The Sun.
London, England, 1848-08-15 00:00:00

DISTRIBUTION BETTER THAN

DIVISION.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

And drove the golden knife
Into the palpitating seat of lire.
CIIATTERTON.

Sin, —ln my last I endeavoured to show that some re-
formed Bank of Eensgpleacniclaiolyugohnte-topofuunrndisahnbd half-pound
of
d is-
notes: the moneyed and unskilful, as depositors, to supply
the skilful moneyless with cash, the most useful of all
implements; the district bank, by means of its provin-
cial knowledge—to hold the stakes. If it depended
on themselves, some landlords in Parliament would vote
count with notes,
without remorse " that the landing laud do cease also,"
and every tenant do pay one half-year's rent at the least
on putting his plough into the ground; an hypothesis
of hmited injustice not near so great as expecting the
ortyrier to live on air and water till Saturday night, or
till the master gets paid by his employer. Perhaps the
two authorities presenting the clearest ideas on the cur
reney matters are those of Sir It. Peel, the first, and Mr.
Taylor, both of whom had workmen to pay, which con-
stituted them bankers. What must Sir Robert's feel-
ings have been when his own father told him in the
House of Coesmons—" You have doubled your fortune
and ruined your country: your measure is at once cruel
and unnecessary 1"
Never was delusion equal to this, about exit of gold,
and standards, and foreign exchanges. Mr. Loyd said
that " formerly the obligation to discount all commercial
hills arising out of legitimate transactions was considered
the principle of regulating currency." Whitmore, Go-
vernor, and Pearce, Deputy-Governor, deposed in 1810,
"notes are never in excess if on bills with real purchaser
and seller; the acceptor would not pay interest unless
the money was wanted," (for business and for return). Of
course there were no panics, because no governors and
directors verging on bankruptcy to connive at export of
gold, with the gross non-sequitur of refusing discounts
except to bills they approve. No one then cared or even
knew what the standard was: " the real trade in bullion"
was and "is one of the slightest businesses:" if you had
no loan-firms you would have no exchange-merchaats
loading you with 150 millions of bad debts, estimated by
Lord Palmerston. Formerly who ever dared transport
gold in modern fashion, himself ran a risk of transporta-
tion. Sir R. Peel coEnplained of " the Bank maintaining
an arbitrary preference for such bills." Compare this
with the dicta of Loyd, Whitmore, and Pearce, as given
above, and you come to a bitter, poisonous tap-root—
" A various complicated ill
Whose every symptom is enough to kill."
I entreat your readers' attention to the effects of a
stingy, faithless currency on all mortgages and debts, in-
cluding the debt, so called, national: nec meus )tic sermo.
Supposing a currency, define it as you will, of
20.000,000; 1,000,000 added raises prices of everything
five For cent. and 3,000,000 added raises everything
fifteen per cent. Mr. tvorman was ere. to 'its,- th.c
much to the Committee of 1832. Also, Edinburgh Re-
, riew, December, 1818, established as a postulate that
"if double the usual supply of commodities were brought
to market in a country with a limited currency, their
money prices would be reduced to half; and if only half the
supply were brought, their prices would be doubled; and
this whether the cost of production were increased or
diminished. Suppose money limited and valuable pro-
duce of every kind much multiplied, the exchange
which this limited amount of money would have to per-
form would be proportionably greater, and of course a
proportionably smaller sum would be devoted to each
transaction, or, which is the same thing, prices would

fall."
From this and Mr. Norman's illustration it follows,
that if 23,000,000 of actual practical national cash or
market•money of use and wont are urgently required by
the general business of the country, and if we have only
twenty millions, the price of every kind of labour is 15
per cent. too low, and the labourer defrauded of hire, of
keep just so much, to say nothing of this keep being sold
him at tariff prices. But if, which is more than pro-
bable, the currency is only one-third of what it ought to
be, might be, must be, shall be, in amount and activity,
then the damages, pressure, and real cost of mortgages
and debt are treble what they ought to be, the gains of
mortgagee being of course tripled, by the enhanced
purchase-power or money's worth of
,our curreut cash,
each and every pound of it.
And all this is disbelieved while fictions are believed,
simply because truth is strange, stranger than fiction;
yet the results are worse than any possible statement,
because the quantities are all multiplied into one vast co
efficient, the loss of hope, which is life. Dolendi
iimendl non item.
The.moneyed interest have seats in Parliament to watch
the case against them; for example, Mr. H. Drummond.
Whether this gentleman has a little humbug in his cotn-
positum or not, whether he is by any chance over-
rated, or what phase of doctrine soever he happens to
maintain just now, skills:not to say. In Parliament he
sits as Dr. All-bury, keeping gold sate for loan, ex-
change, Londo❑ circulation, corn speculation. Polk,
Mexican war, and no banks of discount. Better had
this gold been always buried, say Peruvians, still mourn-
ing their Inca's and hiding their mines.
Aurum irrepertum et sic melius situm
Cure terra celat spernere fortior
Quam cogere humanos in usus
Online sacrum rapieute dextr&.
Better even that gold should never have served as in
Peru, without coinage, a tacit reference and security, a
measure or standard of value in all exchanges and trail.
sections and industry, though in such a nation, Mr.
Prescott shows poverty and crime were unknown.
Better so than even risorgimento d'halia, vaunted
tramontane reformation and revival of literature, which

