The Sun.
London, England, 1848-08-11 00:00:00

FRANCE.

[The following appeared in our Third Edition of
last night]:—

The Committee of Legislation has approved the
resolution proposed to the National Assembly by M.
L kURENT (de I'Ardeche), to the effect that no repre-
sentative of the people shall be prosecuted without an
application to that effect be made- to,-the National
Assembly by the Minister of Justice, gild that the
ground of such demand be stated.
The Committee of Finance has proposed several
reductions in the Budget of the Minister for Foreign
Affairs. It recommends the suppression of the lega-
tions at Darmstadt and Saxe-Weimar, and the con-
version of several consulates into simple agencies. A
considerable reduction in the allowance to consuls is
likewise suggested.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE
OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS ON THE BANK
ACT.*

(From Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper.)
A heavy blow and sore discouragement have at length
overtaken the bullionists. The frontless impudence of
Sir Robert Peel has met with a grave rebuke: the
flippant smile that played over the lips of Sir Charles
Wood has departed ; Mr. Jones Loyd groans in the
spirit. The House of Lords has condemned the blun-
derings of these pseudo-economists, who are only
to be compared to those who in former times displayed
false lights on a rocky shore to lure vessels to destruc-
tion that they might plunder the wreck. The Bill of
1844, dissected with care and skill, is proved to be a
rank imposition, having in practice falsified all its pro-
mises. Contrasted with the meagre report of the
Commons, that of the Lords is full, searching, argu-
mentative, and worthy to be called a State paper ; it
contains a careful and impartial analysis of the evidence,
and though we are not able to bestow unqualified praise
on the commentary which accompanies that analysis, it
certainly reflects great credit on the industry and inte-
grity of those by whom it has been prepared. There
are errors in judgment which we regret to see, but
which, when exposed, we hope will be retracted, for the
Lords really seem anxious to avoid all mystification and
arrive at truth.
It appears to us that the Committee of the Peers mis-
took their duty when they confined their attention to
the Bill of 1844. That Bill is avowedly the comple-
ment of the Bill of 1819, and they ought to hare inves-
tigated the major rather than the minor problem. After
an experience of twenty-five years, Sir Robert Peel
himself avowed that the Bill of 1819 was a dead failure,
and therefore did he introduce the complementary Bill, as
a buttress to prop up the tottering fabric. Now it appears
to us that the Lords should have placed themselves on
more elevated ground, to have commanded a more ex-
tended horizon and a more comprehensive view. They
should have approached their scrutiny bearing in
mind that Mr. Horner, the chairman of the Bul-
lion Committee of 1810, mourned over his errors
before his death, declaring that " whoever attempted to
set that question of currency right without taking into
account and fully appreciating the new circumstances
that have arisen, the vast new and additional obligations
that have been entered into, since cash payments
were suspended in 1797, will inflict indescribable
misery on the country." They should have re-
membered the dying declaration of Mr. Ricardo to
his friend Sir William Heygate couched in these memo-
rable words-" Aye, Heygato, you and the few others
who opposed us on the cash payments have proved right.
I said that the difference at the most would only be
! five per cent., and you said that at least it would be
twenty-five per cent." These are sounds of repentant
voices speaking from the tomb, calling on the living to
repair ' the unintentional wrongs inflicted by the dead,
and they should have had their due weight with the
Committee. Mr. Horner and Mr. Ricardo were the real
authors of the Bill of 1819, which they ultimately repu-
diated ; as to Sir Robert Peel, he has always lived on
he ideas of others; from the two gentlemen men-
tioned he copied the monetary system which passes
under his name, and as the founders of it con-
fessed the gravity of their mistakes, all that once
I conferred authority has become null and void; the Lords,
• therefore, it seems to us, ought to have investigated the
principle of cash payments as embodied in the Bill of
1819, rather than the appendix or complement to a con-
demned measure, the details of which only aggravate the
mischiefs of a system which its real authors had long
since pronounced destructive of the welfare of society
iand dangerous to the institutions of the State.
Their Lordships should also have enlarged their judi-
rial thoughts by bringing to the aid of their intellgence
ibe arguments used against the Bill of 1819 when
debated. The late Lord Ashburton, for instance,
uttered a most suggestive truth when he said "No
c.)untry before presented the continuance of so ex-
traordinary a priliciple as that of living under a
progressive increase of the value of money, and a de-
pression of the productions of the people." This sen-
tence does indeed solve the problem, why the " rich grow
richer, and the poor grow poorer," and why usurers
flourish where honest industry is ground to the dust. It
should have been fresh in the memories of their Lordships
that the experienced Mr. H. Gurney observed " Shift the
matter as you may, the question before the Committee
comes to this, will you at this moment indefinitely in-
crease the weight of your taxation and diminish the
means of bearing it ?" Here is shadowed forth in pro-
phecy What has become fact—periodical distress of the
most aggravated form, civil commotion, ever-re-
curring. bankruptcies through sheer misfortune,
and an annual poor-rate not falling short of
7,000,0001. sterling. Their Lordships ought to have had
present"to their minds the warning words of Mr. Att-
wood, when he said, " High prices and an abundant
circulation were necessary; but neither could exist per-
manently in conjunction. with the low price of gold,
which this Bill attempted to fix. This was the source
of all their difficulties; and all measures of relief founded
on other views, as would those which were now pro-
posed, would lead: them only to evils more complicated
