The Sun.
London, England, 1836-05-14 00:00:00

S TilE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

In the House of Commo laSt night, Sir George
Sinclair avr.iled
'Arrr die return of the Conalmlary Force (Ireland) Bill ,
Lords, with amendments, to launch out iuto
-tvartn'praise of that assembly, and observed- teat this
'isms one c: the ninny occasions on which the utility of
the Kouse of Lords was clearly demonstrated. Most
wholesome changes; he said, had been made, and the
total expense had been greatly diminished, Mi-
mister-sin the House of Lords acquiesced itr the amend- '
orients. The lion. Baronet trusted " that justice. on this
head wmild he done' to the assembly by which so much
public good had been accomplished." So eager was
lie that the merits: of the LordS should not be lost on
the country, tl7,at he was even for appending the sche-
dules with the amendments, in order to show what had
been done since the measure passed the Commons. Qui
ssexcuses'accusc, sayc the French proverb. Sir G.Sinclair
eacerly lays hold of the amendments in the Constabulary
Bill to J:ow that it is quite a mistake that the Lords ate
always doing mischief. It would be strange, indeed,
if Blils in their passage through h second branch of
the Legislature should' not be occasionally improved. I
Surely the Hon. Baronet does not suppose 'that the
people believe the House of Lords determined to do
mischief for the sake of mischief. Jonathan Wilde
even was at great pains to ineulcate_ the importance of
never doing more mischief than the occasion requires.
Sir George's eulogy, .nowever, has reference to an-
other matter, on \Nnich the Commons will. soon be
called to exere.se their judgment, when it is probable
the alterations made by their Lordships will not ap-
pear in the light of improvements ; and he no doubt
conceives that the great obligation we are under to the
Peers, for not altogether destroying the Constabulary
Bill, ought to, be received as a sufficient excuse for the
treatment another Bill may receive. But fault has been
fo-and with their Lordships for their omissions. The
other night the Attorney-General alluded significantly
to the dormitory of their Lordships, in which many
measures have long enjoyed an undisturbed re-
pose. When the Irish Corporations Bill is to be de-
stroyed their Lordships are activity itself. We wish
the could observe a portion of that activity in the case
of many other Bills, which cri;•s'at not to be delayed.
For instance, the Municipal. Corporation Act Amend-
ment Bill was read a second time on the 29th of
March last, and refarred to a committee. Nothing,
however, has sine been heard of the Bill ; and in the
mean time th', utmost inconvenience is suffered from
the delay. Several boroughs may at present be said
to be verging on anarchy, from the absence of all legal
autho:ity to administer their municipal affairs. To
take the case of Ipswich, the Tory mayor so managed
matters, that the elections under the Municipal Re-
farm Act were invalid—a defect which cannot be re-
medied without a new Act, as the mayor, who had not a
good title during the election, cannot have a better now.
The consequence of this is, that funds could not have
been obtained for the payment of the police and other ne-
cessary expences, had not individuals raised money on
their private credit, and undertaken to indemnify
all who incur any hazard by conducting the most in-
dispensable business. In the meantime demands have
been made on a number of persons, in the name of the
old Corporation, r.s, for instance, from those who had
booths at the fair, and quo tvarranlos have been sued
for the purpose of giving annoyance, and causing ex-
penne, which must be borne by the inhabitants of the
bc,rough. We take the borough of Ipswich as au in-
stance; but there are, no doubt, a number of other
places suffering in the same way. Surely, if ever
there was a Bill which demanded instant attention
from their Lordships, this is one. But it would not
• at all surprise us if the Bill never found its-way out of
the Committee. When Sir George Sinclair, there-
fore, next sings the praises of their Lordships, we
trust he will not forget the inconvenience to which the
country is put by their dilatory mode of proceeding in
all hut destructive work.—Morning Chronicle.
Nothing that may have occurred to us on first hear-
ing the discussion introduced by. Mr. Clay last Thurs-
day, could or can weaken our acknowledgment of the
fact, that the banking system of the United Kingdom
is in a state which calls for persevering watchfulness
on the part of the Legislature, and of individual capi-
