The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-20 00:00:00

THE CURRENCY.

A Lecture of a highly interesting character was de-
livered at the National Hall, Holborn, last evening, on
this subject, by Duncan, Esq., which was attended by
Mr. Pattison, one of the Members fur London, and
several other gentlemen of rank and influence. The at-
tendance, also, of the working-classes was numerous,
and the attention with which the observations of the
lecturer were received, indicated an intelligent appre-
hension of a confessedly difficult subject. Those obser-
vations, however, were so perspicuously put, that a
matter on which but little information is possessed in
the mass of society, was rendered perfectly clear, and, as
the writers of school books would say, " easily under-
stood by the meanest capacity." The lecturer began by
stating that he conceived the currency to be a subject of
paramount importance, and that it was his own appre-
hension of its importance which had first drawn
his attention to it. It not only affected those
who were distinguished as the property classes,
but, also, the working population. He did not
like to see the spirit of antagonism which was
now exhibited by the several portions of the community
in Britain, because he felt that it was a necessity that
all should prosper, and not only a few ; and it was as
necessary that those who followed the plough should
enjoy their existence as those who plied the loom. There
had been what appeared a species of opposition intro-
duced into society, and he conceived that the interests
of all classes of the State, whether it was seen that they
were so or not, were identical. The matter on which he
had to speak was of a highly interesting nature ; but
still he found that the introduction of a new subject
would be attended with some difficulty, and that it
would not at first be very inviting. As some justifica-
tion, however, of the topic, he might refer to the cir-
cumstance of Sir James Graham having, in the House of
Commons, made the astounding statement that one-tenth
of the whole population were at the present moment
subsisting on the poor-rates—that out of a popu-
lation of 15,000,000, more man 1,500,000, whose only
property was their labour, were at the present
moment absolutely depending for their daily sustenance
on the exertions of others. Sir James Graham had ac-
companied this astounding, fact by another of equally
startling character. He had in the face of the House of
Commons affirmed that since the conclusion of the year
1815 no less a sum than 200,000,0001., equal to one quarter
of the debt, had been paid for the support of the poor.
Sir J. Graham made this statement on the Tuesday, and
it was a natural expectation that the Prime Minister,
under whose notice this fact nad been so prominently
brought, would in his budget on Friday have provided a
remedy for the evil. But he did no such thing. There
appeared in fact to be a sort of collusion by which the
whole question was set aside. It seemed to be admitted
as an axiom that when one great interest in the State
was prosperous, that the other must suff r—that there
must be an alternate sacrifice of the interests of the two
great classes in the community. It might very well suit
the objects of politicians to paint the bright side of the
question and omit the gloomy one, but he did say that
the Minister of State who pursued such a course, who
was either deluded himself, or wilfully or ignorantly a
party to the delusion of others, was altogether unworthy
to rule the destinies of a great empire. He did not wish
to see one, but both, of these great classes flourishing.
He did not advocate any of that system which left the
currency of the country at the caprice of any man, or
any body of men. He was no advocate for that which
was generally termed flimsy, or kite-flying, and he was
quite anxious that the instrument of exchange should
be one for which there was every security of value to
the public; but this he would say, that the money laws
of the present day were based on nothing, either more
or less, than a system of insidious iniquity. The prin-
ciple of that system was simply and solely to exonerate
the rich from bearing their share of the burdens of the
State, and to throw them on that class which, for six-
teen hours every day, whether man, woman, or child,
had to work for their bread—on those who, if the
greatness of the country, or their importance in
the community was considered, were the most im-
portant part of the population. He was aware that
it was generally thought this was a subject diffi-
cult to understand, but he thought, with a little atten-
tion, it would be perfectly clear to all. He would, for
the sake of elucidation then, take money in three dif-
ferent points of view. Money, in the first place, he
would take to mean or represent land, the structures on
land, minerals, metals, and all the other property within
the bowels of the earth; secondly, fisheries and all other
species of property of a similar kind, on which labour
had been expended ; and thirdly, the means by which
all this property was made transferable from party to
party, so as to be available for the general benefit of the
community. It was important to make this distinction,
as otherwise money, and the object of money, would be
confounded. It was the object of money to represent
value; now it was not any particular thing, or the pos-
session of any particular thing, that rendered it valu-
able, but the labour which had been bestowed upon it,
that gave it value; and money, symbolic money, the
means by which the enjoyment of this product of labour
was transferred, was only the symbol or emblem of value.
Money, indeed, might be divided into three classes.
