The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-02 00:00:00

Mont% I *int

LONDON, TIIURSDAY, MAY 2, 1844.

The Lords did not sit last evening, and the only-
question of importance that came before the Com-
mons was the Masters and Servants Bill. The
order _of the day was to go into Committee on the
Bill, and• Mr. T. DIINCOMBE, who is always at his
post, opposed it with his usual spirit. We are happy
to state that he was successful, Sir JAMES GRAHAM
opposed the amendment, and announced his inten-
tion of voting for the Bill going into Committee.
The House, however, would not go with the Right
Hon. Gentleman. On a division there were for the
Bill 54, and against it 97, making a majority against
the Bill of 43. It is a singular fact that Sir J.s.mss
GRAMM seldom carries any Bill which he supports.
The House adjourned at a Quarter-past Seven.

-We have lately perused in the columns of a Morn-
ing Contemporary an at title on " the Currency as
now constituted," which so distinctly adopts, whilst
it enunciates, certain fallacies connected with the
elements of this all-important question, that we can-
not do better than deal with them at once. The ge-
neral subject will, in a few days, form the engrossing
topic of Parliament's deliberations. It may be ex-
pedient, therefore, to clear the ground over which the
arguments on either side will be pushed, of all encum-
bering errors of principle ; and of delusive plausibi-
lities, which have nothing more to recommend them
than the authority of some great names, by whose ill
considered sanction they were originally ushered into
public notice. Against the arrayof great names and
clever theories the public has learned to set the prac-
tical results of a severe experience. All their respect
for the sagacity and acumen of a RICARDO does not
blind them to the stupendous blunders of his antici-
pated calculation as to the maximum ratio of decline
iti 'prices, consequent on the establishment of the gold
standard of value by PEEL'S Bill. All their reverence
for the attainments, genius, and integrity of a GREN-
VILLE, will not remove his memory beyond the im7
peachment of extreme rashness in the dogged perti-
nacity with which he insisted on the nostrum of a
gold standard of value as a panacea for all the evils,
exaggerated as well as real, of the depreciated value
of our paper money at the close of the war. The late
Lord KING scarcely. imposed an one man in Britain,
beyond'the immediate circle of his own political
clique; by the. stand he made for his rents in gold, at
a period when the Dover and Harwich mails were con-
vey ing every golden guinea which could be evoked from
private hoards to these ports, there to be smuggled
out of this country to the Continent, where its market
value was so much enhanced beyond its Mint value
and denomination with us. Coneseer himself did.not
give that crotchetty and unamiable peer credit for any
curmtitutional jealousy on behalf of the legal or golden
standard of valt ; but chuckled at the succeil of his

noble friend's" very sordid purposes in applying the
screw so mercilessly to his tenantry. As for Mr.
llrsiussow, his character for political honesty has
been efficiently disposed of by the author of " The
Minister Mistaken." It
.is quite evident that when
Mr. HusitissoN wrote his pamphlet (destined to run
through so many editions) on the Report of the Bul-
lion Committee, he absolutely falsified, in adverting
to theni, the returns and tables which had been pre-
pared by the Bank of England, to show at what pe-
riods, and under what corresponding conditions of in-
creased or diminished taxation, &c., its issues had been

expanded or contracted. But the comparison between
his assurances to the House of Commons in 1826, as
to the limited amount of even the utmost extent to

which the newly modelled tariff of import duties,
agreed to between Prussia and three or four of the
German States (a confederacy which was the proto-
type of, and finally replaced by, the Zollverein), would
affect British manufactured goods brought into
Prussia; and his own subsequent admission that, in••
stead of this utmost limit being from 15 to 20 per
cent. it reached, in some cases, between 70 and 80 per
cent.—this comparison is fatal either to his minis-
terial j udgment and ability, or to his political integrity.