and to greater dangers." The prediction has been veri-
fied in a thousand forms.
!Had their Lordships entered upon their labours with
a full knowledge of these facts, had they contemplated
great principles, and taken an historical retrospect of
the last quarter of a century, we think they would have
enlarged the sphere of their usefulness, by holding up
to 1 national indignation a monetary system destruc-
tive of credit, trade, and commerce—which has added
50Iper cent., to all public and private obligations—which
has cut down wages and profits, while taxes have in-
creased proportionately as the means' of paying
them have been diminished—a system which places
in constant and imminent peril the very exist-
ence cf the monarchy, and by driving hungry
millions to fury necessitates the augmentation of
a istanding army, the enactment of penal statutes,
and places the sword and the musket in the
hands of the policemen in addition to the customary
truncheon. But we are grateful for what the Lords
have done; and it is because they have done so much,
that we entertain the hope they will examine this ques-
tion of questions more minutely, and do still more. •
We proceed circumstantiallz to their report. It will
be remembered that one of bir Robert Peel's solemn
predictions in 1844 was that his complement Bill would
for ever eliange. fhe nature .of man and put an end to
speculation. On' this presumptuous and stupid boast,
the Committee have pronounced the following stinging
condemnation :
" To thoso who anticipated that the Act would put
a check on improvident speculations, the disappoint-
ment cannot be less, if reliance is to be placed (as
the Committee aro confident it may) on the state-
ment of the governor of the
,Bank and other wit-
nesses, that ' Speculations were never carried to such
en enormous extent as in 1846 and the beginning of
1847.' If the act were relied on as a security against
violent fluctuations —in the value of money, the falla-
ciousness of such anticipation is conclusively proved
by the fact, that whilst the difference between the
highest and lo'West rate of discount was, in the
calamitious years 1837 and 1839, but 2+ to 21 per
cent., the difference in 1847 rose to 6i. If it was
contemplated that, the number and extent of corn-.
mercial failures would have been lessened, the deplorable
narrative of the Governor of the Bank, recording the
failure of thirty-three houses comparatively in
large business, in London alone, to the amount of
8,129,0001., is a conclusive reply. If the enormous
extent to which railroad speculation has been carried,
he considered as an evil to which a sound system of
banking could have applied a corrective, such a cor-
rective has not been found in an Act, since the passing
of which, during' a period of three years, an in-
creased railway capital of upwards of 221,0001. has
been authorised to be raised by Parliament ; and when
the enormous sum of 76,390,0001. is stated on high
financial authority to have been actually expended,
on railways, in two years and a half. If the power
of obtaining banking accommodation on moderate
terms, were considered to be promoted by the Act of
1844, it cannot be said that this important object has
been attained, since it appears in evidence that in 1847,
in addition to an interest of 9 or 10 per cent. a com-
mission was also frequently paid, raising the charge to
10, 20, or 30 per cent., according to the time which the
bills had to run."
Rare pickings these for the usurers, who must surely
venerate the names of Peel and Jones Loyd, the authors
of the Bill of 1844, which placed in their hands the
power of a Shylock without the danger that accompanied
its exercise. We question if Cardinal Ximenes that,
Dominican monk, who founded the Inquisition, and Tor-
quemada, who first ascended its bloody throne, inflicted
bitterer tortures on Spain than Peel and Loyd have in-
flicted on this country, albeit the weapons were different,
the one lacerating the body, the other the heart.
How many hordes have been rendered desolate, how
many have sunk into premature graves from broken
hearts, how many have been bereft of reason
and perished in a lunatic asylum, by that re-
turn to cash payments whose victims are recorded
in 1816, 1821, 1825, 1832, 1837, 1839, and 1847 ?
From the closing passages in the paragraph we have
extracted from the report, the industrious classes may
learn why their wages were reduced, and why they
here thrown out of employment; and they who
chronicle the statistics of crime may there also be
taught a lesson they have overlooked, that usury first rob-
bing labour urges the arm of labour to violence and the
plunder of property. And yet Sir Robert Peel is the
unblushing champion of usury, for he asked in insolent
triumph, last November, in the House of Commons, why
10 per cent. or more should not be taken for money, if
money were worth that interest? but he screened the
important fact that he had limited money by Act of Par-
liament to bits of bullion, and thus made an artificial
scarcity the cause and the justification of the shameless
extortions he defended.
It is provided by the Act of 1844 that the Bank of
I.England shall only hold one-fifth of silver bullion to
,tour-fifths of gold bullion. The legal standard of the
-continent is silver, so that a store' of that metal at home
would always be available in paying the balances of
foreign trade ; that would relieve our merchants, but it
would cripple the gains of the usurer, so the framers of
the Bill introduced the proportions mentioned, that they
'Light more effectually sacrifice the bees to the drones.
Silver is only a legal tender to the amount of 405.; so
that a man far wealthier in silver than his neighbour is
in gold may be driven into the Gazette, poor in the
midst of plenty, and as able to meet his engagements, as
Jones Loyd is to take up his acceptances. On this most
monstrous regulation Mr. Cotton, Governor of the Bank
of England, gave the following evidence:—
" Merchants from the Pacific, whose returns are very
euch in silver bullion, found when it arrived last spring,
that there was no market for it here, and that they had
tol send it over to Paris for returns in bills of exchange,
andnwhen they came back there was a difficulty in dis-
ting-
cou The interval lost, which is about six weeks,

