The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-29 00:00:00

last manifesto from Derrynane, Mr. O'CoysELL
warmly praises Federalism, and even gives it the pre-
ference to unqualified Repeal ; but he does not vouch-
safe to tell us what is its particular character, or in
what way it is to benefit Ireland. He leaves his
readers in the dark upon both these points, and yet
expects that they will embrace a principle which is
nearly, if not quite unintelligible, merely because
it hears a Derrynane imprimatur ! Federalism,
like Repeal, will never answer any other purpose
than to keep Ireland in a state of incipient uneasiness,
and this our Irish fellow-countrymen will find out
ere long, but not before they have suffered bitterly
from experience. " There is, or might be, another
party," adds our northern Contemporary, " that
could do vast good—the party of the country—the
party that would act rationally for the public good,
and that would not be influenced by bigoted power on
the one hand, nor propelled by mere authority on the
other. We are in want of such a party, and we do
not despair that it will be found." Judging from
present indications, we should not say that the ele-
ments of this party are very rife in Ireland, still we
are willing to hope with our Contemporary that the
want will ere long be supplied, and that, when the
Repeal and Federal crotchets have had their day,
common sense and an enlightened spirit of patriotism
will assume the ascendancy over men's minds in the
sister country.

The remarkable excitement in the market of capi
tal produced by the announcement of so many rail.
road projects already in course of execution, or pro.
posed to be commenced, is a symptom which cannot
be too carefully noted by those who would study the
phenomena of our social condition. Were it possible
for our earlier authorities on the statistics of capital
and wealth to waken from the sleep of the grave to
the aspects at this moment exhibited by the " money
power " in Great Britain, they would imagine them-
selves resuscitated in a new world. They would deem
that a new system of money had been invented.
For what are :the contrasted features which any
of our daily journals exhibit of the wants and the
wealth, the refinements and the destitution, diffused
through the various classes of the community ?
Pauperism—the abject wretchedness of hundreds of
thousands—attested by vast district or union poor-
houses, swarming with whole colonies, not alone of
the aged and impotent, and helpless infants and youth,
but also of able-bodied men, still in the prime and
vigour of life, but unable to obtain employment. Poor-
rates for the support and maintenance of these un-
fortunate masses to the annual amount of 5,000,0001.
An aggregate population so far removed from
the general poverty which these premises would
seem, at first sight, to infer, as to pay
annually the largest amount of taxation per-
haps levied on any nation of the world ; yet
burdened with the largest amount of national debt
(800,000,0001.) ever recorded as having been con-
tracted at any former period of history ; the charge
of interest and management alone thereon amounting
to upwards of 28,000,0001, per annum. A commerce
of almost boundless extent, and a mass of accumulated
capital, still awaiting employment, so vast that after
supplying all the enormous funds of our greatest ex-
isting public works, such as docks, railroads, &c.,
now and fur some time past in full operation, it is still
further hypothecated, so to speak, to the incredible
amount of 39,600,0001. for the forty new projects Of
railroads, to be carried over 2,100 miles of ex-
tent, of which we have so lately given an ac-
count. It TEMPLE Or CuILDE, or if DAVID
HUME or ADAM SMITH, Or Dr. CAMPBELL,
could contemplate this extraordinary state of things,
or so huge a sum of social misery co-existing with
such enormous advances in domestic opulence—so
fearful a leaven of poverty in the masses, made only
the more palpable by the imperial wealth concentrated
in class interests, and in the coffers of individual
capitalists—the first inquiry, perhaps, of their saga-
cious and provident minds, would be, what were the
chances of permanency attaching to a system under
which elements of so antagonistic a character could
have attained, coincidently, so striking a develop-
ment ? To determine this question, they would at once
institute a preliminary examination into the nature
of our monetary system, and, probably nothing would
so irresistibly suggest an inquiry into the character
and the amount of our currency as the contemplation
of these gigantic demands of railway speculation. But
this last is a question of too vital and present an inte
rest to be dismissed, together with any mere theoretical
assumptions of what the dead economists might think
of us. May they sleep lightly, without disturbance
from those misgivings which we own to, while con-
sidering the probable results of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S
currency legislation on a condition such as we live
under in 1844.
The Act of last session has fixed the same ominous
amount of 39,000,0001. odd as the whole aggregate of
the paper currency to be issued by the Bank of
England and the provincial banks, under the sanction
of the Crown, throughout the whole of the United
Kingdom. The fancied security of this amount and
description of issues is, that " it is intended ultimately
to be based on Government securities and on gold
conjointly." Any circumstances which tend to dis-
turb or deteriorate the value of either of these ele-
ments, must place their joint aggregate in imminent
jeopardy. Now, of these thirty-nine millions, one
component is, in round numbers, twelve millions of
the Government's own liabilities, held '" as securi-
ties" by the Bank. The Bank is limited to the
issue of such an amount of notes only as it can pay on
demand in gold bullion, eked out, if necessary, by a
permitted per centage of silver bullion. To
answer these conditions in the simplest form, the