Either he wilfully deceived the House of Commons on

the subject, or he was the credulous dupe of the Baron
MALTZAHN'S protestations. In either case we find an
additional reason fbr deploring the fatuity which lis-
tened to his cciunsels, and passed the Act of 1819,
known as "PEEL'S Bill." Now the experience of

five-and-twenty years has demonstrated, first, that
the extent assumed, even by the late Mr. HORNER

himself, for the actual depreciation of Bank of Eng-
land paper, just before the Bullion Committee last re-
ported, was fallacious, and, practically speaking, by
no means approximated to•the rate which theory had
ascribed to it ; second, that the foreign exchanges

were by no means (in the practical operations of capital
on the payment and adjustment of commercial ba-
lances) so adverse as they were reported to be in the
official notations of them. The fact of this discre-

pancy, and an ingenious attempt to explain its causes,
are well illustrated in an article in the "Edinburgh

Review" for 1811, on Currency and Prices, which

has been attributed to Mr. HORNER. And yet the

continuance of these adverse exchanges was one of the

main grounds relied upon by a school of economists
who undertook to measure the ratio of depreciation

by the variation of the exchanges.
In 1819 we possessed an enormous and rapidly im-
proving foreign commerce ; money was in immense
abundance ; all the departments of domestic trade
were in full activity ; the wages of labour were ade-
quate to the subsistence of our labourers. Of the
carrying trade for other countries, which the Ameri-
cans had once so largely engrossed, we had succeeded
to an enormous portion. The facility of obtaining
advances on capital of all kinds, real or personal, was
so great that every branch of legitimate industry and
enterprise was quickened, invigorated, expanded. We
were. at peace with all the world. The national debt,
in the four years since the close of the war, had been
already largely reduced. Reductions, also, of
oppressive customs duties, and other fiscal ameliora-
tions had been successively adopted. Taxes were
beginning to be removed. The public revenue was
increasing. The income' of the " Excise " showed a
prodigiously increased capacity of consumption among
the. poorer and humbler classes of society. What was
wanting to the permanency and consolidation of such
a state of things, but to persevere in the slow though
certain career of improvements and guarantees on
which we had so happily thus far advanced ? Alas!
" A 1/. Bank note and ls. in silver were clearly not
equal, in the money or the foreign market, to a
golden guinea in value." What of it? Did a it.
Bank ncte and Is., in silver buy less than 21 shillings'
worth of goods, here ? Was there any difficulty in
obtaining for them manufactures which would have
sold readily for a guinea's worth of gold' abroad ? But,
the currency being "depreciated" so long as a given
amount of Bank of England paper and silver would not
command. an equivalent sum in gold, "it was ne-
cessary, above all things, to restore the ancient gold
standard of value of the country," so as to equalise
the one description of money with the other, by
making the paper convertible into gold on demand
from its issuers. But, in the first place, it was an
historical folly to suppose that the " gold standard of
value" wAs our " ancient standard." The experi-
:nent of making Bank of England paper payable in
gold upon demand had lasted only one hundred years,
when it was put an end to, after some failures and
nany intermediate approaches to violent and abrupt
termination, by the "BANK RESTRICTION ACT" of
1797. The old money of this country was either
symbolic (intrinsically valueless, but current for a
given value, by its issue from and receipt into
the KING's exchequer, where alone it was convertible
into silver by tale or by weight), or coined gold and
silver, to which a certain value was given by Royal
proclamation at its issue. The fancy of affixing a
?ertain, irrevocable value, to the ounce of gold, of
itandard fineness,—leaving free to find their fluctua-
ting value with all other commodities and mer-
chandise, all other metals ; and all representatives of
capital, not having coined money, such as bills of ex-
change, Exchequer bills, and promissory notes, cir-
culating from hand to hand ;—this fancy would have
been too wild for the gravity and sound sense of those
elder statesmen who laid broad and deep the first
foundations of British trade, opulence, and power.
But in 1819 the " gold standard of value" was set up
is it were, by acclamation.
We had now gold cheap by Act of Parliament,
though any or every other metal, chattel, merchan-
dise, money, property of any kind, should happen to
be coincidently dear. In all Europe there was pro-
bably not one-fiftieth part of the amount of our
actual currency circulation—silver and paper money,
bills, &c., of the kinds we have just referred to, circu-
lating in gold coin. in the bullion store of the Bank
of England there was not then—(if there be even now,