* It is understood that Lord Menteagle, formerly a
bullionist, and now half converted to sounder principles,
drew up the report.

THE SUN, LONDON,.

is a very serious thing to a mercantile house; and there
is another evil in it; supposing the amount of bullion
held in the issue department to be in the exact propor-
tions allowed by the Act, with one-fifth siker, and sup-
posing that 400,000/. notes go in, taking the same
amount of sovereigns out, that immedialy alters the
proportions, and the issue department lot* necessarily
sell silver bullion to keep the proportions right, and thus
reduce the circulation another 100,000/. tci keep up the
proportion."
The Committee concur in these opinion 4 and recom-
mend a change, but to what extent does noit appear from
the report.
Several of the witnesses examined attribUted the pres-
sure felt in 1847, and the panic which succeeded, to the
publication of the accounts in the manner prescribed by
the Act of 1844; and the Governor proposed that the
rule should in future be relaxed, so far as related to the
Bank reserve. To this exception the Committee, and
with reason, thus argumentatively express their dis-
sent:—
" The suggestion made by the Governor of the Bank,
of publishing the whole accounts with the exceptioa of
the reserve, appears wholly inadmissible. Such accounts
must necessarily furnish the elements or data from
which the amount of reserve may, with a greater or less
degree of accuracy, be deduced or inferred. If the
amount of reserve could thus be accurately calculated,
the proposed remedy would be no corrective of the sys-
tem complained of. If the amount of reserve were to be
inferred inaccurately, such a proceeding would be an
aggravation of the inconvenience rather than a safe or
effectual remedy. It would appear more in accordance
with legislative wisdom to reconsider the rale itself,
against which there can hardly be stronger presumptive
evidence than the suggested necessity of concealing the
consequences to which it leads."
We now come to the most important clause in the
Report, and on which we must pronounce the most un-
qualified condemnation. It runs thus:—
" The Committee feel, in common with every witness
examined, the duty and obligation of maintaining at all
times the practicable convertibility of the bank•note.
This they consider to be the first and most essential
object, which, in all discussions like the present, must
be constantly kept in view, both by the Legislature and
by those who direct the banking operations of this
commercial community. Upon the practical enforcement
of this principle, not only does the public and the private
credit depend, but the whole industry of the productive
classes and the wages of labour."
The bank-note is either money, or it is not money.
If it i.e money, what use is there in converting equivalents
into equivalents? If it is not money, discard its use
wholly, for why allow a fraudulent instrument, an ad-
mitted imposture, to obtain any currency whatever?
Their Lordships have here lost sight of that "legislative
wisdom" to which they appealed, when refusing to
exempt the Bank reserve from publication. If con-
vertibility is to be the law, how do their Lordships
reconcile it to their consciences to permit the Bank of
England to issue 14 millions of notes, on the sandy foun-
dation of a debt due by the country to that establishment,
not one of which notes is convertible? or still stronger,
why do they allow the country bankers to issue eight
millions of inconvertible paper, which do not even re-
pose on the colourable rottenness of a debt? The truth
is that while Sir Robert Peel in his speech of 1844 com-
menced by defining a " pound" to be 123 grains of gold,
and insisted that the obligation to pay a " pound" ad-
mitted of no other construction than the tender of 123
grains of gold, by which he understood convertibility, he
completely falsified his own principles and his own defi
nition when he allowad the Bank of England, the coun-
try banks, the Irish and Scotch banks, collectively, to
put into circulation 31 millions of paper promises to pay,
without taking the security of a grain of bullion to that
amount. It is only over and above that amount that
these establishments are bound to retain gold in their
coffers, so that the pretext of convertibility is a juggle
and a fraud.

