The Sun.
London, England, 1847-11-25 00:00:00

.FEZ SUN, LONDON,

LAW INTELLIGENCE.

COURT OF QUEEN'S BENCH, Nov. 24.
(Sittings in Banco.)

dustry. The United States have drained us of our
gold to provide for the Mexican war. Her
Majesty, while alluding to Switzerland, was
wise and politic to abstain from allusion to
Mexico. The United States had said that Lord
Palmerston must be silent if they chose to annex
Mexico and Canada, because England depended on
them for cotton and sugar. We had sacrificed India,
and given to America that monopoly of the cotton mar-
ket, which she had used so well that the cotton mer-
chants of Liverpool had, last year, lost to America
2,000,000/. at least. If the stoppage of our manu-
factures was owing to a deficient crop, how came it
that it did not operate on the manufactures of the
United States ? While our cotton manufactures bad
decreased the cotton manufactures in the United
States had increased during the last year 10 per cent.
'They present an increase of ten per cent. in their
manufactures, notwithstanding they are suffering
from the dearth of cotton also. While the Govern-
ment was passing the Bank Charter Acts to saturate
the country with gold, as the Hon. Member for Liver-
pool had informed the House last session, other coun-
tries es ere enlarging their currency. Neither France,
Bavaria, or Russia were pursuing the same destruc-
tive policy as this country, which was now, on the
one hand, restricting its currency, and, upon the other
hand, enlarging its commerce. The consequence was,
that England, which, a few years since, was the pride
of the world, now presented a spectacle of bank-
ruptcy, ruin, and shame, at which the finger of
scorn was pointed by every civilised nation, from the
United States to the walls of Canton.—(Hear, hear.)
The Noble Lord then proceeded to say—When your
merchants come to you, and your manufacturers pray of
you that you will relax your monetary restrictions, and
enable those who have cotton and sugar and woollen
manufactures, and those who have tea, to have money
lent to them at a reasonable rate of interest, you, her
Majesty's Ministers, draw back and refuse to set the
Bank of England at liberty till you find you are on the
brink of the precipice itself, and that any farther delay
would precipitate you into the gulf of irremediable
ruin. Then, indeed, you come forward, but instead of
doing as great Ministers had done in former times—in-
stead of imitating the example of Mr. Pitt, who, in the
year 1793, when he found the commerce and trade of the
country in a similar position, came forward, and ad-
vanced 5,000,0001. sterling, at 41. 163. per cent. interest,
although the Government had borrowed, it is said, at
more—you declared that you will become mewl;
leaders, and set your own rate of interest. Well
remember her Majesty's Ministers last year, when I
proposed a measure by which the industry of Ireland
would have been stimulated, saying that the Govern-
ment could not become money-lenders. What are they
now ?—(Hear, hear.) Are they not money-cliangers---•
usurers? Are they not interposing to make money
dear? Are they not raising it to a price which they
know the English merchant must pay, or perish?
Never have I heard of any country or of any Govern-
ment in the world, before the present one, that proposed
to wring money out of the necessities of the
If
people" .--.-
(Hear, hear.) We are told by the Divine law that
thou lendest money to the poor thou shalt not be to hire
an usurer." But her Majesty's Government have turned
usurers, and fatal hare been the effects throughout
totheo
country. The money- lender by profession Wits
ready to follow the example sot him by the Government,
and he who before would have been ashamed to ask $
per cent. for his money did not scruple to take 10.
Mortgages were raised from 34 to 5 per cent., while ig
Scotland those made at 6 per cent. were raised w 6.
In short, the whole country was taxed by a usury howl
it was taxed to the amount of per cent., a charge fat
heavier than if you were to impose an income-tax of 10
er cent. Any gentleman has only to look at the pro--
per cent. Any gentleman has only to 100 k t the pro
perty and income-tax returns, and he will see—us;
suming the whole land of the country to be mortgageL"
for only one third of its value, and that I bed
is far below what the land of the whole empir:
is mortgaged for—that an increased charge of interes_
of 11 per cent. is equal to a new tax on the land.
of England, Scotland, and Ireland, of 12,000,0001
aiyear. But that is not all. I have hitherto been
speakin of the landed property of the country ; 13,11_
there are the trading and the industrial classes of
country ; these are taxed even to a hi her i
ther degree
this usurious interest. By this additional rate of .t
per cent. interest I will venture to say that a tax
levied upon those who are in debt and obliged to borrow'
money on interest to no less an amount than 25,000,0004
a-year. Well, then, the Government having been score
b
conies to the exacting of this high usurious rate of inte-
rest, are we to be told that it is not convenient thatth
time of the House should be taken up on the secondin
night of the session to consider what were the circu
stances which led the First Lord of the Treasury tut'
the Chancellor of the Exchequer to advise the net;
only to lend money at that high usurious rate ? Good
God ! what are we to believe ? Are we to suppose t
the Noble Lord the First Lord of the Treasurt
and the Chancellor of the Excheq btrat
taken Shylock into their confidence, and
could
they have only been considering how theyes
exact the largest earns of money out of the noses"
ins
cities of this suffering country ? One would imsgle_.
that they had adopted the language of Sir Giles 0! r_
reach, v;ho, addressing Jack Marra', says,—" Here is
plan—all men must be sellers and I the only purchaser
One would imagine that the original authors of the Bank.
Charter Act and the monied interest were determined to
have the whole trade, commerce, and property of the
country at their disposal. Lord Bacon, I think, has
said, that usury would soon bring all the treasure of the
country into a few hands.—(Hear, hear.) His words
are,—" Money is to the users of it a certainty, and t°
