The Sun.
London, England, 1827-10-04 00:00:00

Sinking Fund, during an expensive war, when
every year the Loan raised increased in a ratio
much greater than that of the Debt paid off. It
is, in fact, the race. of the Tortoise and the Hare
increaseis fairly impossible through want
of food.—Morning Chronicle.
Our city article represents some proceedings
taken, or beginning to be taken, on the part of
country bankers, against the introduction of
brand; banks in various districts. For our own
parts, we . certainly, do . not wholly approve
of the proceedings of the Bank of. Eng-
land in the internal management of its con-
cerns ; but we view the general system of pri-
vate banking with much more suspicion and
dread. Country banks, as banks of deposit to
the timid inhabitants of a neighbourhood who
might fear to retain disposable. cash in their
houses, might be tolerable—perhaps useful : but
when the object to which these deposits is ap-
plied is to enable the farmer to keep his crop
from market till prices are raised, then internal
mischief begins ; whereas the general employ-
ment of Bank capital is the promotion of com-
merce, the Bank of England having hitherto in-
terfered but little, comparatively, in rural con-
cerns. But it may be asked, will not these
branch banks supply and propagate all the local
mischiefs (for there are many, besides that which
we have specified) resulting from country banks ?
Undoubtedly this is a point very much to be
apprehended, and should be watched and guard-
ed against, not by the Bank of England itself—
for that, of course, will look only to its re-
turns,—but by the public at. large, and by
those who watch over the interests of the State.
However, it should be observed, that the at-
tention at head-quarters in the Bank of Eng-
land being chiefly fixed upon commercial and
manufacturing speculations, and the general
funds of the corporation being appliad to
these objects, there is, we should hope, less
reason to apprehend the misapplication of the
gains arising from provincial establishments to
injurious purposes of local aggrandizement. The
blood which is sent out from the centre to the
extremities will return in due circulation to the
centre again, invigorating, indeed, the remote
regions, but not allowing them
sto protrude into
excrescences, or swell into morbid tumours. But
a passage in our city article amuses us much.
The country bankers, it is stated, are accusing
the London Bank of air, attempt " to monopolize
the currency of the country." The country
bankers, then, and the Bank in Threadneedle-
street, are debating to whom appertains the cur-
rency of the realm ! Where, then, we ask, is
George IV., King of England, and where are
his loyal subjects ? If there be a right belonging
to Royalty exclusively, it is that of being master
of the circulation. Here are two curs quarrelling
for a bone to which neither has a right. We
should say to both of them,—" Shagtails, be
off: that which you are snarling for is the prey
of the lordly mastiff."—The following is the
extract from the City Article referred to :

It has been the subject of frequent remark in the city
with what apathy the private bankers, both in town and
country, have regarded the recent proceedings of the Bank
of England ; and how long they have remained passive
under the adoption of measures which must tend so mate-
rially to curtail their influence, and to reduce the profits of
their trade. This forbearance has at length reached its
limits, and a considerable number of the leading country
bankers are at this moment in London, whose object is
understood to be that of organizing a system of measures,
for effeetual resistance to the growing influence of the Bank
of England. - Their interests they consider to be in the
most direct manner invaded by the establishment of the
branch banks, since the plan, if vigorously pursued, (and
its patrons in the Bank-parlour make no secret of the ex-
tent of their views), threatens the extermination of the
present system of country banking, together with a mono-
poly of the currency of the country.. The indications of
such ambitions views on the ' part of the Bank Directors
will be held no longer doubtful, whenever it is considered
that the original grounds for the establishment of branch
banks—that of assisting those parts of the country where
the credit of the banks had most suffered—has been
departed from, and that they have fixed themselves
in towns where credit was preserved . during the whole
of the panic, :and where the existing banks had been
proved quite adequate to the wants of the commer-
cial communities among which they were placed.
The more intelligent proprietors of country banks
are willing wough, -we believe, to admit that defects
existed in the established method of provincial banking;
but they all contend that those defects were capable of being
reformed, and that at all events the destruction of a system
of so long standing, and so deeply-rooted in the habits of the
people, is a measure of great harshness and severity, were
nothing taken into the account bUt its effects on their own
interests ; but that it is much More to be deprecated when
it involves, by the extension.of the branch banks which are
to be raised upon their ruin, the most serious consequences,
in their opinion, to the country also. No plan of proceed-
ing appears yet to have been organized on the part of the
provincial bankers, but they have solicited an introduction
'to the Committee of London bankers, which has been
granted, and preliminary conferences have taken place on
the subject. The country bankers now collected in Lon-
don are from different parts of England, not from those
towns alone in which branch banks have been fixed, and
they are all of them extremely earnest in the business they
have undertaken, some of them having expressed their de-
termination to suspend all attention to their private affairs
until they have brought on a fair trial of strength with the
overgrown corporation of the capital. A conflict between
the private banking interest and that of the Bank of Eng-
land is thus likely soon to become one of the leading topics
of discussion in the city.— Times.
The Whig and Radical Press, the conductors
of which are the proteges, the dependents, the
friends, and in some instances the Parliamentary
0‘ Swiss" of the present Administration, • per-
severes in its efforts to revile and calumniate the
Magistracy. of. England. The English Magis-
tracy consists of the flower of the English
Gentry—of the individuals belonging to this in,
telligent, virtuous, wealthy, and, in every souse
of the word, respectable body, who in their se-
veral counties are most distinguished for intelli-
gence, virtue, wealth, and respectability. It fol-
lows of course, that as a body they can have no
interests or feelings but what are identified with
the well-being and good order of society. They
bestow their services gratuitously upon the com-
munity; they conduct the administration of cri-
minal justice in its first steps in all cases ; and in
cases of minor offences, which from their greater
frequency are perhaps of the greatest aggregate
importance, they conduct it throughout. These
laborious and unpaid duties they have discharged
from time immemorial ; and they have so dis-
charged them, that in every part of England the
office of Magistrate is
.popularly held to ',confer
dignity upon its possessor ; to confer a claim to
the confidence and affection of his less elevated
neighbours ; to he a Mark set upon him, indi-
cating that he is imbued with truly English sett-
timents and feelings—in other words, that it is
tin to one that he will not turn out, upon fur-
ther inquiry, to be either a Radical or a Whig.
Far be it from us to. affront . a body so consti-
tuted, and having so acted, by any unnecessary
defence against the imputations of its. habitual
and systematic assailants. The Gentlemen of
England, as a class, must act .differently from
what they have yet done, and be attacked by
worthier assailants, ere they can require to be
defended otherwise than by the effective, though
silent testimony of their persevering and patriotic
services. But we nevertheless feel it to be our
duty, now that these assailants flatter themselves
that they, or which is the same tiling, their pa-