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London, England, 1831-02-07 00:00:00

N°. 13,702.

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LETTER TO LORD ALTHORP ON MR. ATTWOOD'S
MOTION FOR ENQUIRY. TOUCHING THE STATE
OF THE CURRENCY.

RT THE RIM R. CRIITTWELL, RECTOR OF SFZXPRIALL, surrocc.
le: 6d. _ _

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This is a judicious and well timed publication, which it is
a duty to recommend and circulate. In his preface the au-
thor very properly remarks on the peculiar logic of Mr.
Bating, the late money-commission egad.
• " As a banker, I hold Mr. Bar Mg's judgment doubtful by reason
that, from the law of currency' which now aunts, the interest of the
community and the safety even of our best regulated benking.establish.
menu are set in open and constant hostility towards each other. This
may be called" emerging from the difficulties" in which the subject
was involved ! As a merchant, trading (as many do) upon the sure
ground of a' commission-agent,' it might be that his own profit shall
increase by the very circumstance working rapid destruction of menu-
facturing.capital at home, to the non-employment and consequent
starvation of no inconsiderable portion of our operative classes. Mr.
Baring, therefore, upon the mere score of personal interest stands op..
posed to all the industrious classes, in the same ratio that industry and
general property are ruinously depressed comparing money with cqui.
tridents now and before the peace. 1 merely judge of Mr. Baring, by
the same rule that 1 judge of other men. In all common transactions
of life, I should blush to be thought capable of impugning the high
integrity of Mr. Baring's most honourable mind, in the remotest de-
gree.' In dealing with the judgment of Mr. Baring on subjects like
the present, I should perhaps find it allowable without much want of
charity, to use the carton/duns ad *moisten in preference to the
argumentune ad rem! Without the slightest personality of feeling,
object to Mr. Baring—as a banker--a merchant—and likewise, an
overgrown mooey.capitalist ; and therefore, as opposed in apparent in.
tercet (on this great question) to the whole body of land proprietors, in-
cluding owners, occupiers, and labourers of every description."
The fallacy comprised in Lord Althorpe's reply to Mr.
Attwood (Dec. 13) proposing a committee of enquiry
touching the currency question, he exposes as follows
At a moment like the present—when, from this self-same over-
sight (now of more than fourteen years' duration) the people are in
that dreadful state of suffering, and conseqsendy high excitement, to
be nearly bordering upon open and declared rebellion. I read with
deep regret, that It was the determination of Ministers not to go into
that quesden, from the great importance to a commercial rummy to
have a fixed standard of value : meaning, I presume, a mandsed so far
fixed as to be liable to no sudden, capricious, or uncalled-for change ;
in short, to no change of any sort unwarranted by circumstances of the
purest equity.
"In this respect, then, I entirely agree with your Lordship ;
though reluctantly compelled is differ with you on another puha
equally essential : inasmuch as our present standard (calling it by that
name. In reference to the Bank Cash Resumption Billet 1519) was by
no means settled upon just principles, to begin with. On the con-
trary, it went to the palpable violation of the equitable spirit of every
pre-existing contract--difadog its mischkf through all our agricultu-
ral, commercial, and financial regulations ; embracing a mass little ,
abort of three or four thousand mUlions of pecuniary obligadotm—great '
part of which were positively contracted. and all legally' and 'justly'
recognised as previously payable, in currency depreciated 30 per cent.
to the violation, I repeat, of every contract, ehbee subsisting at the
return of poem in 11114, or any hew likely to be acted spots or affect.
ed, directly or indirectly. by taxes growing out of tomer wars, or
others which might accidentally be called for at any future time.
" What I would. therefore, bwit respectfully some to your Lord-
' ship's most earnest sad hnmedlete attention. is this—tbat even with
our present nominal gold currency, liable (as it mist be) to be so
conatande acted upon by sir rusting war taxes and bartbens. and
constituting (in your Lordship's reply to Mr. Attwood) the sole
ground of objection. oat the part of Ministers, to submit the question
to the fair test of cool and d to investigation; we neither
have, nor can have, notwithst , any thing deserving the name of
I a fixed' standard of value. . _

