The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-12-11 00:00:00

MONETARY CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY:
CAN THE CURRENCY LAWS CONTINUE?

(From Blackwood's Magazine.)

- •
Putting aside all minor considerations, which crowd
upon the mind, there are three of parambritt importance
which force themselves on the attention, any one of which
holds the fate of the empire suspended ih h doubtful
balance.

re.
o The first is, How is the revenue of 155,000,000, and
e. the interest of mortgages at least half as much more, to be
the Provided for under so great a reduttion in the value of the
rge Staple articles of British agricultural produce ? It has
ge- been seen that the total value of the agricultural produce
ape Of the empire was, anterior to the late changes, about
er- £300.000,000. If prices fall on an average to a fourth,
iag 1111 consequence of foreign importations, which is a most
ate Moderate supposition, probably much within the truth.
this £3OOOOOOOO will be reduced at once to £225,000,000.
:.aa But the disastrous effect of such a redaction is not to be
measured by its absolute amount, considerable as that
',Mount undoubtedly is. Its dreadful effect lies here, that
if. the £75,b00,000 thus cut off, absorb nearly the whole
Profits of cultivation, out of which both the rent is paid
to the landlord, and the farmer obtains the means of
ter
ell. : livelihood. The remainder is the cost of production, and
is not lowered in any sensible degree. Thus the whole
'kin falls on the cultivators. This is just what has hap-
ie a Pened under a similar course of policy in the West Indies,
the Where the indolent habits of the emancipated slaves, and
bas 1 free trade in sugar, acting together, have destroyed the
2, I 1 Profits of agriculture : and of course the islands are
et rapidly returning to the jungle and the forest.
ed I Now, if a deficiency at all approaching to this occurs in
the revenue derived from land—the sources of three fifths
1 a
ids of the income of the United Kingdom—how, in the name
ass of common sense, is the revenue to be paid? How are
the jointures of the widows, the interest of the mortgages,
eS, and the other charges on the land, to be made good, when
519, the change of prices has absorbed nearly the whole profit
eof
94 of cultivation ? If they are recovered, what is to remain
of to the landlord ? How are the borne manufacturers, and
the numerous class of shopkeepers in towns, and above
as
ti- all, in the metropolis, who are supported by their expendi-
ture, to be maintained ? It is very easy to say the fall of
ed rents is a landlord's question, and the mass of the people
41- have no interest in it. Who support the manufacturers
kilt and shop-keepers over the country ? The landlords and
In holders of securities over the land furnish at the very
ipe least a half of that support. Of the £5,400,000 a-year,
sve which the Income Tax produces, £3,200,000, or more
CS, than a half, comes from the land. How wide-spread,
sr. then, will be the distress produced over the community,
be and above all, to the shopkeepers in towns, from a change
1- Which threatens to dry up the principal sources from
ed Which their sales are paid.
on In'the 'next place, How is the national independence to
,e- be maintained when we come to import so large a pro-
of
of Portion as from a fourth to a third of our subsistence
from foreign states ? If the chances of war, or a Conti-
g: hental blockade, interrupt our usual sources of supply,
ia 'What is to become of the people? Who is to guarantee
sr) as against famine price on any deficiency of our usual
c- Supply from abroad, and our people from becoming, as
he the Romans were in former days, the sport of the winds
Lie and the waves ? Observe, nearly all our foreign supply
`comes from two countries only, Russia, or Prussia, whom
sr, it influences, and America. If we lose our maritime
sss superiority—and who will secure its continuance, now that
of the Navigation Laws are repealed ?—we may be at once
ut blockaded in our harbours, and reduced in three months
be to the alternative of starvation or submission. But sue-
r- Posing we are not at once reduced to so humiliating an
ad alternative, is it not clear that, when we have come prac-
rd tically to depend for the food of a third of our people on
o) two foreign states, we are entirely at the mercy of those
es two countries, and can never venture to assert, even in
a- form, our independence against them ? Without fitting
re out a ship of the line, or equipping a battalion, they can,
ed by the mere threat of closing their harbours, at any time,
re starve us into submission. And what are the nations
re beneath whose feet proud Albion is thus content to place
a- her neck ? Russia and America, the two most rising
er countries in existence, and both of which are actuated
49 by the strongest and the most undying jealousy of the
I; ancient glory and maritime preponderance of this coun-
ao try.
es Mr. Gurney, " the greatest bill-broker in the world,"
53 has emphatically declared in public, on more than one
id occasion, that the country cannot go on with its present
is expenditure ; that £15,000,000 a-year, on the charges of
of the army and navy, is more than can possibly be afforded ;
er and that, if a great reduction is not made, we shall soon
Ty become bankrupt. His remedy for this is to disbaild our
at trocps, sell our ships of the line, and establish the reign
id of peace and bill-broking throughout the world. On the
3r other hand, "the greatest captain in the world," the
s. Duke of Wellington, has made remonstrances to several
3, successive administrations, on the total inadequacy of our
ea present establishments, both by sea and land, to secure
re the national independence in the political changes which
1. may be anticipated in the lapse of time. * * * * ,5
is In the third place—and this is perhaps a more vital
Le consideration than any—How is the constant recurrence
5e of monetary crises, similar to that which has left such
40 awful desolation behind it, to be avoided upon every re-
'y currence of a deficient harvest at home, or a straitened
1 importation from abroad ? The people of England are
sensitively alive on this subject. They watch the rain in
autumn with the most intense anxiety ; and, if it falls a
few more days than usual, the utmost alarm pervades all
classes. They know well what rain in autumn portends.
They see rising up, in dismal perspective before them, a
= great importation of grain, a vast export of sovereigns,
the screw put on by the Bank of England, a contraction
of credit by every bank, every man finding his creditors
on his back, and one-half of his debtors bankrupt. All
this they see, and see dearly ; but the minds of a large
portion of them are so benighted by the free-trade dogmas,
it, that it never occurs to them that all this is the creation
:- of their own policy, and is in no degree imputable to the
a laws of Providence. They think the thing is inevitable.
e They believe that there is a natural connexion between
3, three weeks' rain in August and a monetary crisis, just as
Le there is between a similar deluge and flooded meadows,
a or destroyed bridges. The evil, however, is entirely of
human creation, and may, with absolute certainty, be
avoided by human means. There is no more reason why
three weeks' rain in August should produce a monetary
e crisis, than three weeks' rain in November. It is our
ruinous monetary laws which render them cause and
e effect
r

