The Sun.
London, England, 1842-10-21 00:00:00

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L OND ON
FRID IY MORNING. OCTOBER 21, 1842.

The other great project of the Whig party in
America, to which Mr. WEBSTER is devotedly
attached, is the establishment by.the Govern-
ment of some general and universal bank. On
this subject, he says:—
" Another great and original object of the Revolu-
tion of 1840 was the restoration of a sound and uni-
form currency. Our troubles did not begin in the
want of money, nor with the Compromise Act, but
with the derangement of the currency in 1833. For
this great evil of a disordered currency no provision'
has yet been made. Until some provision (be made)
of unzform value throughout
for a general currency
the Union, I shall be hard to be persuaded that we
can see a return of our former prosperity." " There is
an absolute necessity," be further says, " this
country for a common, medium of
uniform, and me
cheap
exchange, for a machine which ll eqztalise debt and
credit from one end rf the countrytothe other, and
with the same velocity with which steam carrlei men
and merchandise. We must have for the country a
large and liberal provision f
hazes, really cheap
and uniform, such as exisoterdex‘c ur
when many millions
could at any time be exchanged for less than three
quarters per cent. between the most distant portions
of the country. How can we reach this goal but
by the authority:of the General Government."
On those principles Mr. WEBSTER, the chie f
currency man of the Whigs, and the Whig party,
arc prepared to act. For their sake that party
effected what he calls a revolution. But is not a
ig sound and uniform currency"—a "currency of
uniform value," a mere chimera—the baseless
vision of a dreamer? -Where and when did such
an instrument ever exist ? The nearest approxi-
mation to it is the precious metals; but as trade
expands or contracts, and as the supply of them
increases or decreases, they vary in valtic in rela-
tion, to everything bought and sold. Every
newspaper, which tells us of rates of exchange,
informsus that gold and silver are dearer in some
places than in others. Small as they are

in bulk it costs something to convey
them from place to place, which necessarily
causes, even where the communication is the most
free, a variation in their value in relation to
other commodities. Our own currency, consisting
mainly of paper convertible into gold, is gene-
rally supposed to be as little liable to fluctuation
as the currency of any kingdom of Europe ;
but have we not, within the last twenty years,
seen variations in its value, which have at one
time lent wings to speculation, and at an-
other have chained our dismembered indus-
try to the earth ? Communicating with all
the commercial nations of the globe, what-
ever disorders the currency of England ne-
cessarily disorders theirs to some extent, in-
dependently of all their internal causes of
fluctuation ; and we may, therefore, safely
assert that in no part of the world now, and at
no time, was any such instrument in existence,
nor can it ever exist, as Mr. WEBSTER risks
the fate of his party, and the peace of his coun-
try, to establish by an Act of Congress.
We are obliged, when we read such phrases
as " cheap medium of exchange, which shall
equalise debt and credit with the velocity of
steam navigation," to suppose that Mr. WEB-
STER has been extremely unfortunate in his
reporter. Such language sounds like the rhodo-
montade of a visionary, not the sober words
of a statesman carefully pondering over the public
good, and what he is able to accomplish. He
proposes to provide, by the authority of the
General Government, a large and liberal provi-
sion, of exchanges, 'ready, cheap, and uniform ;
a gigantic project, which, if it were only practical,
surpasses, we will venture to say, any project
ever yet conceived by the most despotic Govern-
ment for the presumed benefit of commerce. In
all these observations, Mr. WEBSTER seems to us
bank or currency mad, and we seek in vain in
them for any glimmering of the sagacious and
cool-headed negotiator. When such are his
opinions, and the opinions of his party, we can-
not be surprised that lie has been unable to
remedy " the evils of a disordered currency,"
and that " even a Whig senate would not pass
Mr. EWING'S Bill." Such wild language and
wild schemes, to the credit of the Amerhans,
were not sanctioned even in the delirium of ,a
party contest and party triumph; and, in spite of
Mr. WEBSTER'S endeavours to "hush the storm,"
it arose and scattered the Whigs, of which he is
one of the leaders.
We are surprised that he should talk of" ex-
changes," and immediately jump to the conclu-
sion that a means of providing them can only be
found by the authority of the General Govern-
ment. But in what do the several States of
America differ, as to commercial transactions, from
the several States of Europe, all of which settle
their exchanges in a ready and easy manner,
without the help of a Federal Congress le-
gislating for France, England, and Ame-
rica? Exchanges grow from commerce, and
do not need the regulating hand of Government.
Indeed, our merchants would look with some
degree of astonishment were our Government to
interfere with the exchanges between England
and the United States, and between England
and France. As the several distinct political
States of the world cannot have any general
Congress to make laws for them, and provide
them one uniform measure of value, as the com-
merce between them regulates the subject
itself, so the commerce between the different
States of the Union would regulate it, though
the General Government were not to interfere
with it. Mr. WEBSTER, by his proposal, convicts
himself of a very ignorant ambition.
He boasts very much of his long acquaintance
with the currency question. It has been, he
says, " the study of his life." Thirty years ago,
" when the subject of a mixed currency was
much discussed in both Hcuses of Parliament, I
paid the greatest attention to the controversy."
" I read everything at all valuable written or
spoken on the subject." On this vast erudition
he ventures to assure his countrymen that the
" measure submitted the last session to Congress
is the best and only measure for the country."
The source of his knowledge inspires us with
the deepest distrust of his conclusions. An Ame-
rican statesman who draws the rules of his con-
duct from the politics of Europe must necessarily
go wrong. He should not be ignorant of what
is said and what is done here, but the origin of
political power, with the form of the political con-
trivance, and the distribution of property, are so
essentially different in Europe and America,
that he should study the course pursued by the
Governments of Europe rather to shun than to
follow it.
We all know that here the power of control-
ling the currency has been assumed to be the
prerogative of the Crown. The persons who
took possession of the different countries of Eu-

