The Sun.
London, England, 1858-10-15 00:00:00

fforts in the good oauso may be often yet annually
renewed, and that their highest aspirations, may be
fully and rapidly realised.

The Directors of the Bank of England separated
yesterday without any alteration in the minimum
rate of discount, which still remains at 3 per cent.

per annum; no very extravagant price, after all,
and which commercial men engaged in legitimate

operations would at any time willingly pay. The
Times is, however, furious. Although once pretend-

ing to be influenced by prudential considerations,
and condemning the Bank for making money too
cheap, it has, by a bold act of tergiversation, re-
versed all its former opinions, and is desirous of

" sowing the storm in the hope of reaping the
whirlwind."

It speaks of the " injustice to debtors," in keep-
ing up the price of money at 3 per cent., or one-
sixth beyond the ordinary market rate. It is
almost the first time that the leading journal has
affected any regard for this class, and well, may they

echo the exclamation of LAOCOON—
" Timeo Danaos et dona ferentas."
The love is that of the spider for the fly. If dis-
counts be reduced to 11 or 2 per cent. there is

every probability that they will increase to 10 or

even 20 !

For a century and a quarter they never rose
beyond 5 per cent., and never fell beyond 4. There
were no violent extremes, none of those fluctuations
which, as Mr. COBDEN declared, occasioned
" greater evils, social and moral, than the failure of
all the Banks of Issue that ever suspended pay-
ment." We have repeated this statement of the
once popular Free Trader usque ad nauseam.
It is familiar to the ears of our readers ;
but we give it again because it clearly and
distinctly expresses a great fact, having an impor-
tant bearing on the welfare, happiness, and pro-
sperity of the nation, and such as the quondam
Member for the West Riding knew how to turn to
the best use. That he has changed his mind on
such a point is deeply to be regretted ; but we may
appeal from the committee-man who gave a cast-
ing vote in favour of the Act of 1844, to the agita-
tor who earnestly, enthusiactically, and efficiently
demanded a repeal of the obnoxious law.
Every sentence that has recently appeared in the
Times against the Bank of England, or its once
favourite correspondent, " The Country Banker," is
fatal to the . Peel-Overstone enactments. It has
but just ascertained that fact, and it is conse-
quently proportionately indignant, and it deals out
its censure with indiscriminate vehemence. " The
hard calculators," its esteemed pets, cannot enter
into a speculation so nicely balanced that the dif-
ference in the Bank rate of 1 per cent., or
between 21 and 3 per cent., will affect the
result. They will be subject to competition, and
therefore the speculation will be less promising
than would have been the case if the Bank of Eng-
land constituted the City Editor of the Times a
managing director, with full power to act as he
thought proper on all matters that might be
brought under discussion, and to arrange the rate
of discount at his mere will and pleasure.
The wrath of the Times has induced it to enun-
ciate some wholesome truths—every portion
whereof would be applicable to periods of dear
and scarce money. It says—" The warning tone,
moreover, is always adopted when the whole com-
munity are labouring under an excess of caution,
and vice versa. If in times of unreasonable
fear the discount market were allowed at
once to find its level, a revival of com-
merce and manufactures would take place
so much the sooner, and with this revival
a healthy recovery in the rate of discount might
occur before the adventurers who play upon public
credulity would have a chance of commencing opera-
tions. Cheapness of money, like every other con-
dition that happens naturally, is a great blessing ;
but according to the pedantries of the solemn gen-
tlemen who get great repute for discretion, but who
are always the first to lose their senses whenever
any real exigency occurs, it is an affliction against
which every conceivable preventive or remedy should
be put in force. Such persons would deny us light
and warmth because there are incautious people who
will occasionally burn their houses down. To pro-
tect the simpletons who periodically suffer them-
selves to be betrayed into inflation, and to keep
them from the advantage of being allowed to buy
wisdom by experience, our producers and importers
are to be forced to pay an artificial price for one of
the chief elements upon which their power of work-
ing at a profit and of meeting the competition of
foreign rivals depends. When trade is prostrate on
account of low prices they are to be prevented from
having the means by which they could profitably meet
those low prices, and give employment to all who
depend on them. And these views are so prevalent,
and so regularly assented to in parrot fashion by all
who want to be considered orthodox that many
who have a clear notion of their absurdity do not
care to call them in question, from fear of being
supposed to be in the interests of the speculators
whose object it is to abuse, instead of to use the
opportunities of the period. The tyrannies com-
mitted in the name of liberty have never exceeded
the reckless follies to which men pompously- inarch
under the flag of Prudence.' "
This is, indeed, the truth. There is not a single
sentence that is not applicable to the state of affairs
that existed in November last, and in October,
1847. The final sentence deserves to be written
in letters, of gold—" The tyrannies committed in
the name of liberty have never exceeded the
reckless follies to which men pompously march
under the name of Prudence." This is, indeed, the
truth, and should the Times continue in the same
strain we shall hail it as a monetary reformer, a
respected coadjutor in the cause of an efficient
circulating medium. It is true that the opinions
thus ventilated would have been more appropriate
in November, 1857, than in October, 1858 ; that
the Times would, in promulgating such
views then, have been regarded rather
as the friend and advocate of the
industrial community, than as the organ of the
" hard calculators." Now matters have changed,
but we are entitled to make use of the admission
of the bullionist journal, and to ask what would
be the effect of such explanations and reasoning as
those above quoted, if discount was at ten per cent.
and scarcely to be obtained even at that rate, save
by first-class houses? Would it not be unanimously
proclaimed that " the tyrannies committed in the
name of liberty have never exceeded the reckless
follies to which men pompously march under the
*flag of Protection ?"

The rate of exchange at Paris presents an appear-
ance of renewed firmness.
150,000 sovereigns have been shipped for Con-
stantinople. It is believed that at present the total con-
templated to be remitted thither is £4so,ooo—that is to say,
£300,000 in addition to the sum sent to-day..
• The Admiralty have entered into a new contract
with the African Steamship Company for the conveyance
of the West African mails. Liverpool is to be the port of
departure and arrival of the mails. Goree is to be ad-
mitted as a place of call, Cape Palmas is substituted for
Monrovia, and the three principal mouths of the Niger, the
Benin, the Nun, and the Brass are to be visited. The con-
'tract is for seven years, and the payment £30,000 per
annum. The steamers vill call at l 5 ports, rivers, and
places between Madeira and Cameroons. Cape Palmas, it
is said, is rising rapidly into importance as the head-
quarters of the Kroo tribes, who are employed in large
and increasing numbers on board her Majesty's ships and
merchant vessels. The Island of Goree is to be one of the
depots of the new line of French steamers to Brazil.