the borrowers of it an uncertainty, and the end must soots
fceorunt
laughter.)htre yl,
ans
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yno
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allat
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be that all, or the greater part of the money of tilt!
mortgagedm" - -<e
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at Iu
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h pte
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ort
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and the interests of all those whose moneys are embark."
ed in trade, into the hands of the money-changer. It
18,
in fact, a total transference of the property and money of
one portion of the community into the hands of anotherpor-
don of that community. And are we, on such a propeoe„
sition as this, to sit down in silence and hear no word._
explanation from her Majesty's Ministers as to the
grounds upon which they so long upheld this injurious
Bank Charter Act; and why, when they were at last
reduced to the necessity of relaxing it, they, in doing
so, incited the Bank of England to exact such an amount
of usurious interest as never before was known to have
been received in the course of the last century and ts
quarter?—(Hear, hear.) I will not enter anew upon
the affairs of Ireland, further than to say that her Ma-
jesty's Ministers must make themselves responsible for
the peace of Ireland.—(Hear, hear.) I shall postp
postpone
they may produce tr,/
my remarks upon any measures
I see them before the House. I trust her Majesty *
Ministers will not present another spectacle of a Govern-
Ministers will
turning out one set of men, and then goveninghh
country by the principle in a resistance to which t e
obtained office.—(Hear, hear.) I hope, at all evenly
whatever may be the measure, it will not be a Curfew
Act, to shut men up in their houses at night, in orderw
operate as a remedy to mid-day murder.—(Hear, hear')
But whilst lam quite prepared, on due cause ieolUg
shown, to support the Government, I shall wait till
measure is proposed, and reserve to myself the right
it.
?
giving it my support in proportion as 1 may think
suited to the occasion. I will not trouble the House by
adverting to the foreign policy of her Majesty's Govern-
ment; they, I suppose, have maintained a prudent re-
serve in abstaining from any observation in the Speech
in regard to their foreign policy,—on the subject of their
policy in respect to Italy they are altogether silent; but
her Majesty has been graciously pleased to say that she'
has obtained a slave treaty from the republic of the
Equator. I must say her Majesty's Ministers would
have shown more tact if they bad been silent on that
subject altogether.—(llear, hear.) The Hon. Gentleman
who seconded the Address said that there was another
link of the chain knocked off the limbs of the negro.
Why, Sir, I want to know how many thousands of new
links her Majesty's Ministers have added to those chains -
which tortured the negroes by the admission of slave
grown sugar ?—(Hear, hear.) I shall be curious to
learn, on official authority, what the estimated amount
of the increase of the slave trade may be. We do seer
statements in a certain paper, which is supposed some-
times to receive information from head-quarters, that
the slave trade has increased fivefold, and that the
capital embarked in it has also greatly increased. It is
notorious that slave-grown sugar has risen greatly in
price ; and it is notorioas also, that the price of a slave
in Cuba and in the Brazils has advanced from 300 to
500 dollars at least. But I shall be curious to learn to
what extent the slave trade has increased. If we are
sure that more links are added to the chains of the
negro, and that more slaves aro transported to the
western hemisphere, sure also are we, by the labour we
take out of them, that no low number will suffice to
count up the thousands of lashes by which that labour is
extracted from them.
As her Majesty, on proroguing
the last Parliament, congratulated it upon its having
given her subjects cheap sugar, she might in her
gracious Speech on opening the present Parliament
have uttered one word of pity for the thousands who
had been reduced to beggary by that measure. When
we see that Government was obliged to send out instruc-
tions to watch the export of rice from the East Indies
for fear the Mauritius should become another Ireland,
and the 93,000 imported Coolies, who were left without
employment and without wages, should also be destitute
of food,—when we know that Lord Grey has authorised
the Government bank to issue notes, and to advance 91-
per ton on 50,000 tons of sugar, in order that the
Coolies in that colony may be kept alive—when we 500
the Noble Lord, with all his high currency notions at
home, is compelled to issue ten shilling asstgnats in the
Mauritius,—when we see all these things, I think We
are entitled to require that we should hear, if not fro=
her Majesty herself, at least from her Ministers, some
explanation of the course which the Government has
determined on adopting with respect to the Mauritius
and the West Indies. Though her Majesty congratu-
lated the country upon its having cheap sugar, I think
there are now few persons so obtuse as not to understand
that that measure has been one of the main causes of
the distress which afflicts the country by producing the
failure of the sugar planters in the West Indies, the
Mauritius, and the East Indies, by ruining the sugar
merchants, by breaking up other mercantile houses
connected with that trade, and—as a necessary
consequence—by causing the bills of manufacturers to
be returned to Manchester. What is the position of
Manchester at the present moment ? The rates levied
for the support of the poor in that city are more then
double what they were at any former period.—(Hear'
perio
ho,r.) S u e()f
This t
things has wt caused by the no-
turn of tit6hononred bills of corn and sugar merchants,
given in payment ior goods. It is true, that during the
last ten or eh von mouthsthere has been an inciew
in
the u:tation of manufactures to the Untied S4lLt"
to
the extent of some 7,000 packages ; but the exports* -
tiOnS to the Canada; the West Indies, and the resit