The Sun.
London, England, 1857-01-27 00:00:00

works, as at the Chatham Dockyard and at the
Portland Breakwater. This will have to be
examined into, decided upon, and satisfactorily
explained by her MAJESTY'S Government.
Again—as to military reforms, as to university
reforms, as to municipal reforms, as to reforms
in the organisation of the Civil Service, and re•
forms in the ordering of the legal profession—
everywhere may be recognised heavy work
chalked out for the different departments of the
Administration. The accumulation consequent
upon a time of War ! Work obviously requiring
from the Man at the Wheel—his shoulder to it !
Requiring this long before the late war actually
commenced. But demanding it more urgently
still, now that that war has been brought to a
disgraceful conclusion !

Quite, as a matter of course, we shall have to
note upon certain nights, scattered sparsely here
and there up and down the session, the revival
" by particular desire" of a few of the old stock
pieces. The Jew Bill for instance! And the
glimmering ghost, perhaps, of Lord JOHN'S pet
hobby of reform as affects the whole system of
representation ! And the shadow of the shade,
may be, of Sir Jowl's favourite crotchets about
National Education ! As inevitable, all this, as
the annual motion in favour of the Ballot, chi-
valrously made at the appointed time by the
Hon. Member for Bristol, despite every obstacle
in the way of Ministerial ridicule. In open
and magnanimous scorn, in truth, of the jeers
of the TAPERS, and of the sneers of the
TADPOLES who stand ever, year by year, at the
lobby door on the Ministerial side of the House
counting out the serfs of Party and the flunkies
of Power ! As it so happens, the Commons, this
session, will no longer have, metaphorically
speaking, the midnight bell rung, and what
THACKERAY calls the " domestic muffin" toasted
by the amiable hand of Mr. BROTHERTON ! It
will, in like manner, be deprived hence-
forth of the distinguished probity of the late Mr.
JOHN SADLEIR, as well as of all the notable advan-
tages resulting from his brother JAMES'S elevated
moral character ! If the Commons, beyond all
this, have reason gill to regret the loss of their
renowned Jester Colonel SIBTHORP, have they not
a substitute still left to them for his folly in the
buffoonery of Mr. HENRY DRUMMOND ? If the
House no longer rings to the shrill eloquence
of RICHARD &MIL, or to the racy humour of
DANIEL O'CONNELL, has it not a double so-
lace in the sprightly rhetoric of the member
for Carlow, and in the stuttering declama-
, •
tion 'of that impassioned orator the honour-
able and learned gentleman the representative
of the borough of Youghal ? It is true that the
House of Commons has yet cause to cherish a
very poignant regret for the late, and, let us add, the
Great Sir ROBERT PEEL —but then has not the
Prince DE LIGNE recently reminded us through
the medium of a highly-spiced address delivered
to the English residents at Brussels, that there is
still left to the House of Commons another Sir
ROBERT PEEL (shall we say the Small Sir ROBERT
PEEL ?), who cto talk—how does the Prince de
LINE express it ?—with the taste of an "ivrogne"
and the language of a "gamin,"and the manners of
a " vaurien P' To a Parliament shorn of such
glories, and adorned with such graces—Ministers
will have, in a few days, to proffer their expla-
nations !

On Tuesday last we declared that "many zealous
advocates of the convertibility of the Bank note
are still strenuously opposed to the provisions of
the Act of 1844, and the unwise and impolitic
prohibitions of the smaller denominations of B ►nk
paper." We have already received conclusive
proof of the accuracy of our assertion. A clear-
headed and intelligent gentleman—albeit a bul-
lionist—has addressed a letter on the subject of
the Bank Charter Act to the parties selected to
represent the Belfast Chamber of Commerce at
the approaching conference of the " Society for
Promoting the Amendment of the Law,"—when
" the law of banking" is amongst other impor-
tant questions, to be taken into consideration—in
which the manifold defects of that most impolitic,
and, we may add, inequitable measure, are so
clearly exposed, that we have not hesitated to
give it insertion in our columns. Let us then,
for once, regard the question through a bullionist
medium (our friends will not suppose that we
have for a moment, deserted the eause we have so
long and so steadily adhered to), and see how the
matter stands between MERCATOR and his myr-
midons on the one hand, and Mr. JOHN SEED,
and, we may add, Mr. JAMES WILSON on the
other.

The former are • not satisfied with
• enforcing the necessity of payment on demand. It
is not sufficient that every note presented should
be forthwith exchanged for the amount of wive-
, reigns of which it is the representative. Far from
it ! There must also be stringent measures of
restriction, limiting the power of the Bank to
issue their " promises to pay," however pressing
the necessity, or however unquestionable their
power to redeem the obligation, They will not
even sanction the power of suspending it under
lany circumstances whatsoever, and emphatically
caution the public against the means of relaxing
it, or what they are pleased to term " the dodge,"
which they declare will prove fatal (!) if once
tolerated. True it is that it has already been
suspended with the most beneficial results, that
it gave, according to the Lords' Committee, "lin•
mediate and effectual relief," and " the salutary
consequences of the step were recognised grate-
fully by almost every witness—even by those
most favourable to the Act of 1844"—some
apprehending that the Bank would have to shut its
doors in a week unless the law had been violated."
The then G mernor of the Bank said " all harm
appeared to have ceased on the issue of the letter;"
and again—" What restored confidence was the
letter of the Government, allowing the Bank to
make any advances, without reference to the Act,
at a given rate of interest. We did not so much
want the money, but we wanted a certainty that
if we did want it we should get it." While Mr.
HORSLEY PALMER, who had twice filled that posi-
tion, added—"ln the autumn of 1847 the demand
for assistance was so much increased as to place
the Bank in imminent danger by granting it, and
which nothing could have relieved short of the
relraation of the law, which took place." Even
Mr. S. JONES LOYD, with a species of special
pleading, remarkable in the Epistles of MER-
CATOR, also declared that, " although the letter
we s a departure from the positive provisions of
thti Act, it was not a departure from the principle
of the act " (!), a distinction which the Committee
justly declared they " could not recognise." In-
(teed. Mr. Loy) himself explained the cause of the
eilicacy of the letter observing, "The remedial
cl taracter of the measure was not the discounting
at. 3 per cent., but the declaration to the public
tliat at. 8 per cent. there was an unlimited supply
Biaik notes at their command. The Bank could
not possibly make that offer with the sanc-
tity a of the Government." "It was," said the
ommittee, " the knowledge, on the part of the
' public, that there was actually power given to the
Bank to advance any quantity of notes without
limit, that produced the effect. Without the ,