The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-08 00:00:00

nounced that the Member for Montrose postponed his

motion relative to smuggling tobacco, spirits, silks,
and other articles, charged with high import and ex-
cise duties, till Monday.
In answer to a question from Mr. MAcAuLAY, Sir
ROBBRT PEEL said he could not enter into any de-
tails with respect to late transactions in Gwalior till
the official dispatches were received.

Mr. LABOLCHERE asked Sir ROBERT PEEL if the
statement said to have been made by M. GUIZOT, in
the Chamber of Deputies, that the commercial nego-
tiations between France and England were at an end,
was founded on fact ?

Sir ROBERT PEEL answered in the affirmative,
and had no doubt that in the opinion of the French
Government there was no probability of effecting a
reduction of commercial duties by actual treaty.
Mr. PAKINGTON obtained leave to bring in a Bill
to define the period for holding quarter-sessions in
cities and boroughs in England and Wales.
Mr. LAROUCHERE moved that an address be pre-
sented to her MAJESTY, praying her MAJESTY to
adopt such measures as may appear best calculated to
maintain and improve the commercial relations be-
tween the United Kingdom and the Brazils. After
giving a brief history of the commercial relations of
this country with Brazils, and the increasing trade of
France with that empire, he stated the 'difficulties
with which British merchants had to contend in car-
rying on trade in that quarter. In the article of
sugar, for instance, the duty of Muscovado sugar in
France was 265. (d., in Germany 155. 4d., while in
this country it was 63s.—an actual prohibition. His
object, however, in bringing forward the motion, was
to ascertain what were the views of her MAJESTY'S
Government with regard to the renewal of the treaty
about to expire. The speech cannot well be abridged.
It was on one of the most important commercial
questions which can come before Parliament, and we,
therefore, refer our readers to the report.
Mr. GLADSTONE, of course, opposed the motion,
and contended that the policy pursued by the present
Government was precisely the same as that pursued
by their predecessors. His speech, altogether, was
most unsatisfactory, and furnished no answer to the
arguments of Mr. LABOUCHERE.

Sir ROBERT PEEL, Lord PALMERSTON, and a
number of other Members, spoke on this important
question ; and, on a division, the motion was rejected
by a majority of 73.
The House adjourned at a Quarter to One o'Clock.

' • The Anti-League party, driven to desperation by
tlie\ progress which the principles of free trade are
milking in every direction, have now resorted to the
-\- desperate expedient of giving false and fabricated
aceliiints of meetings in support of the corn-laws,
z which never were held—resolutions and proceedings
=Ate such meetings, that never were passed, and never
wok place—and of giving names of persons attending
such meetings, who, although they might approve the
published proceedings, never were present at the
meeting.
One of the latest attempts of this kind is an account

of a meeting of " the tenant farmers and landowners
of North Cheshire," held in the Market Hall of
Northwich, on Tuesday last, and which is paraded
through the monopolist press as a most important
affair. Let us just look even at the monopolist an-
nouncement. Foiled in the attempt at holding an
open meeting, because anti-monopolist resolutions
would have been moved, the " tenant-farmers and
landowners of North Cheshire" adjourned to the large
room of the Crown HOtel.

Those of our readers who have ever had the felicity
of seeing the large room at the Crown Hotel at North-
wich, will know—and those who never had the plea-
sure, ought to know—that this said large room covers
a space of about 17 feet by 12, and contains just as
many square feet as rooms of that size usually con-
tain. In this large room a number of persons were
crammed, who having retreated from the Market Hall,
where they were out-numbered, out-voted, and argu-
mentatively ejected, found an asylum, where monopo-
list doctrines might be freely talked, because nobody
could, by any possibility, get in to contradict them.
And in the large room, resolutions were passed, and
speeches made, which, high-sounding and magnilo-
quent as they appear on paper, existed only in die
imagination of the parties reporting them. The
meeting was a failure and a humbug—the resolutions
and the speeches a mere fancy and a delusion.
It is quite true that they were intended to be made
and passed at a meeting intended to be held ; but the
good sense of the people of Northwich prevented the
passing of any such resolutions at a public meeting,
and therefore a hole and corner private affair was re-
sorted to.

Is this the conduct of the Anti-Leaguers ? Is this
the best fight that they can make ? The Duke of
RICHMOND'S " National Anti-League Association,"
got nearly smothered, at Freemason's Hall, a few
evenings ago ; and the same fate seems to await all
such Anti-League meetings, whether held in town or
country. The Anti-Leaguers dare not hold a public
meeting; or, if they do, it is turned against
them. Look at the Richmond meeting the
Somerset County meeting—and all the other
open meetings, down to this very one at
Northwich, which they have attempted to
hold. All have been free trade meetings, and so
they will and must he. The tenant-farmers may be
drilled and schooled; they may be put to say, in har-
mony, the words of " rent, sweet rent ;" but, when they
feel the knuckles of the landlords in their backs, though
they may repeat the words by mouth, they will, in
their hearts, in place of "rent, sweet rent," as set to
music by their landlords, ejaculate " rent, cursed
rent," with their very sincerest feelings.