" The Corn all of 1113..ti1l in partial operation, and most ruin-
ously so in respect to certain classes-.-sints to create (but how 1) an
artificial tax-price of eighty shillings the quarter of wheat to English
consumers; the average gold or sliver price of other eaustries,at moss,.
not needing 40s. or half the said amount. Again, the cost price of so
much tea being 100 L an ad valorem to of 1001. more, doubles at aloe
the price of tea to oar own consumers, depredating, however, at the
same time, money, in respect of tea, just fifty per cent. Al! other taudl
and taxable commodities go (of necessity, and justly so), to affect thei
principle of money precisely after the same manner. The duty eel
some articles (tobacco, for instance) being as high as tea, twelve, sad
fifteen hundred per cent. And this, leaving the almost incalculable
amount of indirect taxes wholly out of view.
" Now surely, in such a ease, it may be fair to ask (and no where.
I humbly suggest, with so much propriety as in a committee of either
House of Parliament)— Which is the " standard" that we speak of,
when the question refers to our present money, as the &apposed " fixed"
standard, so highly beneficial to us as a great commercial nation? Is
the price Of wheat, tea; tobacco, Bcc. untaxed to be understood as
meaning precisely one and the same thing (called a standard). with.
the price of those articles taxed from one to ten, twelve, and fifteen
hundred per cent?"
The following argument ought to close this contro-
versy, and is a specimen of Mr. Crutwell's clear' mode of
reasoning:—
" But the great and most crying mischief of all to which I here wish
more especially toesil your Lordship's attention, iethat after a course
of inevitable war.taxation, justly depreciating the standard of our
paper debts and obligations 50 per cent. we have now for fifteen years
together been endeavouring to enforce a new standard of double value,
upon all the "debtor" transaction' of the empire. And this, with
the grossest of all possible perversions of language, we still call " a
preservation of national faith ' in defiance, moreover, of our existing
corn laws—the principles of which, as affecting .the currency, were
again to produce a similar depreciation ; thus again acting, in direct
contravention of your lordship's avowed intention to waive the pro-1
posed enquiry, under the notion that our present standard is one eel
"fixed" and undeviatiag value! That is, we have really two stew
dards at one and the same moment, without perceiving ft ; the stow
dard of the corn-laws, and the standard of Mr. Peel's bill. The
former alms to produce an extension In the current arrant of our dr-1
culation 50 per cent. beyond its intrinsic value, in respect of wheat
estimated in foreign gold ; and which, If extended to manufactured
articles as well, would prndoce the general relief required. The latter,
even as regards farm produce, has a constantly counteracting tendency.
to diminish the amount of circulation; driving us back again, with all
the hopelessness of utter ruin before our eyes, to a state of currency
necessarily "contracted" to so enormous an extent, as with our still
existing burthens, to diminish the means of finding labour for neatly
half the working classes; nen in farming districts, without causing
to the legitimate employers most overwhelming loss : while lo sonic
of oar manufacturing districts, the evil now operates in a degree of
ten-fold augmented mischief.
" It Is by such-means that we have brought upon ourselves and upon
posterity a revolution of property—a regular's stem, ft may be termed,
of legal and voluntary confiscation—so dreadfully extensive and com-
plete us millions of innocent sufferers, in ha pass--pmeent—and future
consequences ;* that, if much longer persisted in, it will assuredly
bring down upon the entire nation some sort of moral retribution, for.
the injustice and unnecessary suferibglitteby inflicted on the labour;
tog classes. This will probably happen .in the diestganisadon of the
"Aide framework of society as now subsisting amongst us; , involving.
In its final and no very remote issue, all. daises (innocent as well as
sailty) In one common nett *? total and ineatingibitable Poe
,myself. I feel padectly • asstred-.-and this fromil chain of elbse-eon
eats(' tenoning long since laid down, that (nor riatbmt) lye are sink-
ing by. i'most rapid course of moral is well Is civil revolution. Arad,
peraspaarnongUll the faiturtalrf national &erecter that have more.rer
eently developed themselves, in our present highly diseased'polltiesi
• condition. there Is Wane wage than Vert made arwileeastabl }et
*tree apathy (or rather, AMMO pssgrly 5P0P11404.1 )'
regarding thegreat puuliag question of 'eastee and Awl, ,all,
likewise of remedy best adapted to AC state before us, Ulrich murk
runs throtill" MAL of our metiffalheittfal claissei.. Hat feeds; tuba;
operating as it now has dose for so many years, the evil never could