The Sun.
London, England, 1847-10-21 00:00:00

E SUN,

vate credit, to embarrass and reduce all the ope-
rations of agriculture, manufactures and commerce, and
to throw out of employment (as in the calamitous
year of 1816) a great proportion of the industrious
and labouring classes of the community." Never
was the warning voice of a prophet poured forth to
more incredulous ears. Never was a vaticination
more thoroughly disregarded, and seldom has there
been a more perfect realisation of a foreboding. The
Trojans were not more iniifferent to the predictions
of CASSANDRA. than the Legislature to the arguments
of those merchants who, from their past experience
and their own observations of the fatal effects of a
restricted currency whenever it was attempted to be
introduced, drew their deductions that similar results
would necessarily follow similar causes. Sir
CHARLES WOOD himself could not be more confident
" tbat there was not any just cause for the apprehen-
sion which the mercantile body seemed to entertain."
The flippant assurance of Mr. RICARDO, " that the
whole question was one of three per cent." (an opinion
which he afterwards admitted to be erroneous), was
received with greater attention, and had more weight
attached to it, than the cairn and deliberate declara-
tion of men whose whole lives were devoted to com-
mercial pursuits, and who must, indeed, have been very
stupid if they were not competent to form a sound
judgment of the effects of the monetary restrictions
on their business operations.
Well, the Act was carried almost by acclamation,
and, it is scarcely necessary for us to say, that it
utterly and signally failed in giving that invariable
value to money which it was intended to do. The
changes since that period have been more frequent,
and attended with more disastrous consequences than
at any former period of our financial history. It
was not merely that a debt of 600,000,0001., borrowed
during the time of war for the preservation of the
property of the country, was placed as a permanent
burden on the industry, the labour of the people,
but it was now required' to be liquidated in
a currency very different from that in which it was
contracted, and its weight thereby nearly doubled. Re-
strictions toe were imposed wholly inconsistent with
the national prosperity, and which prevented the ps-
sibility of maintaining that amount of circulation
which was required to supply the wants of commerce
and active industry. Need we point to the crises of
1825, 1830 to 1832, 1833 to 1837, or of 1839 ? In
every instance the prosperity was accompanied by an in-
creased circulation of bank notes, to which it was
fairly attributable; and the misery and calamity that
ensued was attended, and indeed we may say, occa-
sioned, by the reduction of the amount, and the con-
sequent depreciation in the value of every description
of property.

As if the country had already not suffered suffi-
ciently from the ill-considered and injurious Act of
1819, advantage was taken of one of our periodical
fits of apparent prosperity to introduce a new Bill,
by which the law was rendered more stringent, and
the Bank directors were deprived of that discretion
which they had formerly been allowed, and which
was exercised so beneficially for the national credit
in 1825 ; all that was required from them by the Act
of 1819 was, that they should at all times be enabled
to exchange their notes for gold at the Mint price of
31.178.101 d. per ounce. So long as they were enabled
to do so they might judge of the cause of any panic,
and deal with the disease according to its origin. If
the demand for money was to obtain gold to send out
of the country—if it was occasioned by over-trading
or undue speculation—it became their duty, as
well as their interest, to withhold the accommodation
by which this spirit might be increased and fostered,
and to put on the screw; but when the foreign ex-
changes were favourable, when the necessity and
pressure was purely domestic, there would be no such
necessity. On the contrary, it would become expe-
dient to exhibit confidence, to issue freely their notes,
which are quite acceptable to the whole trading popu-
lation, and thus to avert the unreasonable fears, the
absurd panic, that would cause greater mischief than
a real calamity; this however, is not now lawful, they
cannot by any act of theirs remedy such a panic, and
the national credit may be destroyed—the people
may be sacrificed to preserve the security of the
standard. The object of this Act was to enforce the
retention of gold in the country, or to bring it back if
it should by any means be exported, but this
may likewise operate in a manner wholly different
from the intentions of its originators. The wide-
spread alarm that it has occasioned has cast discredit
upon the British name ; the, honour and the solvency
of British merchants cannot now be relied on, as in
ua., 5. ile value, ul L 7.1113 O l r.tigiana
are, consequently depreciated, from the fear
that they may b© returned dishonoured, and
payments in other lands can therefore be more
profitably made in specie than by bills, and as a na-
tural result the bullion will still leave the country,
no matter how anxiously our rulers may endeavour to
retain it. Either that must be the case, or there
must be a total cessation of our commercial pursuits,
and all classes must be exposed to the greatest misery
and privations, and for what ? " That the integrity of
the standard may be preserved !"