talists, even should there turn out to be no necessity
for a formal change in the law upon that important
question. Our own habitual, and often-repeated be-
lief, has been, that credit is too easily obtained in this
country, for the interests of sound and wholesome
commerce. There exists no other country in Europe
where so much property is bought and sold on trust—
where creditors are so full of easy faith—where
debtors_ are so numerous—and, we fear, in a multi-
tude of cases, so negligent of the obligation to punc-
tuality in payment. Hence a looseness in matters of
dealing is interwoven with a greater laxity than exists
amongst many other nations in one important branch
of morals. It will of course be said that such a condi-
tion of things must inevitably right itself, and that in
the long run the abuse of credit must bring its own
correction. The answer to this is—look at the fact.
Have not all the successive crashes in our commercial
system proceeded invariably from an unwarrantable
boldness of enterprise, stimulated by an extravagant
and reckless facility of trust, which on both sides
paid less regard to the demonstrable certainty of
final ruin than to the flattering posssibility of imme-
diate gain, and of which one very extensive result, has
been to demolish an immense proportion of people in
middle life, whose moderate means would not enable them
to struggle with any sudden and difficult emergency,
concentrating in the coffers of a few leviathans of
enormous wealth what remained from the fragments of
ten thousand humbler fortunes? We are sure that if
the state of things were s'..rictly investigated, it would
be found on a comparif...on between the present and a
former age, that a %inch greater difference now exists
between the higly,,st class of capitalists and, all below
them than coit'ul be alleged cf their respective grandfa-
thers—that the tendency of our system of credit has
been to %well and strengthen the overgrown commercial
oligarchy, and to wither and impoverish the small tra-
der-4.—to favour the centralization of riches, and oh-
s...met their diffusion—to favour the increase of half or
quarter millionaires, and multiply among the shop-
keeping class the number of pinched, profitless, and
hopeless insolvents. A system of dealing which is sub-
ject to great disturbance and convulsion at intervals of
a dozen or a score of years, must produce or aggravate
extreme inequality of fortune. The very strong, who
are few, survive the tempest, and pick up the spoils of
the multitude—the Very weak—who perish. Such is
not a salutary posi!.ion of our trading world, and, as it
must be closely connected with, if not in part depen-
dent on, the banking system or medium through
which the machinery of credit has been con-
ducted, there does appear to be a primafizcie case for
investigating the subject brought before Parliament
by Mr. Clay. Upon two of the requisites proposed
by the Member for the Tower Hamlets, as essential to
.a sound flanking system, there can, we presume, be
little di Terence of opinion. He recommends that every
joint-stock company of bankers, who owe their exis-
tence to a friendly change in the law, should be. com-
pelled to make public the results of their management
as bankers ; that those who have means of pushing
their transactions to a vast extent, and drawing larzebt
upon the public confidence, and thereby involving,
many thousands of families in the issue of their pro-
ceedings, may be compelled to satisfy those who rely
-upon them, as to the prudence and honesty of their
acts, and not lead their customers ignorantly or blindly
into peril. The Bank of England renders far more
jl:,stice to the country by publishing its accounts than
it formerly did by concealing them, and—we humbly
conceive—has experienced no injury from the change.
Then, as the expediency of paying up the amount of
capital to which each shareholder in a joint-stock
bank has pledged himself, it is, undoubtedly, nothing
more than the redemption of a bond which has been
offered to the public as its security against suffering by
misplaced credit. At present, an individual not worth
1,0001. may hold himself out for having embarked ten
times the sum as a joint-stock banker ; and when any.
exigency in the commercial world arrives, he figures
merely as an insolvent. Nay, worse than this—a joint-
stock bank may now be advertised and established by
as Mr. Clay says, of
needy men, on tire outlay,
just money enough to " buy mahogany desks and'
brass-plates upon their doors." But what security is
there for the public in the partnership of five hundred

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