Moreover, their Lordshipa7ust :deluded by the ambi-
guity of the word they have:7loyd. If they mean that
the note should be convertible •into merchandise, at the
market price of merchandise, the word " convertibility"
is used in a proper sense; but if they mean, as they ob-
viously do, that the note shall always be convertible into
a definite weight of gold at a fixed price, whether gold be
abundant or scarce, cheap or dear, then have they fallen
into a most lamentable blunder. We may take 123
grains of gold, stamp it, decorate it with the effigies of
Queen Victoria, or of Britannia, or of St. George and
the Dragon, put it into a circular form, and mill the
edges, but we have not changed its intrinsic value or the
character imposed on it by nature; it is still a bit of
bullion, an article of merchandise, a commodity fluctu-
ating in price under the law of supply and demand
equally with every other commodity. Is it not then
grossly repugnant to common sense to affirm that the
price of an ounce of gold must be the same whether the
Bank holds one hundred ounces or ten thousand ounces?
yet this monstrous error lies at the very root of the doc-
trine of convertibility as taught by the bullionists.
Is it desired to preserve the invariability of the pound
by this blundering in a fog? Why, the Lords them-
selves have given it as their opinion that no such invari-
ability exists when they condemn the Bill of 1844 on
account of the fluctuation in the rate of interest which
we have quoted. If at one time I can get the loan of
1001. for twelve months on paying 3/., or fifteen dwte. of
gold, and a few months afterwards I must pay 6Z, or
thirty dwts. of gold for the same accommodation, what
becomes of the invariability of the gold pound? On the
average of.the six weeks ending 17th June, 1847, wheat
was 935. 9d. per quarter; at the same dates for 1848,
wheat was 465. 10d. per quarter; so that this year a gold
pound in purchasing power is equal to two gold pounds
of last year. The doctrine of invariability is, therefore,
a transparent humbug; so also is the convertibility of
gold into wheat or any other merchandise at a fixed and
unfluctuating price.
We have extended our limits; perhaps the importance
of the subject may be pleaded as an execuse. It is dif-
ficult to be silent when we see hereditary legislators, and
elective ones too, attempting to change the laws of na-
ture; the only excuse that can be offered for their folly
is their blindness. They know not what they do. They
are destroying trade and fostering rebellion. They
starve the poor, and swell the poor rates. They fly for
support to soldiers and police. They play the game of
the usurers and strangle industry. We warn their
Lordships of the precipice on which they stand; if they
are despoiled of their estates, they will only have them-
selves to blame. The working classes are now studying
the money laws more intently than may be suspected;
when they are enlightened, the hour of retribution will
not be distant.