an increased circulation, demanding labour, stopping
ouvriers' mouths, with instant compromise of
public and private debts, poured on mediaeval
barbarism ! From conquests of Mating) to Coun-
cil of Trent scarcely a dozen years, and yet, what
a change! Easy it is to underrate the advantages of
circulation; impossible to overstate the evils of obstruc-
tiveness and morbid congestion. Money is " drawn up
from labour market into interest market;" instead of
market money we have money market, not bread-and-
cheese market. The tendency of our customs is into a
more than Malthusian dilemma, contraction at geome•
trice!, hoarding at arithmetical progression—in a word,
Hudsonism, inflammation of mortgages by scarcity of
money, with Dr. All-bury's assiduous depletion, trans-
fors whole counties, as Surrey, to mortgagee bankers;
but these broad acres add nothing to security of banks
when carefully secured from liabilities which we never
know. All we know is, that one bank is as good as
another, provided they keep to rules and regulations, for
the Bank of England is there to " protect" the London
circulation. Ages of luxury and excitement have debi-
litated the nobles; the currency which carried us
through Napoleon's wars put them in their places for a
moment, by lightening their debts, effecting sales of
corn with monopoly of employments; but not content
with this, they formed ambitious schemes, especially in
Ireland, took every title they could invent, and invented
owners,
and,
tenure,
the o
equityu House o f
of Lords
re.
and apologised,
dm o
every title they could think of. They ran in debt, their
debts are trebled in cost and damages and pressure they
are now,
as
Bish o p Wilberforce
d by
way
of told logised, mere mortgagers, land-letters, farm-
building
en
p
io. Come bill-discounters—come insurance-
brokers, annuity-buyers, money-scriveners--the serf pays
:.•.11, the subject race, the frieze•coated Oderint duet
metwant !—Dirt. I have done,
11. C. ARGENT.

ST°tWE
e Post.)
The first leading articlt h
of the ;
(From
Times of yesterday is
devoted to an exceedingly inflated account of the present
condition of the Duke of
Buckingham's princely man-
sion at Stowe. All the effects there are in the auc-
tioneer's hands, and about to be gold to the highest
bidder. The fact is mournful enough, and needed not
all the exaggerations of that
penny. aline sort of elo-
quence which our contemporary has bestowed upon it.
If any other journal had trespassed but
half as much in
a similar way, the literary gentlemen who live by sneer-
ing
would have jested upon it for a month. But, to be
commercially " influential" is enough to awe these inde-
pendent and virtuous satirists into respectful silence.
Ws pass, however, from the malicious caricature of
pecuniary distress and household ruin, to th• savage
attack upon the unfortunate Duke of Buckingham
with which the article concludes. Our contemporary
has been remarkable for some time past for the harsh,
disparaging, almost calumnious tone in which its ela-
borate obituary notices have been written. Scarcely
a man of note disappears from this troubled scene of
life without having his character, almost immediately
afterwards, painted in the most unfavourable colours
by our contemporary's obituary artist. A refinement
upon this cruelty seems now to have been hit upon, and
while a man yet lives to have the bitterness of reproach
added to the agony of a ruined estate, the Times comes
forward to say the very harshest things which a malig-
nant imagination could suggest of a nobleman sinking
amid the utter wreck of his once proud fortunes. We
do not pretend to have any knowledge of the private
affairs of the Duke of Buckingham which would en-
title us to speak with authority upon the subject. We
can only deal with the subject of his misfortunes in so
far as they have become matter of public notoriety.
Our contemporary insists that it is matter of public
notoriety that the Duke of Buckingham has not only
ruined himself, but that he has deceived and ruined his
son, the Marquis of Chandos. Not only is the Duke
accused of " wilful folly," and of giving, at his son's
expense, to " expensive tradesmen, and extortionate
nioneplenders better security than they con-
templated when they first sold their goods and
lent their money," but a distinct charge of the cruellest
kind is made against that unfortunate parent. "It is
notorious," says the Tinies, "that the Duke; by the use
of a passionate and overpowering persuasion, induced his
amiable son, now in his twenty-fifth year, to cut off the
entail of all the property in which his Grace was in-
terested. If the ruinous compliance was yielded to re-
presentations which subsequently proved to be incorrect
—if the Duke urged the step only as a formal act which
he would soon set right by re-settling the estates, we will
gladly concede to him the excuse of utter ignorance or
frenzied desperation. Let it be that he did not know
what he was about. The world, however, will view the
act as a whole. The world has a certain opinion of the
son who ruins his father, and it will not have a more
favourable opinion of the father who has ruined
his son, or rather both his children." As to
the matters of fact here asserted or insinuated,
we are only in a condition to deny that they were
" notorious until—whether true or talse—our contem-
porary made them so yesterday morning. We may..
however, be permitted to observe that the statement is
improbable. Such things as the signing of deeds to cut
off the entail are not generally. done uhe,,imp.o .he
of " passionate and overpowering peporsuasin ton. bulc
,
affairs are not generally managed, nor is it easily. con-
ceivable how they could -be managed, without titer-
Tendon and assistance of some respectable solicitor.
Every one knows ,that it if the first duty of professional