The Sun.
London, England, 1832-09-19 00:00:00

their children and connections at the expense o
the public, and transmit an enormous es-
tate to one child. Primogeniture and pau-
. •
petism, therefore, are the cause and effect.
The effects of our Oligarchical System on the
general welfare are happily illustrated by our
contemporary (the Scotsman), in the follow-
ing observations on the Oligarchical scale of
pay :
" We alluded lately to the ridiculous practice of making
the services of one man, as Speaker for some years, an
excuse for saddling the country with visions for two
generations. From a return lately printed, we find that
Mr. Onslow, who wan Speaker thirty-three years, retired
in 1761, with a pension of 3,0001. for his own life and
his son's. It appears that the son died in 1814, and that
in the fifty-three years I,etween that period and 1761,
father and son together drew 158,8841. ! If we suppose
that the father lived nine years after his retirement from
the Chair, the fortunate youth, the younger Onslow, must
have received 130,0001. for performing no services what-
ever, but simply for being born the son of a public officer,
who was amply remunerated for his labour during his life-
time ! Let us suppose farther, that Mr. Onslow's salary
was 5 0001.,—it could scarcely be less when the pension
was 3,0001.,—it follows that he must have received
165,0001. while he filled the Chair. Adding to this the
amount drawn as pension, the country must have paid
324,0001. to a common-place man for thirty-three years'
routine duty, in an office which any person of ordinary
sense is able to fill ! The Speaker of the American House
of Representatives receives for similar labour 3,000 dol-
lars, or 6601. per annum, and this only while he holds the
office, without a shilling of pension after he leaves it. If,
then, we compare the scale of pay in the two countries, it
stands thus :

.• The people of Britain pay a Speaker for 33
years' service £324,000
.‘ The Americans pay a Speaker for ditto 21,780

"In other words, our oligarchy's scale of pay is to the
American as fifteen to one; and yet the duty is as well
done on the other side of the Atlantic as in Bri.ain ! We
defy any one to find a parallel to this, even in what Burke
calls ' the heroic ages of Boman corruption.' A single
fact, such as we have cited, ' saith more than a thousand
homilies.' It bespeaks a system made for the tax-eaters,
and over which the tax-payers have hitherto had no
control ! The worst act with which Ministers are
chargeable since they came into power, was, in our opi-
nion, the pensioning Mr. Manners Sutton according to
this vicious precedent. We can imagine motives that
might be pleaded in extenuation of their error, but which
cannot entirely justify them. They, no doubt, desired to
be rid of a Speaker whose heart was wedded to the corrupt
system ; they wished also to treat an opponent with punc-
tilious good faith, and this might seem to require that
Mr. Sutton should be remunerated according to the plan
established and acted upon when he entered the office.
This may be admitted as an excuse, but not a justification
or their conduct. Happily the gigantic system of profligacy
we have alluded to has received its death-blew by the fall
of the Conservatives, who must be allowed to be, without
exception, the most shameless patrons of corruption and
peculation which the world ever saw."
The prejudices of Englishmen, we are sorry
to say, in some respects blind theM to the evils
of the system. In returning Members to Par-
liament, they are too apt to mistake sound for
substance. It is easy to deliver in choice terms
a set of generalities which may have a liberal
sound. But let the people be persuaded that
the feelings of the class of aristocrats, liberal
and illiberal, are generally in favour of the con-
tinuance of the system of inequality and high
expenditure. Thus, for instance, Sir Francis
Burdett is a worthy man, whose honesty cannot
be doubted ; but he is full of the prejudices of his
caste respecting primogeniture, and the advan-
tage of having masses of landed property in the
hands of a few, with a pauperized population
surrounding them. The people ought to be on
their guard against the prepossessions which
make part of the very nature of an English
aristocrat, Tory or Whig.—Morn. Chronicle.
We printed a few days ago, for the infortna-
tion of our readers, the Report of the Committee
appointed to inquire into the propriety of renew-
ing the Bank Charter, and it is now our intention
to offer such observations upon it as have oc-
curred to us in the course of its perusal. It is
possible that in the remarks we may have to make
we may greatly differ, not only from those pre-
sented by our contemporaries, but also from the
opinions expressed by men of great practical
knowledge, in the evidence before us ; but our
opinions, whatever weight they may have, shall
be honestly given. And first of all we beg it to
be understood that we do not consider the ques-
tion of the renewal of the Bank Charter as by any
means either a very difficult or a very important
one. The Bank is a public establishment only in
consequence of its doing the business of the pub-
lic, and transacting the affairs of the Govern-
ment; in all other respects it stands on precisely
the same grounds, and is conducted on the same
principles, as any private mercantile or banking
establishment. To serve the public, in any
other way than by serving itself, is not only no
part of its duty or business, but contrary to
its end and design ; for were it to act on this
Quixotic principle, it would necessarily soon
cease to be serviceable either to its proprietors
or to any others. The question, in conse-
quence, respecting the renewal of its Charter, is
one ofpure expeuiency,and which may be as rea-
dily solved by the rule of three—that is, the
rule of advantage or disadvantage to the public
—as by any other. Having cleared the ground
in this matter, we come to another point, which
was much agitated in the evidence before the
Committee, and respecting which very erroneous
opinions are generally entertained—we mean the
alleged utility of the Bank in managing the fo-
reign exchanges of the country to its advantage,
when, without its aid and interference, they
would certainly turn against it. A more errone-
ous notion cannot possibly prevail. The Bank of
England, or any other moneyed body or private
individual, may unquestionably operate for the
moment favourably or unfavourably upon the
foreign commercial intercourse of the country ;
but it can only be for a moment ; for unless it be
determined to do that which it is not its business
to do, and to sacrifice itself in the cause, it can-
not for any length of time maintain the attempted
and needless control—needless, we say, because
it is in the nature of commercial business that
the exchanges will always right themselves with-
out the interference of any one, and the more
speedily and safely that no one does interfere
with them. They depend on the amount of
trade between one country and another, or be-
tween different countries, which cannot for any
length of time be either unnaturally increased
or unnaturally diminished, and which, in
spite of all attempts either the one way
or the other, will soon revert to the
standard of the - demands in the respec-
tive countries between which it is carried on.
A third delusion respecting the Bank of England
is, that, by the liberality of its discounts, it has
sometimes prevented, and at others alla)ed, the
mischief arising front commercial panics. Here
'also, however, as ni the former instance, it may
be truly said that the Bank has no business to
travel out of its \' ay to do either the one or the
other, and that when it does so, it not only de-
parts from the spirit ofits charter, but compro-
mises its own safety and that
of those who may
have deposited their money. in its hands. It
may be liberal in its discounts at particular pe-
riods ; but it can only be in the discount of good
bills, from which it realizes an ample profit,
and not of those which are doubtful, and from

which it might realize an equally ample loss.
We see no praise and no gratitude that is due