The Sun.
London, England, 1845-10-29 00:00:00

THE " TIMES" and the RAILWAY

SYSTEM.
(From the Sentinel, October 25.)
We may well question the purity of that public virtue
which aids and abets the very enterprise it unceasingly con-
demns, and are justified in doubting that consistency which
daily takes sums of money to a large amount for circulating
what it pronounces delusive and fraudulent. Such, however,
is the conduct of the Times, which publishes double supple-
ments of railway advertisements, and then declares to the world
that its columns are the medium by which swindlers may plun-
der the unwary. It certainly does not express itself in these
very terms, but the spirit and tendency of its writings justly
bear this unstrained interpretation ; for, if nine-tenths of the
schemes which the Times advertises are designedly con-
cocted to extract the deposits, without any intention, on the
part of the projectors, to go before Parliament, on what
moral principle can the Times justify itself in giving ruse
to such schemes? Why does it not virtuously refuse
the advertisements? Will its numerous readers be deterred
from speculating, when they hear that the Times is receiv-
ing, perhaps, a thousand pounds a day from the funds of
organised cheats? Would not the impression on the public
be far stronger, were the Times to drop its supplements, and
avow its resolution no longer to circulate advertisements of
a dishonest character? This is the test by which we would
try the mercantile morality of the Leading Journal.
The Times asks, " Can any one deliberately expect that
the thirty millions will be really forthcoming ? Is it pos-
sible that the hundreds of thousands of shareholders can really
pay ten per cent, on each of the many millions of shares now
in the market ?" These questions are not fairly put. It is
assumed that three hundred millions of capital are about to
be invested simultaneously in railways, and we are asked,
whence the ten per cent. on that sum, or thirty millions, are
to be found ? The assumption is erroneous, and the reason-
ing built upon it falls to the ground. In the first place, the
competing lines will coalesce after a trial of strength ; secondly,
many lines will be abandoned; thirdly, some years must
elapse before the schemes which will ultimately succeed, can,
by possibility, receive the sanction of Parliament. Therefore
instead of three hundred millions, one-third of that sum will
be sufficient for all the lines, and many years will elapse be-
fore the state of the works will require its advance. This
capital will not be invested simultaneously, but gradually,
and at intervals, so that, in whatever view we consider the
subject, there appears to be net the slightest cause for panic
or apprehension.
The general argument of the Times proceeds on the prin-
ciple, that no public work is to be undertaken in any country
unless it has heaped up in some cellar or store a certain quan-
tity of gold and silver. The intelligence of the people is not
to contrive, the physical strength is not to execute, any un-
dertaking, unless the precious metals are within their reach.
Their presence alone is to give activity to the brain and the
muscles. Nay, more, however necessary any new works may
be, even the reclaiming of waste land for the supply of defi-
cient food, they must not be commenced unless a certain de-
posit of some ounces of gold or silver is lodged in the hands
of a public functionary. It amounts to this, that none but
rich people or rich nations are to make any progress in civili-
sation. The absurdity of this argument will be obvious, if
we merely consider, that man did emerge from barbarism and
arrive at a very improved social state long before gold or
silver mines were discovered. Now, had the law, as it exists
in England, always existed among all nations, it is very
clear that man never could have emerged from barbarism ;
this reas( ning is fundamental, and at one blow destroys all
the quackery of the bullionists.
If it were contended, that the supply of iron being limited,
railways, :into whose construction it enters, must also be
limited, we should admit the force of the argument, since it

