The Sun.
London, England, 1827-11-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We have been amused in a higher degree than
we can boast of being instructed, by a pamphlet
which is just put forth from somebody engaged
in the country bulking interest.. The author
makes no disguise about his object, which is to
attack the monopoly of the Bank of England,
or at least the spreading of its operations by
means of branch banks throughout the country,
and to cry up the system of country banking by
individuals, as one more favourable to what he
calls " public credit." Now it is far from our
inclination to bolster up the Colossus of Thread-
needle-street, either by panegyric or by argu-
ment : we think it has' swelled to an inconve-

nient bulk, and been at times the cause or en-
courager of serious abuses in the currency and
commerce of the empire. But if the pamphlet
writer should succeed in establishing even more
than we have admitted against the Bank of Eng-
land, his work would be still to do : the charaes
ter and value of the country banks—such banks
as the law of the country has permitted, and sej
the people, to the ruin of hundreds of thousands,
have endured—would not gain a jot in the opi-
nion of any man of understanding. On the
contrary, the more incapable the Bank of Eng-
land might be found of supporting a safe and
pure system of credit throughout the nation, the
more absolute would be the necessity of so con,
stituting an efficient power for the assay and esti-
mate—the restraint and government—of those
who offered themselves to undertake the important
trust of provincial bankers, as to protect
the community from the evil which has so
often and so fatally oppressed it—natnely,
that of desperate paupers, covering the king-
dom with ostentatious establishments no more
solid than houses of cards-enabling needy
adventurers, like themselves, to plunge into
commercial enterprises, and to swindle credit
from the honest and industrious, without
a shilling of real capital to depend on ; thus
creating for the moment a fictitious and unproe
fitable bustle, stuffing the pockets of the whole
community, within a day's journey of their ope-
rations, with paper promises, riot representing
the precious metals, or any other species of
marketable property, or convertible, when called
for, into aught but ashes ; and thus, when their
day of bankruptcy came, involving the poorer
and more credulous classes of the people—the
least competent to look beyond the surface of
magnificent pretensions, or to detect. the hollow-
ness and rottenness within—in irretrievable ruin:.
But the fact is, that the pamphlet or manifesto of
the country bankers has not established Any
thing on any side of the question. He is
man of short sentences and shallow views.
" The general welfare of the nation," quoth he.
depends on the integrity of public credit ;"
and then he rattles away into ay explanation of
public credit," by whiCh it appears that he
means, not public credit, but private credit, viz.,
the confidence which man reposes in man, a?
being able and willing to pay in commercial
transactions ; and this he styles the very life of
public credit. But, with submission, we beg
leave to say that, to be useful, credit ought to
be well founded, inasmuch as misplaced confi-
dence—such, for example, as in the recent me-
mory of every man who does not choose to
forget it—such as was given within these three
years to hundreds of plausible insolvents, who
had been cheating the public for years with
notions of their great capital, stability, and so
forth, until they burst like shells in the midst of
their plundered customers--ethat sort of confi-
dence is not " the life" of wholesome credit,
but the death of it ; and if we could be sa-
tisfied that the Bank of England was now
labouring successfully to prevent the resur-
rection of the tribe of bankers in whom that
sort of confidence used to be, reposed, we
should deem that it rendered an invaluable
service to the country. The writer insists
that the Bank of England cannot possibly,
" so extend its ramifications as to meet the exi-
gencies of the country," If he understood the
bearing of his own arguments, he would feel that
this was an unanswerable admission against him-
self; for the Bank of England could not exer-
cise what he calls a monopoly. Men of large
property, in the character of bankers, would
enter the lists with it, in every county or district
where the Bank had proved itself " unable to
meet the exigences" of public credit, and then
there is no harm done. But when the Bank is
charged with a " spirit of monopoly," we confess
our belief that the charge is not unfounded ; the
Bank is like other traders, and they are all mo-
nopolists. Every country banker would be a
monopolist, if the cupidity of each man's neigh-
bour did not operate as a practical check upon
his own. The misfortune is, that the Bank
charter will, for a short time, serve as an artifi-
cial support to that greedy spirit which the ru-
lers of Threadneedle-street exhibit in an equal,
but no higher degree, than the meanest specu-
lator of the most paltry town, who sets himself
up as a banker. The formal and legalized part
of this monopoly is an undoubted grievance so
far as it goes, and we trust, will never be re-
newed. In the mean time, there are two circum-
stances to be considered, which may go far to-
wards
mitigating the apprehensions of disinteres-
ted men on this subject—for with the selfish
croakings of mere partizans on either side we have
excess
nrec
asoisnto,
and
neh r ndas
vu—cecohiblmse
epte.louNl::th:rectf cannot
bonuroassntte
and solid
fisloscltridoubted
daiptcredit
nthat
would
Hofenitaittlee yearsthem t
too carry contend
on
retonopme
ormtttryhrieihr r
sdca
sae:,
with safety to themselves and
are the men least likely to suffiWtuehrsietthsibee.--erailoi k2uidsnl.gy
from
any scattered competition, which the Bank of
Threadneedle-street, formidable as are the re-
sources at her centre, could raise by means of
distant branches, against the accumulations -61
local capital throughout the great extent of Eng-
land.—Times.

him, is peculiarly applicable to
The Fable of the Boy who called out " Wolf,
wWooullfd,"
bteillileavte last, when the wolf came, nobody
the statements in the Newspapers respecting
Greece and Turkey. The accounts relating to
the Levant which have hitherto appeared have
been in general so completely without founda-
tion, that the public may well be pardoned for
placing
no faith in any thing that they hear from
that quarter. It would be difficult to say whe-
ther the Greeks or the English have surpassed in
these affairs of the imagination. For our parts
we have been so sickened with the endless con-
tradictory reports of what is doing at Constan-
tinople, each successive one delivered with as
much gravity as its predecessor, that it is with
reluctance we have ever touched on the subect.
There has been no difference between the En-
glish and Russian Ministers in Constantinople,
that any of the Ministers in London, either
English or foreign, know any thing of up to
this day ; and it is hardly, therefore, venturing
too far, to say that the report of such difference

7;77.