FROM THE LONDON GAZETTE
OF TUESDAY.
DIVIDENDS.
At the Court, Bashighall-street.
A. Quarterman, Oxford, glover, Aug. 29, at eleven.
In the Country.
A. Ball, Wells, Somersetshire, innkeeper, Aug. 31, at
eleven, at the ourt, Bristol—Maria Ham, Wells, So-
mersetshire, milliner and dressmaker, Aug. 31, ut the
Court, Bristol—J. Gee, Dukinfield, Chester, cotton-
spinner, Sept. 6, at twelve, at the Court, Manchester.
PAYMENT OF DIVIDENDS.
Frederick Rieder, Leeds, butcher, final dividends of
4s. 4fd., 3s. 6d., and 2s. 4d., any dy after Aug. 8, be-
tween the hours of eleven and two, at the office of Mr.
Hope, Leeds.
Joseph Carne, sen., Truro, provision merchant,
Is. lid., in addition to 45., any Tuesday after the Bth
inst., between the hours of eleven and three, at the office
of Mr. Hirtzel, Exeter.
Robert Burns, St. Sidwell's, Exeter, draper, 6s. Bd.,
any Tuesday after the Bth inst., between the hours of
eleven and three, at the office of Mr. Hirtzel, Exeter.
Reginald William Bligh, Plymouth, hosier, 155., any
Tuesday after the Bth inst., between the hours of eleven
and three, at the office of Mr. Hirtzel, Exeter.
William Skemp, Bideford, Devonshire,clraper, 6s. 7-fd.,
any Tuesday after the Bth inst., between the hours of
eleven and three, at the office of Mr. Hirtzel, Exeter.
Edmund Render, Bodmin, ironmonger, 2s. 6d., any.
Tuesday after Aug. 8, between the hours of eleven and
three, at the office of Mr. Hirtzel, Exeter.
John Pigeon, Honiton, Devonshire, wine merchant,
Is. 81, any Tuesday after Aug. 8, between the hours
of eleven and three, at the office of Mr. Hirtzel, Eieter.
Joseph Shepherd and Benjamin Shepherd, Exeter,
wine merchants, of 3d. in addition to 45., on now proof's,
any Tuesday after Aug. 8, between the hours of eleven
and three, at the office of Mr. Hirtzel, Exeter.
Joseph Shepherd, Exeter, wine merchant, 3s. 2d., any
Tuesday after Aug. $l, betw.aon tho hours of olovon and
three, at the office of Mr. Hirtzel, Exeter.
Benjamin Shepherd, Exeter, wine merchant, Is. ()id.,
any Tuesday after Aug. 8, between the hours of eleven
and three, at the office of Mr. Hirtzel, Exeter.
Samuel Levy Bensusan, Magdalen-row, Great Pres-
cott-street, merchant, 10d., any Thursday after Oct. 15,
between the hours of eleven and two, at the office of Mr.
Pennell, Guildhall-chambers.
R. and R. Weatherhog, Stone, Kent, farmers, 3s. 4d.,
any Thursday after Oct. 15, between the hours of eleven
and two, at the office of Mr. Pennell, Guildhall-
chambers.

Charles D. Smith, Bridge-road, Battersea, nursery-
man, 6d., any Thursday after Oct. 15, between the hours
of eleven and two, at the office of Mr. Pennell, Guildhall-
chambers.

John Hammond, Bognor, Sussex, ironmonger, 25., any
Thursday after Oet. 15, at the office of Mr. Pennell,
Guildhall-chambers.
George Marsh, Broadway, Hammersmith, ss. 6d., on
any Thursday after Oct. 15, between the hours of eleven
and two, at the office of of Mr. Pennell, Guildhall-
chambers.

Griffith and Pearson, New Bond-street, tailors, 9d.,
any Thursday after Oct. 15, between the hours of eleven
and two, at the office of Mr. Pennell, Guildhall •
chambers.
G. Marsh and E. K. Marsh, Carnaby street, Golden•
square, drapers, 3s. 6d., any Thursday after Oct. 15,
between the hours of eleven and two, at the office of Mr.
Pennell, Gui Idhall-chain hers.
William Armstrong, Norwich, draper, 10d., any
Thursday after Oct. 15, between the hours of eleven and
two, at the office of Mr. Pennell, Guildhall-chambers.
Strong and liosking, Dye-house Wharf, Clink-street,
Southwark, Is., any Thursday after Oct. 15, between the
hours of eleven and two, at the office of Mr. Pennell,
G uildh all-chambers.
James Ilendson and James Broadbent, jun., Gall, near
Littleborough, and Manchester, calico-printers, Is. Id.
and 4s. 2d., on Tuesday, Aug. 15, or any Tuesday after
Oct. 4, between the hours of eleven and one, at the office
of Mr. Fraser, Manchester.

George Tattersall, Davies-street, Berkeley-square,
saddler, 2s. 6d., any Saturday before Aug. 17 between
ffi
the hours of eleven and two, at tho office of dr. Green,
Aldermanbury.

NOTICES OF CERTIFICATES.
At the Court, Basinghall-street.

R. Jewesson, Great Winchester-streot, City, mer-
chant, Aug. 31, at one—J. Hocking, sen., Canterbury-
place, Union-road, Newington, grocer, Aug. 31, at half-
past twelve—lL Gibbs, Word, grocer, Sept. 1, at eleven