The Sun.
London, England, 1842-06-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURIgALS.

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
GLOBE.—The Standard professes, as our readers
know, to represent the Conservative Dems-cracy, which
we understand to mean the sincere bigotry and honest
ignorance of its party in the country. How reconcile
sincere bigotry and honest ignorance to condtr t on the
part of Ministers which must clearly show those who
have any glimmering of sense that they, at least, have
been dupes 1 The Standard's mode of doing
this difficult and rather dirty work is characteristic.
The Standard has been in the habit of amusing the
" Conservative Democracy " with d. clamations against
the " money-power," and representing the " money-
power" as inspiring in an especial manner the late Mi-
nistry. The Standard has been conveniently oblivious
of the obvious fact, that as the landed interest claim
to be the possessors of the bulk of the solid weal h,
and employers of by far the largest proportion of the
labour of the country, the landed interest must, in fact,
wield the greatest proportion of this abused money-
power. And so indeed they do ; they form the greatest
" money-power" in the country, and the power which is
most determined that its money shall rule all the rist, and
that legislation shall be conducted with a sole view to its
prices—i. e. its money-power. We need not ask whether
this money-power was arrayed on the side of the late
Government. But as the present Ministers find it neces-
cessary to take a leaf out of the book of their prede-
cessors (however garbled or interpolated) in the chapter
of commercial relaxations, the Standard is put to its
shifts to find a defence for their doings which it can
hope to render palatable to its readers, the " Conserva-
tive Democracy." In this extremity it is compelled to
have recourse to its old bugbear, the money-power. The
money-power which influenced the Whigs, dictates, it
seems, to the Tories ; and the Tory Ministers are not to
be blamed for giving way to it, though the Whigs were!
STANDARD.—In the House of Commons Mr. C.
Buller offered a complaint of the effect of the late pro-
clamation upon the subject of the gold coin, which gave
rise to a debate of considerable length. The Chancellor
of the Exchequer defended the proclamation, on the
ground that it had been called for by the pressing impor-
tunities of bankers and merchants, andjustified the seem-
ingly abrupt manner in which it was issued by the neces-
sity of using secrecy to obviate an opportunity for exten-
sive frauds. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made one
observation which deserves general attention, namely that
it is an offence legally punishable to refuse coin of full
weight. The question is one of great difficulty, as is
proved by the conflicting opinions of the most able men
at different periods of our history. On one side there is
the inconvenience of such a proclamation as has been
issued—an inconvenience which we need not describe, as
few but the very richest have not felt it. On the other,
there is the certainty that any different course would
cause a mutilation of the coin so extensive that scarcely
a single piece of full weight would remain in cir-
ciliation, or find its way back to the Mint. Let it ence
be known that a sovereign, how'much soever deficient in
weight, retains its nominal value, and all the ingenious
processes of sweating, clipping, plugging, &c., would be
put into universal activity. Perhaps a partial remedy
might be found by forming an estimate of fair wear and
tear according to the age of the eoin, and fixing it for a
definite time at a value proportioned to that estimate—
say, the sovereign of George the Third at 19s. 6d., the
sovereigns of George the Fourth and William the Fourth
at 19s. 9d., the sovereign of the present reign at 20s. ;
this is pretty much the estimate which the public has
formed in practice. Still the remedy would be but par-
tial and insufficient as a guard against fraud, for many
of the older coins retain their full weight, as not having
been used in circulation, and some of the new have been
diminished by dishonest practices. On the whole the
Ministers have, perhaps, taken the wiser course, though
that course is unavoidably productive of great hardship
harship, however, which necessarily wears itself out,
and which has already been sensibly alleviated.