' rope also in time took possession of as much of
their money as they could seize, and they claimed
the privilege to issue it, to debase it, to alter it
as suited their purposes. We all know, too, that
they successively tampered- with the currency,
first with the metallic currency, and afterwards
with the paper currency, so that not one country
of Europe has escaped successive monetary con-
vulsions, which have inflicted more injury on
society than famine and pestilence. These are
truths almost as familiar to us as our A B C; and
should not American statesmen—who have
amongst them no Crown with its privi-
leges derived from barbarous times—be anxious
to lay down rather than to take up a powerwhich
has been used at all times, and being founded on
error can only be used, to the injury of the com-
monwealth?
Money of all kinds, like exchanges, grows from
commerce. It depends on two things—the esti-
mate or value which men in the course of nature

come to put on the precious metals, and the quan-
tity of them procured or procurable. Over these
two essential elements of a metallic currency,
Governments can exercise no control. They can-
not alter the value of gold or silver, and they can-
. not augment or reduce the quantity of them in
the common market of the world. A paper cur-
rency, first and last, whatever shape it may take,
is only a promise to pay, or a security fur pay-
' rnent of certain quantities of gold or silver—(if
these be determined by weight only, so much the
better, so much the easier and simpler)—and all
which a Government has to do or can have to do
with paper money is to hold the party making
the promise to the fulfilment of his engagement.
Further than that a Government can exercise
no useful influence over a currency ; and „,

regard the failure of the Whigs in America to

usurp a control over it, after the manner o

European Governments, as extremely creditable

to the good sense of the Americans.

What is plainly wrong in the several States
of the Union, is the charters and privileges
granted to a great variety of banks, the chief
possessors of which, being at the same time the
most influential men in the State, have,
whenever it has pleased them, released those
ban!zs from that obligation to pay, according to
promise, which it was the imperative duty of
the Government to enforce. The not enforcing
these obligations is the source of all the money
contusion in the United States. The separate
States have imitated, to their dishonour, the
crowned Kings of the old world, and have
brought more confusion on those otherwise
prosperous commonwealths than could have been
worked by an invasion. If Mr. WEBSTER had
studied the phenomena of his own country, and
the principles of society, instead of studying the
financial errors of Europe, we are of opinion that
he would have come to a similar conclusion, ind,
would have spared us the unpleasant task'of ex'.2
posing the palpable errors of a man for Whom,
in spite of such aberrations, we are disposed to
entertain great respect.

Every person person must, we think, rejoice to learn
from every quarter that great exertions are mak-
ion-, to
(
improve agriculture, and increase the sub-
sistence
of the people.- It is well observed, in a
clever pamphlet, by THONIAS SHARPE S3IITH,
Esq., on the " Economy 0. v
Nations"—.not that
the observation is new, but we require to be re-
minded of it—that it is '; the desire or the want
of food which is the mainspring of the humin, as '
of all other animal economy." i! What
44,
incii.