselves in no degree
answerable ; they communicate merely what
transpires in the city, and their fads we have
found. to be invariably true. If their doctrines
or:feelings were occasionally to catch the conta-
'glen the' hour, ,it has its use also, that the
-world should see .how the commercial body of
the metropolis are affected-from day to day; but
neither the world nor ourselves are called upon
to sympathize with. these diurnal impressions.

• [MORNING 'HERALD.]
In the improvements which have.already taken
~place in the Metropolis, as well as those which
are promised, there is en evident want of one
- grand-comprehensive design, on which the whole
should proceed. Instead of one set of projec-
tors forming a new street here, and another with
- their crescent or. arcade,, intersecting or running
close beside-it, it would be' much better, both in
point of taste and utility, as well as of econo-
My, if Parliament, or competent persons on
the part of Government, were to suggest and de-
.iipe the main points to be attended to, to which
joint-stock projectors and- individuals should 'be
called upon to conform. And we think it would
not be a misapplication of public money were the
Commissioners of Crown Lands, or the Lords of
the Treasury, empowered to buy up decayed
houses, or the sites of those destroyed by fire or
otherwise, in the lines of any new streets or pro-
jected improvements. We will illustrate this by
the instance of the Strand. Nothing of the kind,
we can imagine, would be more desirable than
tbc:Widening of this great thoroughfare from Char-
ing-cross to Saint Paul's ; but this is an object of
such magnitude and expellee as could. duly be
accomplished by degrees, and would probably
• bein -06 end brought about with more facility
• and' economy, 'it—there :were the poker and
the funds provided to purchase and set back
decayed houses as opportunities offered, instead
of their being rebuilt, as is every year now the
case, upon the old inconvenient sites ; perpetuat-