Notes or authorities issued from the Exchequer—bills of
exchange—and that third class which consisted partly of
coin and partly of paper, but which we were in the
habit of using so as to distribute the exertions and the
property of individuals for the general benefit of the
community. Bullion in itself was not money, and the
mere impress of a likeness of the Queen on a piece of
gold did not alter its character as a commodity; it only
indicated to the public and assured them of the weight
and purity of the piece of metal upon which it was im-
pressed. Ile hoped he should be excused for reverting,
for a few moments, to the days of Rome. The term
money was derived from die Latin word Moneta, and
had arisen in consequence of the Homes having applied
to Juno, when they were in some strait or difficulty, and
who had advised them to act with justice and honour,
and their success was certain. In consequence of
the good effects of this advice and of the suc-
cess which attended their following it, the Romans
erected a temple in honour of Juno Moneta,
and as the object of money was to indicate merely value,
and advise the receiver of benefit he ought to derive by
exchanging it, the proper designation was money.
Money was simply the token and representative of value,
the instrument by which all portions of society were
enabled to satisfy their wants. It was, in fact, the dis-
tributive agent of industry. If it was desired that there
should be a true notion of money, he would refer to the
principle which prevailed in what was called savage life.
The only means which the savages on the coast pos-
sessed for obtaining the benefits which they felt to be
necessary was an interchange of their labour—or, if he
took the shepherds in the interior of the country, it was
still the same—the exchange of the produce of their
labour was the only means which they possessed for ob-
taining the comforts they needed. Was it then to be a
matter of wonder that there should be a great depres-
sion in the state of the industrial classes, when the in-
strument by which their efforts was made valuable
was so greatly reduced in quantity? Adam
Smith, the great father of political economy,
had compared money to a road, and what would be the
consequence if the whole country were again to revert
to the position and the inconvenience which the country
had suffered before the days of macadamization. As
population increased, roads were multiplied and im-
proved, and why not the money ? And if thus much
was said of roads, what would be said of railways? Sir
R. Peel, in introducing his measure for the better regu-
lation of financial affairs, in a gross ignorance of the
facts of the case, stated that it was his desire to revert
to the ancient standard of value ; but he did not wish to
revert to the standard as established by William the
Conqueror, to Alfred, or Julius Caesar. The object of
Sir R. Peel, so far as could he gathered from the vague
and uncertain language which he was in the habit of
using, was to return to the standard of money in the
time of Elizabeth,:which would make money as scarce as
it was in 1601. He wished to give to the country the
same standard as had been used nearly 250 years ago,
and bring society back, in 1845, to the standard and in-
telligence of 1601. Why what would be the consequence ?
They might just as well decide upon restoring the town
to the condition it presented before the time when
the various lanes and dark streets of London possessed
thoroughfares, which, in the present day, would be to-
tally impossible ; or recommend blocking up that great
artery of London from the Strand to the Bank : he would
restrict all the operations of custom and finance to his
own confined views. What would be thought of him if
he had directed that the whole railway from London to
Liverpool should be traversed on bars of gold, and no-
thing else ? He thought that the outcry which had been
raised of the evils of society was far beyond its mark.
He could not accede to the propositions of those who
were always ready to tax Divine Providence with neg-
lect and disregard for the interests of the poor. The
evil lay, not in any deficiency of the blessings which we
enjoyed, but in the imperfect distribution, which pre.
vented a fair enjoyment of the benefits which we pos-
sessed, and he thought this was not the act of God but
the act of man, and he believed that the aggregate wealth
of the country, if honestly distributed, would more than
suffice for the full enjoyment of every member of the
community. And was there not every reason why this
distribution should be made? It was the labour bestowed
upon the several articles of commerce which gave them
all the value they possessed. This labour and degree it
was which constituted the standard of value. Now, he
found that there were natural equivalents subsisting
between the several great articles of consumption, and
it was the labour expended in procuring them, or in
adapting them to the use of mankind, which gave them
all the value they possessed, and which constituted the
rule by which these equivalents were measured. For
the sake of elucidating this position, he would take the
three articles of corn, gold, and silver. lie would sub-
stitute corn for labour, as that was the main staple of
subsistence, and better represented the value of labour
than anything else. That it was labour, and labour
alone, which gave to each of these equivalents their
peculiar value was . evident from the fact that,
in times of danger and trial, it was on the
sinews of the strong that the country relied for
protection and :safety. Yet how miserably had
this Bill of Sir Robert Peel's effected the population of
the country and cut down their powers. It appeared
from the report of the Health of Towns Commission
that the people in the manufacturing districts were fast
degenerating both in size and power, and it was a noto-
rious fact that the tall and powerful men who, in former
times, were readily obtained in Cumberland and West-
moreland for the regiments of the Guards, were now but
seldom met with. Sir R. Peel wished to dwarf every-
thing to his gold standard, and with an ignorance of
historical facts, or a wilful misuse of them, if he was not
ignorant, he had passed his Bill of 1819 to perpetuate
that oppression under which the poor were destined by
him at least always to groan. The whole mistake lay
in this—the confusion between the standard of value and
the measure of value. Now, by Sir Robert Peel's
scheme, gold was made to perform the double function
of both the measure and the standard of value. The
fact was, that if indirect taxation did not come in to
defeat the natural order of things, it was comparatively