The Sun.
London, England, 1835-10-17 00:00:00

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men .4, other ',parties eqully intel4,lad used in-
cessantly to bring about its abr'elation. It was not
enough that haff-a-dozer. clerks of the Post-office
should alone possese ale right of exporting our pro-
perty ; we had. moreover to subscribe to any terms they
chose to imP(ll7;e for the favour of being supplied by
them;;lchcopies of, or incomplete extracts from, the
terench and other papers of the Continent. Such a
state of dependence was not to he endured ; and, in
order to get out of it, we were driven to the necessity
of establishing—at an enormous expense—a line r!,
expresses of our own, between Paris and L'ention,
so that this paper might so.7,ply the Inbst ample,
as *ell as most recent, in.t..-eiligente from the Continent.
The Duke of Riel.Ziond was the first Postmaster-Ge-
neral who perceived the monstrous absurdity of the prac-
tice of allowing any set of clerks of the Post-office
to keep up a regular traffic in newspapers, whereby
much of their time was necessarily diverted from their
public ;duties to be devoted to mattersewith which they
Plight to have nothing to do. After encountering the
customary routine of vexatious opposition, founded
upon the usual cant about long-established practice,
vested rights (! ! !), and so forth, his Grace at length
succeeded' in bringing a Bill into Parliament, repeal-
ing the Newspaper Traffic Bill, throwing the trade of
newspapers entirely open, allowing all foreign ones to
be received, and English ones to go abroad, by post,
on a charge of 2d. postage on each newspaper, Eng-
lish or foreign, but which charge a clause in the Bill
empowered the Postmaster-General to set aside
whenever he thought proper. This clause was in-
troduced in the Bill with a view to the arrangement
of a free exchange of newspapers, through the medium
of the Post-office, between England and Frane.:.
The Bill was in progress through Parliamer.`, when
the Duke of Richmond was in Paris. Soon after his
return to London, and before it het passed, his Grace
resigned. His successor was Lord Conyngham, who
had his six months' apprenticeship to go through be-
fore he could become acquainted with any of the intri-
cacies of his office. His Lordship gave no signs of a
disposition to renew any communications with the
French Post-office. He even carried his apathy so
far as to decline addressing any letter in his own
name to the French director, leaving that task on
one or two indispensable occasions to the assistant-
secretary, who wrote in the name of his father, the
secretary. This marked and almost offensive neglect
on the part of the new English Postmaster-General
was surely not calculated to keep up the cordiality
of intercourse which had previously existed between
the two establishments, and no regular agreement re-
specting the exchange (3., newspapers was entered into.
When urged to it er.terwards by parties interested in
the issue, the 33'eench authorities declared it to be quite
useless tb"_:c they should take any further trouble about
thene-atter, but still expressed a willingness to sub-
sP..-eibe to the four propositions left out of the conven-
tion of 1833, of which four propositions the exchange; of
newspapers between the two countries, free of any charge
of postage, was one. The Duke of Richmond says that
the " English Government ought to call on the French
Government now to redeem that pledge (regarding
newspapers) without loss of time." His Grace's evi-
dence was given on the 6th of November last, and
sent in to the Treasury by the Commissioners of Post-
office Inquiry, along with their report in December
following. Have any steps been since taken to enter
into an arrangement with the French Post-office ? If
not, why are they delayed, and whose fault is it that
the newspapers going from the one country to the
other are subjected to a charge of postage altogether
amounting to 7d. on each ?—Times.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, it will be recol-
leeted, received with much complacency the compliments
which were offered to him by some of the supporters
of the Administration in the House of Commons, on
his able and successful management of the West India
Compensation Loan, or, to speak more correctly,
boasted of the great advantages of the contract so
loudly as to extort from his partizans• the anticipated
and 'desired tribute of applause. There is reason,
however, to believe, that the self-gratulations of Mr.
Spring Rice, and the loud commendations of his
friends were upon this occasion misapplied. It appears
now that there never was a financial operation which,
in proportion to its magnitude, produced so great
a derangement of the circulation, or exposed the
commercial interests to so much inconvenience and
risk, as the petty loan of fifteen millions, for the nego-
tiation of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer
claimed and received so much praise. Instead of being
entitled to the unbounded panegyrics so eagerly de-
manded and so unsparingly bestowed, it is quite evi-
dent, from the present state of the money market, that
the transaction ought to have been denounced as an
extraordinary example of improvidence and incapacity.
A Chancellor of the Exchequer competent to discharge
the duties of his office would have taken care to ascer-
tain at what periods, and to what amount, the Com-
pensation Commissioners would require advances from
Government for the purpose of making payments to
the parties entitled to compensation ; and would have
adjusted, with some approach to accuracy the sucessive
instalments of the loan to the calculated series of de-
mands upon the fund. To a competent Chancellor of
the Exchequer it would have been evident that, by
neglecting to adjust with all possible care the sums
to be paid by the loan contractors to the amount to
be distributed from time to time to the compensa-
tion claimants, and returned through their hands
to the geueral currency of the country, the danger
would be incurred of a sudden contraction of the cir-
culation, which could not fail to be deeply injurious
to the interests of individuals and of the community,
and which might, in certain not improbable cireure-,:.
stances, give a violent and disastrous shock to public
and private credit. Against this evil. Te'nv but the most
ignorant or careless Finance i‘Li.ister would have taken
adequate precautions. No such precautions, however,
seem to have been. thought of by Mr. Spring Rice.
A large pronortion of the circulating medium of the
country is locked up, partly in consequence of the in-
stalments of the loan falling due before the Com-
pensation Commissioners have made such progress
in their investigation of claims as to be ready to
distribute the amount thus provided ; and partly
in consequence of the option afforded to the sub-
scribers to the; loan of anticipating the, stipulated
periods of payment, and thus entitling themselves
to a discount. The Money Market has been ex-
posed to much inconvenient and unnecessary pressure,
which would have been still more severe had not the
Bank of England, by a liberal extension of its accom-
niodation to the mercantile world, successfully endea-
voured to mitigate the evil consequences of the egre-
gious blunder committed by tlee. Chancellor of the
Exchequer. The amount of evil which has been ac-
tually produced by . this blunder is, however, not in-
considerable. The Bank of England has always shown
the !west praiseworthy alacrity in relieving the tempo-
''dry pressure to which, from various causes, the com-
mercial world is perpetually subject. But it ought to
be the study of Government to prevent, so far as it
depends upon them, the recurrence of such emer-
gencies as are calculated to place, for however
short a period, the commercial classes in a Mate
of too absolute dependence upon the ilanlc. Such
emergencies never fail to produce injury io many
individuals, and ruin to some,
unavoid-
ably attended by much • • t They are
,panu and injurious expo-
sure—by an ane-
indiv —uus sifting of the circumstances of
idufis engaged in commercial affairs—by the sus-
._
eension and consequent defeat of Many mercantile
speculations and enterprises, which, had no such crisis
intervened, would have proved advantageous to their
projectors and beneficial to the public. tA. much better
plan of liquidating the claims of the West India pro. ,
prietors would undoubtedly have been to authorize the
Commissioners, after adjudicating in favour of any of
them, to issue a debenture of equivalent amount, and
to have provided by loan for the extinction of the new
description of unfunded debt thus created, whenever it
reached a predetermined extent. Good faith to the
colonists would thus have been equally maintained,
without the least probability of any additional cost to
the nation ; and the monetary system would not have
been exposed to the chance of inconvenient and inju-
rious fluctuation.—Morning Post.

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