it is as much as there is, and that point has never
been reached till within these five or six weeks)
—so much of gold money as .' one-half of
the Bank of England paper at the same
time in circulation. Any fluctuation of trade
—any shock of our
.political relations, any un-
controllable Caprice of- public opinion, at home or
abroad, might, at any moment, alter the relations in
which the demands of trade, and invested and fluc-
tuating capital, stood to each other. In the same pro-
portion, the value of gold might alter and become
dearer in the " market,"—not so at the "Mint." At
the Mint, and under the statute, you must pay and
receive your gold cheap. The holders of more, in
Bank of England notes, than all the gold and
silver bullion in the Bank cellars would amount
to, might carry to the great hall in Thread-
needle-street their paper, and insist on being
paid in gold, at the standard price of 3/. 17s. 100.
per ounce. In Lombard-street, or on the Royal
Exchange, next door, gold might be fetching Si. per
ounce, at the same instant. The Bank must manage
to get, constantly, gold enough to meet all such de-
mands, at a ruinous loss of 1/. 2s. lid. per ounce on
every 'sum of 31. 17s. lOid. demanded in exchange
for its own notes, or it must be bankrupt ! Such is
our boasted security against the danger of " paper-
money depreciation." What is the Bank to do ?
The moment gold begins to rise above the Mint
price, the Bank contracts its paper issues, that
may better meet the demand for gold. Thus it pro-
ceeds to derange all the operations of commerce,
pdtalyse industry, cease its own usual discounts and
advances to merchants of the highest station
and probity, and produce a panic throughout
the kingdom, and involve thousands in help-
less insolvency. What panic —what ruin—
under the old Bank of England paper
smyostreem
everr,eeent
rivalled the panics of 1825, and the
ones, occasioned by the demand for
gold? The local distress resulting from the occa-
sional failure of some worthless provincial bank, was
a drop of water to an ocean in the comparison. Be-
sides, the facilities and benefits which domestic trade
and industry derived from the institution and esta-
blishment of country banks generally, far outweighed
any such partial and Occasional mischief's. Why did
not the Legislature stop at making all paper issues
I convertible into gold at the- market value—not at a
pre-concerted Mind price,.; which can have`.;;
more necessary relation -to what the flactnit-
tions we speak of may render, from time
to time, its absolute iptrinsie value,' than if this
value were taken in 1844 from that applied by DARIUS
to his lost coinage Of Persian daricks. •By fixing
;the price of gold, more especially, at the lowest rate
deducible from the averages of a long series of years,
during which our trade and commerce, our wealth

and resources, their development and their application
were all in mere infancy compared to their present
gigantic growth, you have enhanced and enlarged the
powers of that possible external pressure, which a
rise in bullion will always—and must one day, fatally
—bring to bear upon the Bank of England. " The
most serious of the imputations against the currency
as now constituted," says our Contemporary, "is
liability to over-issue, by which is of course meant,
issue in such abundance as to depreciate the currency,
or, what is the same thing, to raise general' prices."
Now the most serious of the imputations in question
is not, necessarily, the liability to over-issue. So far
from it, the peril is at once greater and more frequent
of under-issue. The false position of the Bank of
England, its perpetual insecurity, from liabilities to
pay in gold, to an extent which it is PHYSICALLY IM-
POSSIBLE for the Bank to meet, should 20,000,0001.,
for example, of its own notes be ever presented for
conversion in the terms of PEEL'S " folly" of 1829—
and the natural proneness of the Bank to contract its
issues, therefore, and ALWAYS at the wrong time—
that is to say, when accredited paper of any kind is
most needed, and in the largest quantity, to allay
commercial panic (the square of whose expansion
may justly be said to be in the ratio of its duration)
—these are the gravest charges to be urged against
our present currency. As to the effect of abundant
paper issues in " raising prices," we have so recently
shown the advantage to the whole community of
prices that will represent the taxation sanctioned by
our industrial labour in, or pending, the production of
its commodities ; and the impossibility of foreign
competitors deriving any advantage over our manu-
facturers from such prices, seeing that as they would
be paid in paper they will obtain gold for it on such
terms only, as shall equate their returns (through the
higher price of bullion) to those derived by our manu-
facturers, that we do not feel warranted in pressing
the point further at present on our readers. Besides,
this is the fifth and the last of the propositions which
we have pledged ourselves to demonstrate, seriatim,
in a future article.

