The Sun.
London, England, 1841-09-25 00:00:00

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LONDON:
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1841.

In the Times of Wednesday there was an ela-.
borate article to prove that fluctuations in the
currency, not the Corn-laws, are the real cause
of the existing depression of trade. The article
concluded by saying, " our statement is so plain
that a child may understand it, and so undeni-
able that no one will attempt to refute it." We
might not, perhaps, have undertaken the task
had not our Contemporary yesterday boasted
that Lord STANLEY and he quite agree as to the
real causes of the existing depression. But Lord
STANLEY only imitated Sir ROBERT PEEL, and
having stolen one of the Right Hon. Baronet's
mannekins, he decorated it after his own glib
fashion, in order to beguile the Lancashire free-
holders. The Times, Lord STANLEY, and Sir
ROBERT PEEL, in fact, agree in ascribing the
depression to the fluctuations . in the currency,
and we are stimulated to notice the unrefutable
article of the Times by the expectation of bring-
ing sonic discredit on the theory of the Baronet
and the Lord by exposing the errors of the jour-
nalist.

Passing over a quantity of the usual vitupe-
ration of our Contemporary, we come to his first
statement of a fact :
" We need go no further back than 1818," says the
Times. "In that year the Bank of England, encouraged
by successive reprieves, had launched oust as if the day of
reckoning would never arrive. "We spec k from memory,
but we believe that its issues were nalrly 30,000,0001.
The consequences were, abundance of imney, high prices,
eager speculation, plenty of employntcnt, and all the
other concomitants of prosperity.' "
Now, what are the facts as to tive issue of the
Bank of England in 1818, and previous years, and
what was the prosperity of that and. the following
year? According to Mr. MAcumLocn's Dic-
tionary, the issues of the Bank of England were
as follows :

In August 1818, 26,602,837/.; in February,
28,279,043/.; in August, 1817, 30,0'99,9081.; in
February, 27,058,578/. ; in Atz,gust, 1816,
27,075,854/. ; and in February, 25480,000/. It

'as not, therefore, in 1819 that the Bank

launched out, for in that year its issues had
decreased very nearly 2,000,0001.,. and did not
equal the issues of 1816. That is false state-
ment the first.

Yesterday the Times seems to have become
aware of its error, but instead of con tradicting it,
and so refuting the unrefutable a r tide it had
built on a gross blunder, it merely said that in
1818 the circulation of the Bank. of England
was 27,220,0001., thus convicting itself of an
error of nearly one-tenth of the yr:hole circula-
tion of the Bank, a sum more th:a..n. equivalent
to the average of those fluctuation s from which
the Times says all our commercial e,wils flow.
Passing from 1818, the Times of z. Wednesday
went on to say—

"The next year, in 1819, saw a sudden. change. The
Act for the resumption of cash payments pa sued; the Bank
received notice to pay all its notes in gold wi t4sin three years,
and it immediately began to contract its is ;sues. General
distress instantly ensued. The chief seat sof trade were
first affected ; hence the failures of that i rear in London
and the other great towns, and the riots: at Manchester
and divers other places."

Subsequent, then, to 1815, acct' l ding to the
Times, when the Bank launched out.. there were
abundance of money, high prices, ea ger specula-
tion, plenty of employment, and a 11 the other
concomitants of " prosperity," and yi et before the
end of the following year all this w:t s completely
changed, and great distress and :riots ensued.
This is a very short period for suci a change ;
but before a public journalist makes :such a state-
ment, he is bound to consult some a.ther records
than those of his own memory and :itnagination.

The Manchester riot took place on I the 16th of
August, 1819, or in less than a pear after the
commencement of the great prosy erity arising
from the Bank launching forth i. a 1818. On
November 29th of that year, Mr. BENNET pre-
sented a petition from Mancheste 2r, which set
forth " that great distress had lo ug prevailed
in Manchester and its neighbourho ;" so that
the great prosperity of the short period which
intervened between the Bank launching out in
1818, and the riot of 1819—the cla: ;turbance of
which prosperity is said to have be !n the cause
of the riot--is a piece of invention Oil the part of
the Times.