But assuming that the monetary laws are to continue
and free-trade to be persisted in, it will become the people
of this country, and especially the trading classes, to con-
sider well the inevitable effect of such a state of things
on the monetary concerns of the country, and, through
them, on the solvency of every one of themselves. We
have seen that the heavy rains and large importations of
grain in 1839 produced the severe and long-protracted
period of distress from 1839 to 1842 ; and that the potato
failure in 1846, acting on the Bank Charter Act of 1844,
occasioned the terrible catastrophe of October, 1847.
But what was the importation of grain, in either of these
periods of distress or famine, to that which is now taking
place, and has become habitual in the face of exceedingly
low prices ? In 1839, the whole grain of all kinds im-
ported was 4,000,000 quarters, an amount in those days
unprecedented. In 1846 and 1847, 12,000,000 quarters,
under the stimulus of famine prices, was imported in
fifteen months. But now, after a fine harvest, and, with
'wheat at 41s. per quarter, we are importing annually, as
our average amount, fifteen millions of quarters offoreign.
grain! How are the most terrible commercial disasters
to be averted, if this immense amount receives any aug-
mentation from bad seasons ? Nay, how are they to be
averted even in ordinary seasons, with so immense a drain
on the metallic resources of the country ? This is a
question in which the mercantile classes are far more
interested than the agricultural—for with them a mone-
tary crisis is an affair of life and death. With landlords,
.cheap prices, unless very long continued, are merely an
affair of temporary loss of income, because the land itself
remains, and it is the value of the annual fruits only that
is affected.

To compensate so many perils, past, present, and to
come, have free trade with a fettered currency, since they
were simultaneously brought into action in this country,
afforded such a spectacle of internal prosperity and con-
cord as to render them on the whole worth persisting in,
at such hazard to our national independence, and even
existence ? Alas ! the view is now, if possible, more
alarming than the prospects of dangers to come, so much
lave the realised and experienced evils of the new system
exceeded what the most sombre imagination, fraught with
the most gloomy images, could have anticipated.

A Wolverhampton paper says that on Monday after-
noon, the railway bridge which had been recently con-
structed over the new cut of the canal, near Messrs. Nor-
ton's mill, in that town, suddenly gave way without the
least warning, and fell with a tremendous crash a heap of
ruins into the hollow beneath. Fortunately no one was
passing underneath the bridge at the time it fell, but seve-
ral men had passed in the course of the day. The cause
of the accident hasnot been ascertained.
QUACKS AND THEIR QUACKERIES.—The legislature
having left the public much at the mercy of those igno-
rant compounders of useless or dangerous nostrums for
Which their authors claim such astonishing virtues, it
becomes a duty of the press, the natural guardian of
society, to sift the tares from the wheat, and warn off the
unwary from those deceptive appearances, which, if they
do not altogether invite to destroy, care little what the
consequences mar be, so long as they dispose of commo-
dities made only "to sell!" Were we to judge, then,
merely by pretensions, how many infallible remedies
should we have to stigmatise as barefaced impostures on
-the public. But amidst this host of frauds, as manifest
to the wary age as they have been proved to be deleterious
in fact—still there are some wholesome and reliable me-
dicines, which accomplish all they pretend. Amongst
these—the " rara avis" of patent medicines—are COCKLE'S
: what they promise they perform, while it is cer-
tain that they are a safe medicine ; a character which
cannot be accorded to nine-tenths of .the compounds that
perform so many astounding miracles—in print.—John
Bull.

LATEST DATES AT

LIVERPOOL, DEC. 9

Direct.' Indirect

(Direct./ Indirect

Australia Bahia ... .
Barbadoes
Honduras..
Bermuda
Bombay. . ..
B. Ayres .. Oct. 5
Calcutta ..
C. G. Hope.
Chagres....
CCharleston
bernerara,.
Havana
Hayti. ..
Ja ...
Lima .maica °'
I
.—. . • •
)44111140,;, • •

Aug. 18
Oct. 2C
Nov.
Oct. 2f
Nov. 12

11auritius .. Sept.
Ilazatlan „ Oct. 10
41exico, (city) 13
Mobile . Nov. 20
Monte Video , . Sept,
New Orleans .. Nov. )8
New York .. go
Panama
Pernambuco. .. Nov. 6
Elio Janeiro .. Oct. 18
San Francisco 1
Savannah
St. Helena .. Oct. 29
St. Thomas., .. 31
Trinidad ..... Nov. 7
Valparaiso
Venezuela
Vera Cri,L r Oct, 20

Oct.l 2:

(Sept.
INoy.

Oct. 1
.-- 1
I 14