The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-08-03 00:00:00

before us two remarkable and valuable

pamphlets upon ti
tion

most important subject, the

currency

as pointing out

the past operation of our present system upon the
industry and the social condition of the country,
and most valuable as containing, in addition to the

3 our If

ess of those

The first of -these it

the order of publica-
h both the pamphlets

tion, apparen
bear the imn

nt is the fourth

entitled "Enq

and a Conti

tid Currency

?.S.E.,

luthor of the ilistor-y

rich Re

rurope, a
nd is en

Trade and a Fettered

ley," by

avouring to lay I
T of Mr. Alison

vs. we shall deal f
1 1845

bland in 1815 E

Alison trac

from 1793, which commenced with an amount of
parilelled by

amercial dis

in intensity or d

any previot
tion, which was only relieved by an t

tensive loan

by government to the t

ding cla,

and which

terminated in the dreadful monetary crisis and run
upon the bank, and mutiny in the Fleet in 1797,
which brought the nation to the brink of ruin, and
forced upon the government the necessity of sus-
pending cash payments. During the

our external pOsition had been equally disastrous,
defeat, with one exception—the Victory of Howe—

well known, Victory crowned our arms in every
contest by sea and land. The despot of Europe
was hurled to the dust ; and from the position of
the most distracted and depressed of nations Great
Britain rose to a pinacle of glory and power, which
she had never before occupied. Her colours en-
circled the globe. Her flag was paramount in every
sea. Nor had her industrial and social progress
failed to keep pace with her naval and military
Her agriculture, commerce and menu:

progress

factures had increased amazingly in extent and
prosperity; her exports, imports and tonnage .had
doubled since the war began; and notwithstand-
ing some temporary distress experienced by the
operative population, especially in the years 1810
and 1811, their average condition had been one of
prosperity. Her yearly revenue from taxation had
risen from £21,000,000, in 1796, to £72,000.000 in
1815 ; and in 1814 and 1815 the nation had borne,
without exhausting either our capital or resources,
_ _

the enormous drain of £117,000,000 of taxation in
each year. The comparative lightness with which
this burthen was felt is proved by the fact that the
loan of 1844 was raised at £4 1 ls. 6d. per cent., or
lower than at the commencement of the war, although
that loan was to the amount of £35,000,000 and
the population was only eighteen millions, or just
two thirds of what it is now.

The arrival of peace, and the sudden contraction
of the war expenditure, necessarily caused great
temporary distress, which was aggravated by the
disbanding of above 300,000 men, who were thus
thrown upon the country without means or employ-
ment, and by the effects of a commercial crisis,
which took place especially in our eastern ports,
owing to the inability of the impoverished Euro-
pean states, to purchase the large quantity of goods
which we poured into their markets. 'et upon
the whole, the years from 1815 to 1817 were pros-
perous, notwithstanding two bad harvests occurring
succession; and in proof of this, although the
e-tax was repealed during the period, along
he war malt taxes, producing together above
£18,000,000 a year, the annual surplus applied to
the reduction of the debt amounted to £10,000,000,
applied to the redemption of

with t

nd other financial ope

well known that Sir Robert Peel's

the land ; and

t time to 1844, Mr. Alison remarks " The
empire exhibited the most extraordinary spectacle

which

world has ever witne
s follows :

nay sum it up briefly

Our popula-

tiori had increased from

20,600,000 in 1819, to

period from £30,000,(

Ruts from £44,000,000 to £130,000,000

and our

lm 2,350,000 tons to 3,900,000 tons

nilarly prof

,ed, whilst

our importations had steadily declined from the
commencement of the century, until, previous to

ssive bad seasons commencer

in 183(

it had

k to 400,000 quarters on the average of

ng scarcel

red-and-twentieth part of the consum
nd animals, which Mr. Alison rat
0,000.000 Quarters. And he adds—

