The Sun.
London, England, 1847-09-29 00:00:00

' SPIRIT of the •PITBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
HERALD.—We have, for some time past, said
very little upon either the Currency or the Free-trade
questions ; from a feeling that it had been determined
to try certain experiments, and that both Parliament
and the people would hold themselves committed to
give the new theories a fair trial, and to judge of their
merits by the result. Yet it may be possible to carry
this silence too far. We fear that the currency-
nostrums of Sir Robert Peel are already bringing
ruin upon hundreds, and want and misery upon hun-
dreds of thousands; and it may be rather too late to
defer our verdict until the country is in the very jaws
of ruin. A considerable number of persons, chiefly
among the mercantile classes, have been accustomed
for several years past to regard Sir Robert Peal as
a man of great practical wisdom and sagacity; and
about one-fif. h of the Members of the late House
of Commons manifested the same prepossession,
by their " wheel about" on the free- trade question.
Yet, to our apprehension, there never was a public
man who stoal in like circumstances of positive
defeat, disgrace, and exposure, to those in which Sir
Robert Peel stands at the present moment. The
case of the unfortunate commander, who, while broad
awake, and in full possession of his senses, ran the
Great Britain high and dry on the shores of Dun-
drum Bay, is but a poor and humble imitation of the
monstrous blunder committed by Sir Robert Peel.
Let us endeavour to make the nature of this blunder
intelligible by a common-place and familiar illustra-
tration. We will suppose Sir Robert Peel to have a
sincere regard for a young relative,--say, a nephew;
—and to have resolved on establishing him indite.
lie introduces him to Messrs. Barings' counting-
house, and obtains for him the very first instruction
in commercial concerns. Thus educated, he places
him in correspondence with some of the leading men
in several of our colonies; and, finally, gives him a
capital, say of 50,0001., and bids him commence busi-
ness as a British merchant. The nephew proceeds,
at first, wisely and well. He establishes a desirable
connexion in the West Indies, corresponds with same
of our other colonies, and by degrees finds himself
fairly afloat, and his capital fully and profitably em-
ployed. After a while he communicates with his
uncle, that large and flattering prospects are opened
to him on the Continent ; and that he sees
various opportunities of entering upon an
extensive and profitable business with Ham-
burgh, Odessa, Trieste, and other continental
ports. His relative and main adviser gives
him the greatest encouragement to seize these
opportunities, and to push his transactions to the
fullest length. Another short period elapses, and he
comes again for counsel. Two or three great rail-
ways are pressed upon him, both from the east and
from the west. He is advised to take a large share in
them ; both with a view to ultimate profit, and also
to agency business, while the matter is in progress.
Again the " sagacious" uncle gives encouragement,
and nothing but encouragement, to go warmly and
courageously into these new speculations. In these
deliberations nothing is said about any pecuniary
assistance. The young man is doubtless to blame,
that he does not come to a full understanding with his
uncle on these points. But he dislikes making a pre-
mature application ; and he says to himself, ever and
anon, " Of course my uncle means to stand by me in
all these affairs. He would never counsel me to
plunge into large and complicated engagements of
this kind, unless he intended to support me, whenever
needful, with the requisite funds." ut, after a
while, this youug merchant, with his 50,000/.,
finds that he has got into engagements to the
extent of 200,0001.; and that calls of various
kinds are made upon him, week by week,—which
he is hourly becoming less prepared to meet. He
therefore hies to his uncle, and opens to him the state
of the case. And he then first learns, with equal
astonishment and dismay, that his uncle never meant
to give him the least aid, either by gift or loan ;—or
even to permit him to use other means of obtaining
the required funds. He asks, and learns with amaze-
ment, that it had never entered into his wise relative's
head, that any more money was required to do a
business of 1,000,0001. per annum than to do one of
100.0001. He quits his uncle in despair, but at the
same time exclaiming, " How wofully are people de-
ceived in a plausible exterior ! Who ever imagined,
that one who can talk so well on monetary and com-
mercial matters, could be so mere a child in resl
practical knowledge!" Is not this suppos:titious case
a very close parallel to the facts of the last four years ?
