The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-04 00:00:00

PRINCIPLE OF FREE TRADE IN SOUND MONEY.

Taking care of the Quality of the Currency, but leaving the
Quantity to take care of itself; by means of which
National Bank, the convertibility of the Bank Note into
Gold will be made more secure than under the present
System; and the evils attendant upon Drains of Gold
prevented, by providing such an extra Reserve of Gold
as will correct an adverse Rate of Exchange without
diminishing our Domestic Currency, and producing the
consequent ruinous depreciation in prices, and Monetary
Panics.

1. To establish a National Bank of Issue where all, with
the exception of the Government, can have as many legal
tender notes, payable in gold on demand, as they may
want ; upon depositing one-third of the amount required in
gold, and the remaining two-thirds in Government secu-
rities. Such notes to be of the value of £5 and upwards in
England, and £1 and upwards in Scotland and Ireland.
2. The notes to be returnable by the parties obtaining
them when no longer wanted, and the deposits received
back in exchange ; the depositors having credit meanwhile
for the dividends on their stock. The Government securi-
ties to be taken at the market price of the day, and to be
returned on cancellation of the notes, at the price at which
they were taken.

3. Commissioners for the management of the National
Bank to be appointed by the Queen in council, and to be
made as independent as possible of . the executive Govern.
ment.

4. The National Bank Commissioners to charge at the
rate of 3 per cent. per annum for the use of the notes.
5. The National Bank Commissioners to issue One Pound
notes in exchange for a deposit of one-thirl of the amount
in gold and two-thirds in Government securities, to serve
as substitutes for sovereigns in the retail trade during a
drain of gold, whenever and so long, as the market rate of
discount for first rate bills, not having more than 95 days to
run, shall in their judgment exceed 5 per cent.
6. The Commissioners to charge at the rate of 4 per cent.
per annum for the use of such notes.

7. The profits of the issue of this National Currency to be
for the benefit of the State.

8. That the Act of 1844, relating to England ; and the
Act of 1845, relating to Scotland and Ireland, be abrogated.
We commend Mr. STANSFELD'S tract (A plan
for a National Bank of issue—Simpkin and Mar-
i/hall) to those of our readers who are interested in
what is of all others a national question. It is so
indeed from its very beginning ; since the privilege
of coining legal tender money which we have im-
prudently handed over to the Bank of England and
many other Banks also, has always been held in
every' civilized community to be a function of the
nation's government. We have granted the SULTAN,
and even the self-styled:King:of HUNGARY, protec-
tion of this right—yet we fail to keep it in Go-
vernment hands at home. Mr. STANSFELD'S tract
shows very fairly the advantages, he thinks, which
attach to his plan.
Mr. STANFELD'S plan is, it should be remem-
bered, not new in its essential features. The right
of the State toa National Bank and the profit, as well
as the security, of the national credit has been long
acknowledged. And in regard to hisparticular scheme
he observes :—" To those who may be disposed to
ridicule this plan of a National Bank of Issue as
the scheme of a Currency-Monger, it will be well
to remind them that it is substantially the system
of currency introduced into India by the Right
Honourable JA NI ES WILSON, and is founded on
the Plan for a Secure and Economical Currency,'
recommended by him in his valuable work
on
Currency, Capital, and Banking.'

On the principle f giving a very distinguished
personage his 'lnn, we ought to notice, if but briefly,
what the Minister of Austria says for the Hunga-
rian policy on which his name is branded. For one
thing we like him—M. Vox scumERLING did not
decline the full responsibility of what he advised.
Rs .poke indeed, in a way no English Minister

would do, of having so convinced the SOVEREIGN,
that the Rescript was, in this sense, the SOVEREIGN'S
act also; but he manfully avowed that he stood
firmly by the scheme of reducing Hungary to a
province of the Austrian Empire.
His defence of the policy is, we cannot say in-
genious, because such as it is it would occur to
any man in the same position. His grand point is
that Hungary has not the same ground for claiming
its historical independence as it has had for the
last 300 years, During that time the other
Austrian dominions were governed despotically;
Hungary having a Constitution naturally objected
to being merged in a despotism. Now, all parts of
the Empire are by the Grace of FRANCIS JOSEPH,
blessed with Constitutions, and Hungary ought)
therefore, thankfully to unite in an Imperial Con-
stitution with all the rest. Another topic of defence
on which he dwelt largely, though with what rele-
vance it is not easy to see, were the benefits conferred
on Hungary by twelve years' despotic government.
An odd prelude this to commendation of bestowing
on her a new constitution in common with the rest
of the Empire. He endeavoured to show that
Hungary had gained greatly in material things, by
being deprived of political rights. We believe the
facts of the argument to be fictions, and that even
had it been for these twelve years a Republic under
a President, freedom would have made it a country
ten times richer than it now is. But be this so or
not—what has a decent care of an enslaved Hun-
gary on the part of its master to do, first, with the
right to enslave her; and, next, with the proposal
to modify this wrong by offering her semi-slavery
with a band of other half emancipated slaves ?
It shows how little VON SCEDIEBLING is pene-
trated, as he boasts he is, with constitutional prin-
ciples, that he should use such arguments as these.
His grand argument is that of the purest despotism.
A despot is always, in his own view, a father who
knows what is good for his children, knows when
to take things from them, and what to give them in
return, and if the children do not like it—why, he
knows better than they, he has the strength, and
he will make them feel it. This is the precise
argument of the German Minister. We Germans,
EMPEROR and Ministers—we know what is best ;
we have determined that Hungary shall no longer
have its independent constitution, and there-
fore it is to be so. Really, the Minister
had better have spoken out and said the
truth—it would have been this—" Gentle-
men, the majority of you are Germans, more or
less so ; I and the EMPEROR are Germans. Hun-
gary is a splendid country, worth all our countries
put together. The Russians trampled her under
our feet when we had been ignominiously expelled
for the very thing we are now attempting ; we
have kept our foot on her neck ever since; but
now we have determined that we will allow Hun-
gary and all the other countries to move their
heads freely, if she and they will but let us keep
them flat on their backs."

