The Sun.
London, England, 1825-11-29 00:00:00

[THE TIMES.

Our readers will observe by an interesting ar-
ticle from the city, (See another column of the
Sun), that credit is undergoing -a severe trial
both in town and country. We know how to
feel for individual distresses, but the main good
of the nation requires that the experiment should
be allowed to work. Let it work, then, we re-
peat—let the fermentation exhaust itself—the
dregs.will subside—the froth will evaporate—
but the body of the liquor will come forth clear
and mellow, and fitted for endurance. The
public consists but in a small degree of per-
sons who speculate beyond their means, and
who risk the funds which they hate begged
or borrowed on slender and remote contin-
gencies. It is not, therefore, necessary for
the bulk of the, people to imbibe the alarms
which now convulse the money and paper market.
Property, whether real or personal, cannot be
depreciated by any change in that which is not
property, but the assumption and imitation of it.
Credit gainecl by pretence, and given by credu-
lity, and wasted on the projects of cupidity
mingled with indiscretion—that sort of credit
which is now in its last agonies—can in no man-
ner affect by its dissolution any property but that
of the individual who has administered to its ex-
travagancies by the loan of his private resources :
all other property will be greatly and perma-
nently enhanced in value by the dropping away
of this rotten incumbrance ; and all credit
which, having been derived from solid ca-
pital, is employed with knowledge, sobriety,
and discernment, will partake of the general
advantage.—The crisis which has caused so much
consternation in the city, therefore, is the natural
result of eager and accumulated speculation, car-
ried, through the facility into which every adven-
turer was accommodated by capitalists at a loss
to find vent for their money, to the grossest and
most frightful excess. Severe though it be at
this instant, if the crash had been postponed, it
would only have fallen with aggravated pressure,
and covered a wider field. Speculations attempted
with borrowed, or with inadequate means, and
founded on over sanguine estimates of futurity,
have failed to afford the profits expected from
them, and have therefore not enabled the un-
dertakers to repay the capital which they
had borrowed. It is the common re-action of
overtrading—it is not a disease, but the natural
cure for a disease ; and though far from palat-
able, it is a necessary cure, and, for the time, a
complete one. How far the Bank may have lent
its aid to encourage and stimulate the previous
rage for speculation, which now recoils upon the

whole paper world, it may not be easy to decide.
It seems obvious enough, that where a paper cur-
rency is convertible at the will of the holder into
gold, an excess of paper cannot long continue to
circulate through the country ; but even since the
bill which authorised country banks to issue one
pound notes, there has existed much practical
difficulty in obtaining, at a great distance from
London, any other description of money. The
habit of accepting country bank-notes has been
pretty general throughout England ; as much
perhaps because few neighbours of a country
banker would not like to incur his resentment, and
so exclude themselves from his occasional cour-
tesies in the way of business, as for any other
reason. But if the Government was unwise
in passing the small note bill, the Bank of
England was equally indiscreet, and a great
deal less disinterested, in its motives for pro-
longing the extended scale of discount after
the course of the foreign exchanges ought to
have warned the Directors that they had
already passed the limits of commercial discre-
tion. That the evil would, after a certain season,
return upon the Bank itself, was manifest ; but
the thirst of immediate profit was an overmatch,
as it is too frequently, for the calculations of
common sense, and the Directors are now reap-
ing the fruits of their indulgence of a short-
sighted cupidity. As for relief from the King's
Government, we can tell the speculating people,
and their great foster-mother in Threadneedle
street, that they will meet with none—no, not a
particle—of the species of relief which they look
for. The King's Ministers know very well
the causes of the evil, and the extent of it,
and its natural and appropriate remedy; and we
may venture to forewarn the men of paper, that
no such help as they are seeking will be contri-
buted by the State. An inundation of bank-notes
has aimed at overflowing the real capital of the
kingdom. Lord Liverpool, therefore, will think a
long time before he does any thing to countenance
that original mischief, under pretence of curing it.
Ile will not throw more Government paper on the
market. He will not countenance the Bank in
an attempt to keep afloat the paper with which
society is now infested,
,by any protective mea-
sure ; there will not be, we can vouch for it,
another ' Bank Restriction Act,' for which some
persons closely connected with the Stock Ex-
change are beginning, we perceive, to clamour :
the worst of our sufferings, in what regards
a forced circulation, and famine prices, take their
date from 1797. The evils that now beset us, of
inordinate speculation bringing after it inevitable
ruin, might, without much difficulty, be traced
to the same point of time. Yet a _repetition of
the same dreadful measure would now, by
some knaves, no doubt, be called a " libe-
ral" (1.) policy, on the part of his Majesty's
Ministers. We are quite sure that not one of the
present Cabinet is foolish or wicked enough to
propose such a crime against the nation ; and
such being our conviction, it is not worth while
to deprecate a measure which cannot take place.