But the whole paragraph displays iintense igno-
rance in the leading Journal. The c Lange which
took place in 1819, so far as the A.-2:t for the re-
sumption of cash payment is concerm•ed, was the
very reverse from that described Li the Times.
The Bank of England, by the Act of 1818,
the last Act for restraining cash pay-
ments before 1819, was bound to resume
cash payments on the sth of .J uly; 1820,
and the Act of 1819, which the Times aescribes as
causing the Bank, by obliging it to pai.y its notes
in gold to restrict its issues, was not to accelerate
but postpone that period. It is entitled "An
Act to continue the restrictions cot stained in
several Acts on payments in cash by- the Bank

of England until the Ist of May, 1823," Thus
its effect was to put off the resumption of cash
payments from July 5, 1820, at which period
they were previously ordered to take place, to
May 1, 1823.*
Moreover, the Bank of England was under an
obligation to pay certain of its outstanding notes
of an earlier date than 1617 in the year 1819,
and the Parliament no sooner met in that year
than the merchants of London petitioned to have
the Bank released from that obligation. Ac-
cordingly, the first act of the Committee of
Seuresy, which sat in 1819, on Bank affairs,
was to recommend that an Act should

* See Second Report on the State of the Bank, in
TLl.ns4 rd, vol. 40, p. 152, and p. 1,567, for the tide of
the Act. See also Lord Holland's Speech, p. 1,295.

be passed to restrain the Bank from
paying these rt.-)tc,s in gold. A Bill
`7" fiirth Witil 1-2 in and l at
once through all its stages. Thus, in the early
part of 1819, the Bank of England was relieved
from an obligation immediately to pay its notes
in gold, while the Times asserts that it was the
creation of such an obligation in 1819 which was
the cause of the Bank curtailing its issues, which
curtailment of issues, according to the Times,
was the cause of all the distress which prevailed
in the next few subsequent years. This is a gross
mistake.
The reader will, perhaps, suppose that we
have pointed out errors enough in one short
paragraph, but they are more numerous than
the words. Instead of prosperity prevailing
in 1818, as the Times asserts, Mr. TooxE says
(and his authority is better than that of the
Times), " That numerous and extensive failures
began in the latter part of that year "—on the
heels of the Bank launching out—" and con-
tinued, more or less, through the early part of
1819," &c.—Tooke on Prices, vol. 2, page 77.
Then the distress of 1819, which the Times
ascribes to the Act for the resumption of Cash
Payments, took place before that Act was
passed in June, which, at the same time, was an
Act for postponing, not accelerating, those
payments.

" Gradually," the Times proceeded to say, "the depression
spread over the country. In 1820 and 1821, it reached
the agriculturists. The year 1822 resounded with their
complaints. At last, in 1823, the Government was in-
duced to relax in its resolve, and the Small Note Bill
passed."

Would not any one believe from this that the
depression of 1819, which caused the riot at
Manchester, as the Times says, continued in the
towns as well as in the country? But what was
the fact? . In the year 1822, the Bank of Eng-
land's circulation was less than 18,000,0001., and
lower than at any period between 1818 and 1825.
At the commencement of that year, however,
this was the language of the KING'S Speech :
" I have the greatest pleasure in acquainting you that
a considerable improvement has taken place in the course
of the last year in the commerce and manufactures of the
United Kingdom, and I can now state them to be, in their
important branches, in a very flourishing condition."
We will not now attempt to point out the causes
of the agricultural distress in 1822 and 1823, for
that would extend our observations too much ;

we content ourselves with reminding the Times
that at present the dispute concerns manufactur-
ing and not agricultural distress, that great ma-
nufacturing prosperity was combined in 1822
with a much limited Bank circulation. That
single fact overthrows the whole theory of the
Times.

We might proceed through the " unrefutable"
article, and show that every paragraph abounds
in errors, blunders, and mis-statements, such as

we have exposed, but this sample of the sack of
rubbish which the Times seeks to palm off on the
public as genuine wholesome food will suffice.
What is the real cause of commercial prospe-
rity and depression has certainly not been
pointed out off-hand so clearly that a child may
understand it by the Times, nor will that journal,

in its new-born zeal ftir the bread-tax and the
bread-taxers, persuade the manufacturing and
mercantile community that the paper money
dealers are the persons who doom them to want
and death. Even if they were, the manufac-
turers have as good reason to demand the re-
moval of that cause from the hand of the Legis-

'ature, and as good reason to condemn it for not
mmediately taking means at least to inquire into

the cause of their distress, as if the Corn-law
were at the bottom of the mischief.

