The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-23 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.-SUN OFFICE, MAY 22.

THEnmomETEr., Lowest, 48; Highest, 63; Noon, 62,
BAROMETER, 30.26.—WLND, N.

NOTFI—The number 32 on the Thermometer denotes the
f.eozing point, and .55 temperate. In Barometers fair is
usually placed opposite 30, and rain at 29.

11.1G11 WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE TRES DAY.
!Horning ... CO minutes alter 5 1 Evening 41 minutes after 5.

pears, in the estimation of the Bishop, to be
a panacea for every evil, and unless this de-
mand be promptly complied with, he antici-
pates °thing short of general confusion and
anarchy. Ile makes no reference to the stringen
necessity that exists for a more extended system of
public education ; he says nothing about that which
should be uppermost in the mind of an expounder of
the gospel of charity—namely, the amelioration of the
condition of the poor and destitute by increasing their
means of comfort and happiness, and diminishing the
number and pressure of their physical wants ; but
confines his episcopal attention exclusively to the
question of " more Church." This is the sole
burden—the alpha and omega of his song.
More Church is associated in his mind with
everything that is important—nay, indispensable
to the welfare of the masses. Give them
this, and you give them all that is necessary
for their temporal happiness here,-and their spiritual
happiness hereafter ; deprive them of it, and leave
matters in stain quo, and you run the imminent
hazard of engendering a state of things whose in-
evitable result must be, at no distant period, general
anarchy. Now, more Church is no doubt a very
good thing in its way, and we are far from wish-
ing to underrate its importance; but, :with
the Bishop's permission, we shall take leave
to say that it is by no means so in-
fallible or comprehensive a specific as he
would have us suppose it is. It is a portion—and a
small portion only—of a national remedy. It may
come in aid of other remedial measures, and be a
very useful auxiliary to them; but of itself, it is but a
scant, inefficient specific. Cheap, homely, practical
education is the first great want of the untutored and
benighted masses ; and to give more Church the pre-
cedence of this, is literally to put the cart before the
horse, and to begin at the wrong end of a remedial
system. But Churchmen either will not—or cannot
be brought to see this. Like the currier who was
constantly crying out that there was " nothing
like leather," priests, whether high in autho-
rity or not, are incessantly exclaiming that there
is nothing like " more Church." This is grievous,
though no doubt well-intentioned, pedantry, and is
ill calculated to make an impression on any but the
thoughtless, weak-minded, superficial portion of the
community. As regards the Bishop of LONDON'S
particular supplications for more Church, it is, we
suspect, by no means prompted by such disinterested
motives as might be imagined; for the more numerous
the churches that are built within his diocese
the greater of course will be the extent of, his
patronage, which to an ambitious nature is a
matter of paramount interest. If, for instance, fifty
more religious structures are erected within the metro-
polis and its suburbs, the ghostly prelate will of course
have the presentation to fifty additional appointments;
hence in assisting to swell the popular cry for " more
Church," he is—possibly quite unconsciously—assist-
ing those views of patronage which are always so
agreeable to the nature of an active and aspiring
Churchman.

We resume our notice of the Premier's speech of
Monday last with the remark that although, in its
commencement, the Right Hon. Baronet complacently
talked of this new "rider" to his monster blunder of
1819 as "this great scheme," (!) it was, in truth, a
miserable evasion, from beginning to end, of his own
questions of the 6th inst., namely, " What is a pound ?"
" How does the adoption of a gold standard of value
operate to regulate the currency ?" This Tamworth
Wizard has forgotten the promises of his own "
He has still to show us how the danger of over issues
of paper money is " inevitably consequent" on the
abrogation of that standard. lle has still to tell us by
what process of reasoning the conclusion-is arrived at
that in future the circulation on issues upon securities,
of the Bank of England, should be limited to
14,000,0001.; and "the remainder of its issues to
take place on bullion alone." It is scarcely necessary
to insist on the truth, in all its rigour, of the remark
made on Tuesday last by a Morning Contemporary,
"that Sir ROBERT PEEL seemed to be incapable of
defining what money was ;" but any such worthless
quibbling upon zvords where precise definitions were
required—any such pantomimic failure as the Right
Hon. Baronet's, who, in answer to his own question,
" What is a pound ?" produced a sovereign, and abso-
lutely chuckled at the drollery of what he no doubt
imagined to be his irresistible demonstration, we trust
the House is not doomed soon again to witness.
When Sir ROBERT finds in a bank note, after the
word "one pound," which it promises to pay to bearer
on demand, this descriptive indication, "or one gold
coin of the realm called a sovereign," he may begin to
persuade himself that he has identified the idea with
the thing—that he has identified the conventional
signification of the phrase with a palpable symbol of
the ,value it proposes to express. In the • meantime
the gold sovereign is not a pound of bullion, twelve
ounces of gold, or twelve ounces of silver; and it is
equally certain that twelve ounces of bullion, silver or
gold, are not one gold sovereign.
But we proceed to more important details. It seems
that Sir ROBERT is determined that not only is a total
currency, of convertible paper and gold, amounting to
30,000,0001. amply sufficient for all the purposes of
the country, but that of this limited amount a large
sum would be, generally speaking, uncalled for