Lucca is emancipated. By his spontaneous abdi-
cation, the son of the late ex-Queen of ETRURIA. has
anticipated the change which would have resulted
immediately upon the decease of the ex-Empress
MARIA LOUISA. Lucca is not only emancipated
from the thraldom of this most incompetent personage,
but its perpetual prosperity is ensured by its incorpo-
ration with the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Ulti-
mately this fortunate transference of authority
would have been inevitable, but the recent move-
ments made throughout the Peninsula by the So-
vereigns of Piedmont, Tuscany, and the Papal
States have so far affected the ruler of the duchy
of Lucca as to precipitate him from the throne of
that principality before the demise of MARIA
LOUISA had removed him to the presidency of
Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla.

Before we comment upon the advantages which
must necessarily result, not merely to the Lucchese
themselves, but relatively to the Italian population in
the aggregate, from the moral consequences of this
dynastic alteration, it may he advisable to recapitu-
late the outlines of the arrangement entered into in
1815, by the Sovereigns of Europe, in reference to
the order of succession in the smaller principalities of
the Roman peninsula. By that most memorable,
because most recent and comprehensive of treaties,
the Treaty of Vienna, the ducal, grand ducal, and
regal crowns of Italy were placed contingently upon
the brows of different distinguished personages. And
among other remarkable stipulations entered into by
Great Britain, Austria, France, Russia, Prussia, and
Spain, the 101st and 102 d articles ordained that
Lucca should be granted to the daughter of King
CHARLES IV., of the last-mentioned kingdom
the Infanta MARIA. LOUISA, ex-Queen of Etruria:
and to her male descendants. Providing, however,
that the ducal throne of Lucca were vacated by the
death of the INFANTA and her male descendants, or
in the event of their accession to another principality,
the duchy of Lucca was rendered the property in re-
version of the Grand Duke of TUSCANY. That the
latter contingency was inevitable, is manifest from a
1 supplemental treaty, dated the 10th of June, 1817,
which ordained that the duchies of Parma, Piacenza,
and Guastalla should, upon the decease of the reign-
ing Archduchess, MARIA LOUISA, ex-Empress of the
French, be transferred to the possession of the IN-
FANTA or her male descendants. Until the death or
abdication of the august widow of the Emperor NA-
POLEON, the Spanish Bourbons were, however, to
be sustained in their sovereignty over the Lucchese,
and - their revenues were to be enhanced by the
annual payment of 500,000 f., abstracted from the
income derivable from Bohemian property called the
estates of the Bavaro-Palatinate. All these con-
ditional engagements—so comfortably dynastic, so
conveniently dove-tailing with the interests of here-
ditary royalty, so consonant with the character of the
epoch in which they were concocted—have been
jumbled into confusion by the sudden and un-
i expected abdication of the son of the ex-Queen
c! ETRURIA. Yet it is
to the advancement of the
leiboenrfi
eatutsivoen
ewanhaiceh
intends
a •
another
Italian
incubuspenin s u 1;a.
it
dI
et s relievestro3,sh
a of the
nother country from
ing spells of the Viennese COMUS ; it br
damn-
another of the brutalizing wands of the Case:;
ocsf
Absolutism ; it snaps another chain ; it overthrows
another obstacle ;it is another step—and a glorious
one !—in the onward march of a Free People.
The Imperial Archduchess still weilds the