M. VON SCUMERLING has the audacity to tell
the Hungarians, in the most irritating style, that
he has got them down, and will keep them down ;
for, in reply to the argument that the Government
ought to restore to Hungary her legal Diet and
then make terms with it, he only says—" We
have possession and mean to keep it." His
words are,—" Gentlemen, the Deputy SMOLKA says
that, in order to come to an understanding with
Hungary, we must concede without reserve to that
country the position in which it stood in 1848—
must complete the Hungarian Diet, and wait to see
what portion of its constitutional prerogatives that
Diet will voluntarily sacrifice to the central consti-
tution. I however confess, gentlemen, that I should
hesitate greatly to employ that plan. I say that
the man who is in possession of his house is happy,

and that no one has even been advised to give up
possession so long as he could maintain it. I affirm
that a general would be blamed by all soldiers if he
were to abandon an excellent position with the
prospect of being obliged to retake it the next day
at perhaps the cost of 10,000 dead; he would do
better to remsin in the position, and to incur the
risk of being attacked and expelled. Such is the
point of view which the Austrian Government
adopts, and must adopt; and the Government will
not abandon it voluntarily to obtain perhaps part
of its prerogatives as a concession and a gift of the

Hungarian Diet.
Most assuredly all Englishmen, Messrs. ROE-
BUCK and LEVER, it may be, excepted, will hold
that the man who can talk of refusing as a conces-
sion and a gift that which he has taken from
another by violence—is not the man who can be
supposed to have repented of the error of his past
ways. This sentence alone, notwithstanding abun-
dant professions of goodwill to the Hungarians,
stamps VON SCUMERLING at once with the charac-
ter of a despots' slave, who has not learned the first
elements of free government. Hungarians know
what political liberty is too well to be coaxed or
threatened out of it thus.

Eight thousand inhabitants of the locality have
recently petitioned that the Street Tramway may
not be torn up by the 4th of October, in the
Bayswater Road. It is no trumpery petition,
remember, that can in a few days, upon such a
subject, be signed by eight thousand respectable
people! Nevertheless the petition itself, and
the deputation of gentlemen who presented it a
few days since to the authorities at 'Whitehall,
each have in turn, or both of them have together
—the deputation and the petition—been cavalierly
set aside, as worthy of no consideration whatever,
by those high and mighty authorities, the Me-
tropolitan Roads Commissioners! Now, this is
surely not as it should be. The Commissioners, who
have acted thus cavalierly, curtly, and peremptorily,
have certainly not behaved in this matter as became
them in their capacity as Commissioners. Eight
thousand of the respectable inhabitants of Bays.
water, Notting Hill, and Kensington are not
assuredly to be swept out of view thus pertly and
peremptorily as though they were no better than
the famous Three Tailors of Tooley-street, calling
themselves the people of England. The animus of
the proceeding we are here referring to, is having
so very recently taken place in one of the admi-
nistrative offices of Whitehall, may, unfortunately
—(we cannot but feel this upon the instant)—may,
unfortunately, be only too well guessed at, Nay,
it can hardly be said to be matter merely of con-
jecture. It is rather an affair of absolute
notoriety. That the hon. baronet the mem-
ber for Westminster is one of the Commissioners,
and that he has sympathising friends among his
colleagues the other Commissioners, everybody
pretty well knows. There is such a thing as vir-
tuous indignation, and there is such another thing
as pleasant retaliation. Here was an opportunity
ready to hand ! One, too, so tempting of its kind
as hardly to be resisted.

People were divided from the first about
these street railways some thinking them a
great convenience to the general public
others an intolerable nuisance. The more irri-
tated and exasperated members of the latter class
of critics in the matter of tramways in the QUEEN'S
highroad had been actually known to apply for
the aid of the police magistrates, in order, if pos-
sible to put down this innovation that they, at