Till the Times adopted Sir ROBERT PEEL'S
nostrum, and endeavoured on Wednesday to
direct public indignation from the landowners to
the paper-money dealers, we considered that
journal as not having wholly passed over to the
side of the bread-taxers. But tired apparently
of not fully sharing the landlords' favours, and
envious of the more successful Herald and Post,
which are appropriate organs of the starvation
party, it offered itself on Wednesday, armed
and provisioned, ready to make war at its own
charge, to do battle against the com-
merce of England. It starts as the willing
guerilla of PEEL and the landowners. It
puts on the livery- of the Starvation Ministry, and
takes on itself the ignominious task of bolstering
up those laws it has heretofore so zealously de-
nounced. Following the direction of Peel, it un-
dertakes to hunt Anti-Corn-law agitation to death
for the service of its new masters. If it succeed

no better on other occasions than on Wednesday
it will only maim and bruize itself, gratifying
the clodpoles it now serves, but it will not injure

e cause of Corn-law abolition.

In the House of Commons last night Sir J.
EASTHOPE put himself very unnecessarily for-
ward as the advocate of aristocratic extravagance.
The question was the retiring annuity of the
VICE-CHANCELLOR. It was proposed that this
should be 3,5001. Mr. EWART moved that
it he 3,000/., which, as Mr. WAKLEY properly
said, is 1,0001. too much ; 2,000/. a year would
be ample. We know not how an elderly gen-
tleman can rationally and decently spend more.
But neither this sum, nor even the large sum of
3,0001., equalled Sir J. EASTHOPE'S magnificent
notions of the manner in which the Judges
should be paid. He condemned the proposed
reduction as paltry economy. Precisely such
votes as that given, we presume, by Sir J. EAST-
HOPE, and such reasons as he urged, extending
through every branch of the public service, at
one time augmenting the pay of Judges, at an-
other increasing the salaries of officers of every
description, civil and military, are the sources
of the vast expenditure in the aggregate which
falls so heavily on the national industry, and
cripples the resources of the people. Though
we like free trade as well as Sir J. EASTHOPE, we
like economy also in managing public affairs.
Sir J.EA STHOPE represents a constituency which
suffers at this moment much distress, and as
long as gentlemen ridicule economy as paltry
that distress will never receive relief from the
Legislature. Does not Sir J. EASTHOPE see that
by voting salaries and pensions on the aristo-
cratic scale, he fosters in the aristocracy that
desire for large incomes, which imposes the
Corn-law on the community? Is he not con-
vinced, too, that by taking a single farthing
more from the people by taxes than is abso-
lutely necessary, he commits a gross injustice ?
What he stigmatizes as paltry economy is com-
mon honesty, and we are m►staken in the suf-
fering and energetic electors of Leicester if they
do not convince Sir J. EASTHOPE that if he hope
to represent them in future he must be as care-
ful of the public money as he is of his own.

One of the most numerous and respectable
meetings ever held at Glasgow, assembled there
"on Wednesday, and unanimously agreed to me-
morialise her MAJESTY not to prorogue Parlia-
ment till the distress of the country had been
inquired into. We shall give an abridged report
of the proceedings when we can find room. Mr•
OSWALD, the Member for Glasgow, was in the
Chair, having gone down from London to attend
the meeting. Two clergymen addressed the
assembly in eloquent and forcible speeches, while
all who spoke deprecated in the strongest lan-
guage, the neglecting to relieve the people as
pregnant with the greatest danger. A far greater
.:umber of persons would have collected had
,here been room, for many hundreds went away
because they could not be accommodated. We
some time ago expressed a hope that Glasgow
.night surpass Manchester, and if it has not it
has at least equalled it on this occasion, and has.
given, in conjunction with its English sister, a
heavy blow and great discouragement to mono-
poly and starvation.

The whole of the French Journals of Thursday have
all reached us. They bring no political news of any
moment. The capital continued tranquil, nor was it ex-
pected that any fresh attempt would be made to disturb
the public peace.

At an early hour yesterday wrming, a man attempted to de.
stroy himself with a pistol on the Quai near the Hotel de Ville_
He did not succeed, but was carried to the Hotel Dieu in a
hopeless condition.
The Sentinelk of Toulon states that some veins of iron