The Sun.
London, England, 1845-02-10 00:00:00

4L041

LONDON, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1845.

The 'Premier's remarkable faculty of saying sen-
tentious nothings with a gravity which almost disarms
the suspicion and mocks the experience of those who
hear him oftenest and know him best, has not often
been more strongly exemplified than in his answer, on
Thursday night last, to a question from Mr. MA-
CAULAY, on. the subject of the Right Hon. Baronet's
intentions with regard to the Small Note Circulation
of Scotland. That answer was the most elaborate
array of many words to conceal half a fraction of one
idea that we have ever seen in print. But we are
far from undervaluing Sir ROBERT'S ingenuity so
much a§ to imagine that this was an unartificial dis-
play. On the contrary, we think it was a very able
mode of.extricatinghimself out of the springe which
had beeh set to catch him, unawares, at an answer.
the
It sounded, for first sentence or so, so like an
ensWerabOnt•tO•be•giaVea qrxu t
n, that.
ck even Mr. MACAULAY'S
extraordinary powers n
have been staggered, perception may well
fo
fatuus illusion that dancevd'ehemeomenta, by the
before him, a 3 if it
were a reply. Two moments of bewilderment were
enough. The Speaker called on another Order of
the Day, and the cheat had vanished, and could not
be recalled. Yet we agree with ;the writer of the ,
money article in the Times, that careful observation
might detect, through the studied ambiguity of the
Premier's language, a foregone conclusion arrived at
touching "the doom" of the small bank-notes of
Scotland (and of Ireland). Like Mr. MACAULAY'S,
Cur present business is with the Scotch circulation
only. Now we differ; tote ccelo, from the Contempo-
rary we have jast referred to, both in our estimate
of the value of the existing system on which that cir-
eulatian i 3 based, and in the degree of apprehension
with which we regard the new experiment about to
be ventured upon by Sir ROBERT PEEL. It is really
to be regretted, in our opinion, that Sir ROBERT has
no political prochain anti, who, in virtue of that rela-
tion to him, might apply for, and obtain from her
MAJESTY, or her MAJESTY'S Cabinet, an effective
inhiLition, a controlling or restraining power, to
v.ithhold him from damage and waste to the fortunes