" Take, for instance, the case to be as it was at
present, that the Bank was possessed of a large amount
of bullion, not less than 16,000,0001., the banking de-
partment of the Bank would possess 30,000,0001. of
bank-notes, fourteen millions .on securities, and sixteen
millions on bullion. Now, a great portion of the sixteen
millions would lie dormant in the coffers of the Bank,
for about 22,000,0001. would be all that would be required
for the legitimate supply of the demands of the country."
By what sort of "private-view" priority of infor-
mation Sir ROBERT has arrived at this important
secret of the specific amount of circulation that
would thus be required, we are of course as ignorant
as we are of what may be signified by the "legitimate
supply of the demand " of the country. To our
humble apprehension, it appears that if, in the nature
of human affairs, it were possible to divine before-
hand the amount of circulation needed by such a
community as ours, for the transaction of all its
enormous business,—for its prodigious home trade, its
weekly and daily recurring disbursements for in-
dustrial wages, to agricultural and machirle labour,
its machinery, cost of manufacturing production, its
investments and remittances on account of its incal-
culable foreign trade, and its absolutely countless calls
for, and transfers of, cash in the hourly transactions
of social intercourse—the grand and primary diffi-
culty of any monetary system would be, at once, re-
moved. But Sir ROBERT, knowing that the in-
vincible vice of his "great scheme" and the inevitable
inadequacy, from mere physical or natural causes, of
any metallic currency that could be launched, to the
exigencies of the British people, was interested to
make out as good a case as he could in the matter of
quantity, for a practical base upon which to start.
He, therefore, modestly assumes that the Bank, upon
an average of bullion stores, will keep in its cellars
16,000,0001. in bullion. Why, it is true, that it has
almost that amount in its vaults at the present
moment. But it is equally certain that it never had
it before—even when it has accumulated gold under
more favourable circumstances than it operates now.
Nor would it he quite prudent to assume that—even
now—this stock has been got together, or can be kept
up, except at the sacrifice of a premium, which, how-
ever the Bank may be disposed to pay it, pending
certain recent negotiations and the final decision of
Parliament upon terms so greatly favourable to its
monopoly privileges, as those under de'pate ; it does
not follow that it would hereafter be either willing or
prepared to pay. But if this assumed scale of bullion
deposits be hereafter practically diminished, to any
phaetlinoe n
”s
falls a s t o
to this
the
considerable extent, the whole of Sir :ROBERT'S anti-
csci
ground.lenetll ry
TPhr nccoi ry if i t
of
his
allow "great
itself to be duped by his assurances, will find that with
the disappearance fo, or wasting of Ithe gold stock, the
general circulation must be proportionably contracted
(for silver is not to be a legalised tender at all); and
then the whole currency must - acqur.re an oppressively
enhanced value. On that scarcity of • circulation and
consequent dearness of money, a fri htf I • g wastlngt
and ruinous panic must ensue, which
with all its
concomitants of bankruptcy, terror, and commercial
ruin, the whole resources of the Tamwcirtb Wizard's
legerdemain will be utterly powerless to arrest or to
mitigate. And it is clear that Sir It'aillEßT is himself
awake to the probabilities of such a dlisa, itrous eventua-
tion of his "great scheme." Ile, ',hertefore, falls back
from his own expressly stipul Ated postulate "that
bullion shall be taken to inter, (lab 9 nly ;" and dis-

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