The intended conversion of the Three-and-a-Half
per Cents. is a topic of engrossing interest in the City,
and forms the subject of many communications from
our Correspondents in the country. We should be
the last persons in the world to undervalue the im-
portance of the operation, or to detract from the gene-
ral impression in its favour, as a step towards the
reduction of the National Debt. And let no man,
say we, regard with indifference any financial mea-
sures in this important direction, merely on account
of the immoderate disparity between the specific means
under immediate consideration, and the mountain of
difficulty which it is the object of these, and of all the
other financial efforts to be hereafter made, in con-
formity therewith, ultimately to remove. A reduction
of 1,000,0001. of capital, for example, would not
represent, in reference to the aggregate of our
Public Debt, a proportion of but 1 to 766. But
there is encouragement, as well as wisdom, in Dr.
JOHNSON'S admonition,—that the first delve of the first
mattock which breaks ground, and the first blow
upon the first pile that is to be driven below the sur-
face, infinitesimally disproportionate though they
he to the total of the same repeated operatious that
must be performed before a bridge can be constructed,
—are yet preliminaries as essential to the production of
the complete fabric as the insertion of the keystones,
or the adjustment of the last block of masonry which
is to terminate the structure.
As a reduction of the Debt, then, we hail with
great satisfaction the proposition for converting the
Three-and-a-Half per Cents. ; but we cannot yet
regard the operation, even considering it only
in the extent to which it goes, as an unmixed good
to the country, until we know a little more of
the intentions of Government as to the mode and
terms of the contemplated reduction. From what
took place in 1830, it is evident that there must be a
very great number of small dividends at present pay-
able on that portion of the public funds. The
reduction of 10s. per cent. of this moderate interest to
such poor annuitants must be severely felt in propor-
tion to the tenuity of their capitals. It is rumoured
that to the proprietors of lowest capitals in such
stocks, in reference to this circumstance, and to the
payment of income-tax by funded property, the Go-
vernment will postpone the conversion of three-and-
a-half per cent. interest to three per cent. only, for
ten years; reducing it, in the meantime, as to the
parties in question, to three-and-a-quarter per cent.
There is this additional—and it is also an
inevitable--evil, attending such financial con-
versions on the part of the Government,
they who are compelled to accept the, offer of
being paid " off," or " out," altogether, are too apt
to be allured by the temptation of higher interest,
to invest their thus retrieved capital in foreign funds
or other inadequate securities, to their own ultimate
loss, perhaps ruin, and to the propagation of that
rage for improvident speculation which released heaps
of capital, under such circumstances, are sure to
excite.

:Our own great anxiety remains unrelieved by the an-
nouncement of the CHANCELLOR ofthe EXCHEQUER as
to the Three-and-a-Half per Cents. What is to be done
with the currency ? If it be not forthwith established on
a sound and permanent basis, such as we have stre-
nuously advocated for example, in the issue of
" Government" notes to the amount of 50,000,000/.,
payable in discharge of taxes, and circulating as a
legal tender—in the meanwhile abrogating the gold
" standard" by repeal of the Act of 1819,
but leaving gold and silver to maintain them-
selves in the circulation,—to increase or to
diminish, in coin or in bullion, according to the de-
mands or exigencies ofthe bullion market ; a crisis must
presently come upon us more terrible than any of the
monetary convulsions which have been experienced
since 1797. Now, we own that we are startled by
the contents of the Letter of " An Observer ;" a
gentleman, we have reason to believe, competent to
write on those subjects with the highest authority.
For " An Observer" gives us an insight into the
" intentions of Government," which our experience
of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S perversity throughout the
whole series of his tampering, yet obstinate, legisla-
tion on the currency, compels us to believe will prove
only too accurate. It is assumed that her MAJESTY'S
Ministers intend-Ist, to suppress country notes issued
by private and joint-stock banks; 2d, to substitute
in their place notes of the Bank of England. This
substitution of one paper for the other, be it observed,
is not a mere equation of currency in which the
public are not concerned ; on the contrary, it will be
seen that it involves an absolute paralysis of banking
stagnation
ndaoton throughoutfitheenergyo the
meksitngdictorm ; a mortal
adewhichis
the genuine fruit of that accommodation as at present
conducted ; and a panic consequent on this
new intervention, this additional blunder of the
Premier, the effects of which it is impossible
to calculate in all their intensity or their extent.
For
under the existing system, the accommodation sup-
plied by any local bank must be drawn from—
Ist, Its actual capital ; 2d, The:amount of its deposits ;
3d, The aggregate of its own circulation in notes.
Suppose the Government plan, announced by an
" Observer," in operation, and what ensues ?

entreat the earnest attention of our readers to the

results :

In the fiat place, the local circulation of the dis-
trict, &c., heretofore supplied by the provincial
bank, is withdrawn—substituted, it is true, by
notes of the Bank of England, but these must be paid
for by the local establishment in hard cash, whatever
be the price of gold in the interim, whatever its ad-
vance upon the Mint price of 3/. 17s. 10fd. per oz.
It is true, also, that the Bank of England, in con-
formity with an arrangement which they have long
been vainly pressing on the voluntary acceptance of
the local banks, are to pay the latter 1/. per cent. on
whatever amount, after the withdrawal of their own
notes, they may be able to keep out of Bank of
England paper. But it is clear " that the loss to the

public and the power of accommodation thus with-