and interests of the empirelwhich have been:confided
to his keeping. It is to be feared, however, that
were Lord MELVILLE, or Sir GEORGE CLERK, or
Lord DUNFERMLINE, himself, even, on behalf of
themselves and all Scotland, as parties to their suit,
to bring such a plea to the foot of the throne, he
would be dismissed as not coming before it with
clean hands. The moneyed interest of Scotland has
weakened and damnified the powerful case it would
otherwise have to urge against being drugged by Sir
ROBERT PEEL'S nostrum through the fact of its having
been, if not a particeps criminis, an apathetic looker-on
when the same visitation was inflicted on the currency
of this country by his notorious " complement " of
the measure of 1819, last year. We assiduously
warned the Scottish people that their turn would
come next. The English nation has been operated upon,
and neither Scotland nor Ireland, we are told, can
now escape the same fate. Thus it is that Jumus is
justified : " what is fact to-day becomes precedent
to-morrow." But our sympathies are still with Scot-
land in her coming trial; and we expect her to offer
a firm, an unwavering, a " no-compromise," a com-
bined, cordial, sustained, and, therefore, triumphant
opposition to the mischievous meddling of our High
Tamworth Currency Doctor. Let the Scotch repre-
sentatives take warning by the listlessness, the indo-
lence, the infatuation, and the apathy of their English
colleagues ; show a firm front from the first day the
Premier displays his battle (the 14th inst.), and by
maintaining it unyielding, resolute, and prompt at
all times for action, they may be sure of vanquishing
a Minister whose progress has been at all times iden-
tified with concessions to principles that he has at
some former period or other loudly declaimed against.
We have, in several former articles, demonstrated
the unparalled advance—the steady, unfluctuating
improvement—of Scotland, in agricultural and manu-
facturing production—in the diffusion of competency
among the middling—and her demand for industrial
labour for the lower—classes of her community; in
the encouragement she has been hitherto enabled to
afford to a system of husbandry, the most enterpris-
ing, economical, and incessant—altogether, perhaps,
the most perfect—to be found in the world—and to
the corresponding scale in which the moral conduct
and education of her people have been raised. All
these important movements have been coincident with,
and in a main degree attributable to, that happy and
intelligible system of currency which she has now
enjoyed for about 150 years. That system has sur-
vived the shock of two great popular rebellions, many
wars, many adverse seasons. It was unmoved by,
and almost insensible to, the monetary earthquake of
1825-26, and utterly unscathed by later convulsions,
the sad evidences of the fatal empiricism which had
been practised here in 1819, and is once more in pesti-
lent activity in 1844 and 1845. Scotland was permitted
to retain her small bank-note circulation, whilst pri-
vate and commercial credit in this part of the kingdom
was paralyzed for want of such aid. Scotland
c,nitinued to advance in commercial importance,
in political weight, in social happiness, in
moral greatness ; for her steps in these noble
destinations were never impeded by the obstructive
fetters and golden manacles of an unexpat sive, con-
tracted, costly, and unadaptab'e metallic currency.
The banking and monetary system of Scotland has
kept on in an unbroken march of improvement and
importance, extending to industry its fair wages, to
trade its fair markets and returns, to capital and pro-
perty the means of representation and evolution ; to
all mercantile dealings, security and confidence. In
England the reverse of such a system—a theoretical
fallacy forced into practical working by injudicious
Acts of Parliament—a gold standard currency, as it
is called—has cramped the energies of commerce, con-
tracted the representation, and taxed, in the most
arbitrary manner, the transfer of property and
capital, thrown dovs n industrial wages below the
lowest subsistence scale, lowered the prices of our
highly-taxed products to the level of the quasi un-
taxed products of continental industry, sapped our
commercial credit, largely impaired our manufactur-
ing superiority, and disorganized private credit to its
very fiundations. It has accumulated capital in huge
masses in a few hands ; its inevitable tendency is to
preclude its distribution into the hands of the many.
These masses are unproductive, as to any of the
ordinary and legitimate branches of trade ; they are
all powerful in the faculty of accumulation when
embarked in the enormous operations of reckless
rnonopolies,—or unscrupuious gambling in public
funds and enterprises, native or foreign. They are so
much of the specific volume of the life-blood of the
Commonwealth abstracted from its system, perhaps in-
fused into others,—never again transmitted, in healthy
action and regular distribution, through its o w n.Un der
this PEEL system, certain classes, composing the cre-
ditor as well as the realised capital interest, are infi-
' nitely benefited ; the other classes, comprising the
debtor and the industrial interest, are infinitely pre-
judiced. The annuitant, the fundholder, the mort-
gagee, being empowered and enabled to receive and pay
in gold at a fixed rate or standard of value, purchase
to the best advantage—that is, at gold or natural prices.
The debtor on an old mortgage, the manufacturer, the
artisan, the man who wants to convert property or
labour into money, buys this money at the dearest
price. The one to discharge his engagements, the
other to acquire his subsistence, pays in the first case
far more than he ever received on account of them ;
in the second, far more than his reduced wages and
his heavy taxation make equitable or even tolerable.
Pauperism, therefore, increases throughout the radius
of our system ; the plethora of capital enlarges itself at
a few isolated spots within it. The extremities de-
cline and die ; the centre preternaturally fattens and
corrupts. Domestic trade languishes, domestic in-
dustry declines from its twin-like connexion with
trade. The condition of the one necessarily
reacts upon the other. With a revenue
of fifty-four millions for the last year,
with a surplus, at the close of it, of income over ex-
penditure of 3,356,0001., with an actual balance in
the Exchequer of 6,254,0001. on the 9th of January,
1845, we have scores of thousands of famishing, un-
employed artizans, with hundreds of thousands of
destitute paupers, and millions of pounds of annual
poor-rate to pay for their maintenance. This is so
under our present currency system, and the evil goes
on increasing. It WAS NOT so before Sir ROBERT
PEEL was permitted, in 1819, to put upon the statute
book his two-sided Bill—a Bill of infinite aggrandise-
ment to the private capitalist, of incalculable mischief
to the national welfare and resources. Let Scotland
regard this picture of our gold standard system and
its consequences ;—and contemplate, in contrast, that
which exhibits her own happy and instructive history
under the system common to both countries, from
1797 to 1819. If she considers the gigantic efforts we
made under the latter, and the brilliant triumphs which
rewarded our confidence in it with the most signal
success and opulence ever recorded in history, and if
she will then look at our social declension and misery
since 1822, she will assuredly and firmly resist, and
cast from her the fatal millstone which the Premier is
obviously bent upon tying round her neck.

It is somewhat curious to observe in how different
a manner a French Ministry and an English Premier
regard the important business of providing, on the
coasts of the country whose affairs they respectively
preside over, harbours of refuge. A morning Con-
temporary very well observed, a day or two ago, on
this subject (to which it will be in the recollection of
our readers we have ourselves repeatedly entreated the
grave attention of the public), that
" The French Chambers have been discussing the pro-
priety of preparing fortified breakwaters to shelter
armed steamers upon that portion of their coast opposite
our shores, and have voted money for their erection;
while English Commissioners have recommended the
construction of harbours of refuge in our Channel,
wherein our mercantile marine may find protection from
the storm in peace, and froai hostile cruisers in war.
Each nation is acting wisely in its generation, for the
most effectual means to prevent war consist in pre-
parations for it."

Sir ROBERT PEEL, if we may judge of his in-
tentions on the subject from a speech which he de-
livered on Wednesday evening, has not yet made up
his mina on any one point enforced in the report of
his own Commissioners. The French Chambers, we
see, have already voted the money for the new break-
waters and forts that are called for by similar
exigencies on their part, to those on our's which gave
rise to the Commissbn, of whose labours we lately
published the very valuable results.
So long ago as the spring or summer of 1843, the Duke
of WELLINGTON had
lael
impressed
way, the
upon a Parliamentary
Committee, in his empe very great urgency
housesou r s 0 aunthderonth.sehrorfeosr, taifineddo
fpcoosnts.,
moforeerepeatrintigeulia)iroleykon