)n of mer

What is most extraordinary of ail

income tax, v

f severe
Toied th

in Great B

per annum e
£150,000,000

f realised c

et never v

more sufferings by the people; and this increased
until the nation was extricated only by the re-
imposition, during the thirtieth year of peace, of the
War Income-Tax. The sinking fund had also been
abandoned during the period ; and a.
years of peace, we had added £11,000,000 sterling
to the national debt. Mr. Alison sums up this 'por-
tion of his remarks by the following statement :
" The nation, during the latter years of the war, p'

t length, in six

pered, and experiencid general well being under _
annual taxation of £72,000,000, drawn from eighteen
millions of souls : in the latter years of the peace, it has
with the utmost difficulty drawn 450,000,Q00, from a

.armer, the operative and labourer, on the other.
According to Mr. Porter's Parliamentary Tables, the
following were the total Committals for Serious
Crime in Great Britain and Ireland, and the popu-
four years lation. in—

Total, 8,2

11S a remarxaoie mature or tne aoove state or
things, it is to be observed that capital has been
daily acquiring greater power over industry; and
that large capital is crushing small capital, however
industry combined with the latter may endeavour
to sustain the pressure. As a mode of protecting
the small struggling masses of capital against the
large masses, the co-operative or joint stock system
has sprung up, as exemplified in our railway corn- ,
panies, banking companies, &c. The growth of
this system and its success, Mr. Alison thinks,
may in time produce an evil of no small magnitude.
Already the sway of our railway and other com-
panies have become a very formidable interest in
the state, superior to the East and West Indian and
shipping interests put together, and exercising out
of doors- powers, to which those of the feudal
system were very inferior, Besides, the resource,
adopted originally to protect small capital has de-
feated its own purpose, such companies now,
directed as they are by a few energetic individuals
operate in- precisely the same way to depress small
individual capital, as the large individual capital
complained of.
Connected also with the subject are the changes
which have taken place in the relative proportions',
of town population and rural counties population ;.
and the extraordinary inequality which is being
produced in the various sections of the working
classes, some of whom are still in a position of
moderate comfort, whilst others are reduced to a
state of continual struggle against actual pauper-
ism. In the latter class the increase during the
last twenty years has been fearful; and their phy-
sical condition, closely packed as they are in the
worst and most filthy parts of all our great towns,
imbibing vice from constant association with vice
and disease from daily contact with it, and from
the habits which engender it, is one of the most
alarming features of the present times. After
remarking that some parties attribute the decline
in the condition of the people generally, and the
difficulty experienced in supplying the exchequer
to imprudent remission of taxes, in which argu-
ment he is not disposed to coincide, as accounting
for the change which has taken place, r. Alison
thus sums up the second chapter of his pamphlet :

" That some great and overpowering cause has para-
lysed the financial resources of the country during the last

nd-twenty years, to which it formerly was a stran-
ger, is evident from the following consideration. The
sum raised by taxes in the year 1815 was £72,000,000 ;
and the population of the empire was at that period about
eighteen millions. Deductin& the property and war malt-
taxes, which were repealed in 1816, and amounted to

£18,000,000, there remains £54,000,000 raised at that pe-
riod, by indirect taxes, on eighteen millions of inhabitants.
These eighteen millions have now swelled to twenty-eight
millions in the present year ; and if none of the taxes had
been repealed, and the resources of the empire, as me
sured by money, had continued unimpaired, these twent
eight millions should now have produced, at th
per head, £80,000,000 a-year of income. 111
sources of the empire, as proved by its exports, import
and shipping, have increased in that time not fifty, but
above a hundred per cent. ; .the exports alone, which were
then £51,000,000, being now £130,000,000, and our im-
ports, which were then 112,000,000, having now risen to.
£70,000,000. There cannot be a doubt, theref
had no extraneous cause intervened, the export

am e rate

tion having more than doubled, the imports dmbkd, and
the population advanced a half, the revenue raised by taxes,
supposing the rate of taxation to have rem ained unchanged,