The forty-fourth anniversary meeting of the Church
Missionary Society was held on Tuesday at Exeter

Hall.' The Earl of CHICHESTER presided, and, toge-
ther with the Bishops of CHESTER and Rirox, Sir
ROBERT INGLIS, and the Rev. J. W. CUNNINGHAM,
bore testimony to the great success which had at-
tended the operations of the Society, which, he re-
marked had triumphed over all opposition. It is cer-
tainly a glorious—a magnificent object to attempt to
convert the benighted heathens of the old as well as
of the new world to Christianity; to pour the steady
light of intelligence on darkened Africa; to hu-
manise the manners of the ferocious New Zea-
landers ; and raise the debased pagans of the Chinese
islands in the scale of civilisation and morality ;
this, we say, is a glorious object, and far be it from
us to hint aught that might convey the idea that we
were desirous to discourage it ; the blessings of
Christianity are inestimable, and cannot be too widely
diffused ; wherever the spirit of the Gospel pene-
trates, there peace, decorum, intellect, and all the
elements of social order follow in its train ; still,
while we cannot but approve the zealous and disin-
terested labours of the Church Missionary Society,
common sense and patriotic feeling would suggest
that that Society might be more profitably employed
at home, in reclaiming our own benighted country-
men from ignorance and its inseparable concomi-
tant, vice, than in instilling Gospel truths into the
minds of a set of squalid savages, who, compa-
ratively speaking, have the faintest possible claims
on our consideration. The available funds of the
Society at this present moment are, it is understood,
upwards of one hundred thousand pounds, the whole
of which large sum is to be spent in christianising
the barbarians of the South Sea Islands, and the still
more demoralised barbarians of Africa and the
Chinese settlements. Now, how much more ration- ,
ally—how much more profitably might not this sum
be employed in performing the same kind office for the
thousands and thousands of our own countrymen who
are sunk chin-deep in ignorance ; who have but an
imperfect acquaintance with, and an habitual dis-
regard of, the great principles of virtue and morality ;
and who pass from youth to age without the slightest
knowledge of one single Gospel truth ? Who but
must remember the humiliating exposure made by
Lord ASHLEY last year of the degraded condition in
which vast masses of the lowest classes of our fellow-
countrymen were still suffered to remain ? He proved,
by a variety of documents, that admitted of no con-
tradiction, that their ignorance was scarcely sur-
passed even by that of an Australian savage ; that
they were familiar with crime in its most loathsome
and hopeless form ; and were ever ready, as oppor-
tunity offered, to play the part of the desperado, the
insurgent, and the incendiary. No instructors had ever
been provided forlhem—no one was found to instil
into their minds the wholesome living truths
of Christianity—they were considered, so to speak,
as the outcasts—the Pariahs of society, on whom

advice, remonstrance, and menace would be thrown
away, and whom it was not worth any respectable
man's while to endeavour to reclaim. Surely these
unhappy and neglected beings have stronger claims
on the active consideration of the Church Missionary
Society than the far-away savages of New Zealand !
Surely it were wiser and better that we first

attempted to Christianise our own benighted coun
trymen, before we directed our attention to the spiri
tual wants of the inhabitants of remote regions