Do we not see Sir R Peel first fixing, with a peremp-
tory law, the maximum of money that the commerce
of England shall have to employ; and then, immediately
afterwards, giving all possible facilities to every kind of
extension of commerce, internal enterprise, and even
rash speculation ? Was not the whole drift of his
legislation in 1844, 1845, and 1846, to encourage
the growth of trade, and to lend every aid (except
pecuniary aid) to every project for the increase of
commercial enterprise? Now all this would have
been consistent, and blameless, under the system
which he abolished in 1819; but it is altogether at
variance with the new theory which he then adopted,
and to which he stubbornly adheres. If it would
have been an act of the greatest folly for him to have
expected a merchant to do as much business with
50,0001. as if he had had the command of 150,0001.;
what is it else for him to encourage the whole
body of British merchants to double, nay, to quad-
ruple their transactions, and then to say, " But
you shall not have the slightest addition to the
money which is to carry all these purposes into ef-
fect !" Two or three very brief questions may set this
matter in a clear light. Can there be the slightest
doubt that, what with the growth of our colonies,
the opening of the Eastern trade, the increasing
freedom of trade with the Continent, and the spread
of the railroad system all over the world, the ag
gr,gate of mercantile business done in Great Britain
is prodigiously greater in 1847 than it was in 1818 ?
Can there be a question that more money is required
to do a large business than is needed to carry on a
small one ? But what is the increase, if any, of
money, which has taken place since 1818, when the
Bank of England had about 30,000,0001. of notes in
:circulation, and the country banks more than
20,000,000/.? And what is to be the result of at-
tempting to do a vastly increased trade with a cur-
rency bound down by the iron laws of 1819 and 1842
but perpetual failure, insolvency, misery, and ruin ?
CIIRONICLE.—Strong grounds as there are for
lamenting the lukewarmness of the French Cabinet
in the cause of Italy, we do not knew but it has
neen too hastily accepted as an axiom that the
public opinion of Europe could find no effective ex-
aression unless in the united action of the Cabinets
of St. James's and the Tuileries. The motives
which all enlightened men in France and England
nad to wish for a cordial and lasting co operation
between the two Governments were many and for-
cible ; and we can with difficulty imagine any turn
of affairs in which the majority of those motives
will not retain their strength and urgency. At the
same time, our affairs would be in a most lament-
able position if it were in the power of any French
Government, by running counter to the wishes
of its subjects, to infect our Government with
its own apathy, and compel England to remain
a passive and apparently indifferent spectator of
transactions in which she takes the deepest interest.
We dare say indeed that the hope of some
such result has had its place in the calculations of
the French Cabinet during the past twelve or fifteen
months. Getting consciously and with malice pre-
pense into a false position themselves, and fatally
compromising the character of their own country,
they trusted that they would, in one way or another,
so embarrass the English Cabinet and impede its
action as temporarily to reduce this country to a
state of political nonentity, so far as the interests of
continental Europe were concerned. They have
been signally disappointed ; and yet it would be un-
justt to assert that their calculations had no warrant
in their own previous experience. The Sovereign, t.h..
Ministry, and the people of England had viedwlwa
each other in the cordiality and attenttihoen
Minis-
they, manifested towards the Sovereign,
try, and the peopla of France. Andso rofound was
French and his
the admiration which the King of
the
turbable easiness
Ministry had conceived for the.
and good nature of the English 1
should not be
nghsircphearracter, that they
thought it a pity that such
put to the usual trials which sgunooPdness meets with in
this wc,rld, and be taken
and to keep their
a little harmless advantage
of, merely as a matter of
hand in. It was a more experiment
serious and every way a less
pardonable error in the French Cabinet not to judge
more accurately the temper and character of their
own people. They ought to have foreseen that when
that crisis arose, whose approach the accession of
Pius IX. ad visibly such a tendency to accelerite,
public opinion in France would be so powerfully
against them, and with the cause of constitutional
liberty in Europe, that the English Government,
in energetically supporting the latter, would not
only be cordially sustained by the English people,
but their demonstrations would likewise carry with
them all the moral weight which public opinion in
France could add to the unhesitating verdict of
public opinion in England. And so it is in fact.
There is scarcely a remonstrance which the organs
of opinion in France address to their Goverment that
is not directly or indirectly a testimony of the sound-
ness of the policy pursued by our own. Passing