is physically impossible for man to increase the quantity of
iron. He can only extract what is deposited in the bowels of
the earth. But the case of money is widely different. Money
is purely conventional: it may be multiplied indefinitely.
Just as population increases and industrial operations are
expanded, so may money be expanded. Money is the servant
of labour, not its master. It is the instrument or tool with
which labour works, and the visible, tangible, convertible
produce of labour becomes the substance and reality of
which money is the sign or symbol. Hence it follows, that
the only real limitation to money is the limitation to pro-
duction, for wherever there is property, there the holder of
such property ought to be entitled to create its representative
in money. Under such a system civilisation would proceed
rapidly and safely, since nothing more would be required
in a state than industry, heads to contrive and hands to
exe cute.
The Birmingham Railway, for instance, is a visible and
tangible property. It is as much so as a gold mine, and its
revenue is as certain as the revenue of the Customs or Excise.
On what principle, then, can it be contended, that the pro-
prietors of the Birmingham Railway ought not to be per-
mitted to circulate representatives of their property in the
shape of money, say Birminghamr. Railway notes? Is there
any tradesman in London who would refuse to take such
notes, were they in circulation ? Now let us suppose that
this Birmingham Company desired to extend their line, and
that the estimated cost of such extension were computed at
half a million. Why should they not have the power of
issuing notes to that amount, and thus, on the security of the
existing line, create the extension line? Would the con-
tractors refuse such notes, or the labourers, or the tradesmen
who supply the labourers? These notes would be money in
the sense in which we understand that word.
Now let us look at the monetary system under which we
live. We have made the commodity gold a privileged
metal ; we have fixed its price by Act of Parliament, and
made it the standard measure of all other commodities. It
is the master, not the servant, of British industry. Heaped
up in the Bank cellars, it lies there in sheer uselessness;
other metals are constantly performing some industrial func-
tion, but this aristocratic metal reposes in. true lordly
idleness. Merchants, with feverish anxiety, look at the
Bank weekly returns, to ascertain how many ounces are
added to or substracted from the heaps; andwhen it is moved
away to the Continent, the intelligence of the wise and the
labour of the industrious are absolutely prostrated.
Yet our brains are not disordered nor our sinews unstrung ;

our productive power, our capability to direct the plough or
the loom, are just in the same condition ; but the wisdom of

Parliament has said, " People of Britain, 'unless gold abounds
in the Bank cellars, you shall not eat your bread in the sweat
of your brow ; we will aggravate the primeval curse, and
sentence you to beggary and want; unless the graven images
of the precious metals are brought back to their subterranean
temple in Threadneedle-street.'
When, then, we are told by the Times, that we have not
MONEY enough to execute the projected railways, we ask—
What does the Times mean by money? lf, by he term, it

understands bits of bullion in the shape of sovereigns,
we agree that we have no sufficiency of that
metal ; but, we deny that bits of bullion are
MONEY ; they are commodities, not money ; and then
the question arises, Are public works in the immediate execu-
tion of which millions of operatives are employed, and whose
completion adds, through reproduction, to the permanent
wealth of the empire, to be suspended or abandoned, because
one particular metal may be wanting? Is that to be the
condition on which alone industry and intelligence are to be
PERMITTED to exercise their active and self-sustaining use
fulness? We admire the Times for its noble denunciation of
the poor-law ; but when it upholds a monetary system,
which is the true parent of union workhouses, and now at-
tempts,' through panic-mongering, to throw the labouring
classes out of employment, we blush for the ignorance or dis-
honesty of the Leading Journal.
We will proceed a step further. The social destiny of man
is progression through labour. The more that labour is em-
ployed under the direction of science, which itself is only
skilled labour, the greater will that progression be. In an
enlightened country labour can only be checked by the crime
of war or the folly of legislation. The brain is ever ready
to contrive and the hand to execute, and accumulations
of property are the exponents of their combined work-
ing. Since the desires of man are insatiable, there is no
natural limit to consumption ; and hence, under natural
views, by which we mean the constitution of humanity,
there never can be over-production. But, he who consumes,
must produce an equivalent, and that he will do under the
stimulus of the desire of consumption. Nothing more. then,
is wanted than a proper distributive agent, by which produc-
tions may be interchanged. That agent i 3 money. If you
limit it, you limit both consumption and production, and you
do limit it, when you enact that gold, at a fixed price, shall
be the sole distributive agent. When the gold quits the
country, the country is then in the state of a street, along
which the thoroughfare is impeded, by repairing the
sowers. In both cases, distribution ceases. Adam Smith
has compared money to a road. We widen and multi-
ply our roads as trade and population increase; but,
most inconsistently, we narrow and diminish our
money. Our accumulated property, visible and tangible,
swells from year to year, yet we will not allow that
property to augment the number of its symbols or re-
presentatives., Thus we make every description of property
subservient to that particular property called gold, and there-
fore the holders of the gold are the masters, the absolute and
despotic masters, of all the skilled and unskilled labour in the
country. More than that ; if the gold is exported, the fo-
reigner does in effect become the temporary master of British
property, for large quantities of that property must be given
to the foreigner to get back the metal. Our conclusion is,
that if railway proprietors are wise, they will unite together
for a repeal of the money laws, and insist on issuing their own
notes on the guarantee of their respective lines.