By all means send out missionaries to China, Africa.
the South Sea Islands, &c., but before you encourage
them to go abroad, insist on their exerting their most
_ .

strenuous efforts in the cause of religion at home,
When they have succeeded in humanising and Chris_
tianising the minds of the thousands and tens of thou-
sands 'of debased creatures who swarm in our manu-
facturing and agricultural districts—aye, even in
Mr. BANKEs's boasted Elysium of Dorsetshire—then,
but not till then, let them turn their vigilant attention
to the religious and moral wants of the Africans, the
Chinese, and the South-Sea Islanders. Charity,
says the old adage, begins at home, and we are de-
cidedly in favour of setting missionaries to work at
home, before we send them abroad to plant the Gos-
pel, and sow the seeds of civilisation in countries
akin to us in no one single respect, and separated
from us by the breadth of immense oceans.

We have intelligence from Madrid to the 23d ult.
Reports were prevalent, which were believed by some
to be well founded, of a change of Ministry. BRAVO
was to resign, and be succeeded by NARVAEZ, as
President of the Council. Only two members of the
Cabinet were to remain in office. The Corresponsal,
however, states that these reports are entirely without
foundation.

The Three per Cents. were done at 35i for cash,
and 36 at sixty days ; and the Five per Cents. at 22i.
The following is the official dispatch of the Baron
DE MEEK to the Minister of War, announcing tha
butcheries of Gerona

"Army of Catalonia—General Staff.
" Excellent Sir,—l have the satisfaction of informing your
Excellency, that the public tranquillity remains unaltered,
both in this capital and the other parts of the district in my
charge.
" The Carlist officers and individuals mentioned in the ac-
companying list which I have the honour to transmit to you,
were shot on the 16th instant, in Gerona, in conformity with
my last dispatch, for having entered Spain from France, in
order to excite civil war; and I have thought it proper on
this occasion to direct the address to the people and the army
which is contained in the General Order, a copy of which I
also transmit for the due information of your Excellency, and
the superior knowledge of her Majesty.—Ged preserve your
Excellency many years.
(Signed)
"Barcelona, April 18, 1844."
" Army of Catalonia—General Staff.
"List of the individuals of the Carlist ranks who were shot
at Gerona on the 16th of April, 1844 :
fvetthl euctied.
nant-colonel,eliciano .calepdtii,liangeodf 4toh,e canativvael
r of
Gerona,
regiment
"Francisco Oliveras, aged 53, native of San Vicente del
broe
Camos, captain of the 10th battalion of infantry.
"Augustin Dachs, aged 48, native of Palmorolu, brevet
colonel, first commander of the 18th battalion of infantry.
"Jose Pont y Vinos, aged 32, native of Santa Eugenia de
Relat, captain of the lst battalion of infantry.
"Fermin Pon, aged 44, native of Gerona, brevet lieutenant,
sub-lieutenant of the 12th battalion of Cazadores :of Cata-
lonia.
"Ramon Canudas, aged 27, native of Caserras, second ser-
geant of the infantry battalion del Rey.
"Narciso Canudus, aged 26, native of Pont de Revente,
camp follower. " DE MEER."
The address alluded to announces to the people of Cata-
lonia, that the enemies of the public repose, having left the
hospitable soil of France, to draw upon the country the hor-
rors and misfortunes of a new war, had been prevented by
Divine Providence from realising their plans, and that the
few who succeeded in crossing the frontier were taken, owing
to the good spirit of the, people and army, and, having been
btorosuhgehdtstpoaGniesrhonbaloo, were
c
e:s.hot there on the 16th instant, con-
eluding with the usual professions of horror at being obliged

" RAMON DE MEER,

Much excitement prevails at Paris, caused by a
general belief that the Government have come to the
determination of converting the Five per Cent. Stock.