The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-08-10 00:00:00

system, precludes the pc
additions in time, to the
therefore is brought to I

and.
ncy the national capital is

the streams which flow from their

fetters, which admit neither of enlargement r

in timeibr, or in proport

a to, its necessities

That the present commercial difficulties could be
removed by an issue of one pound notes, guaran-
teed by the government, to supply temporarily the
place of the gold abstracted from the country, is

tolerably certain ; but the community are stud;.Dusly
driven from the consideration of such a course, by
predictions of evil and danger, of rash speculations,
and, its issue, a money crisis to arise from the re-
coil of the system. - But is the present system with-
out serious and disastrous consequences ? Mr.
Alison points out a few such consequences which
have already been experienced :

" The evils which have been experienced from the la-
vish issue of notes, and frequent failure of private banks
in England, are not a tithe of what have been endured in

this year alone, by the contraction of the currency, con-
sequent on the export of our gold to buy food. Only
think of what they are. The 3 per cents in August, 1845,

public funds had sunk in the same proportion. There
was a loss of nearly twenty per cent., or a fifth, on the
public securities, which on £785,000,000, their present
amount, is £160,000,000. Taking into view the simulta-
neous and still greater decline in the value of railway,
bank, and other stock, great part of which has fallen 20
and 30 ner cent., it may sa

_ y be affirmed that the des-
truction of property, experienced by the nation in the last
eighteen months has been two hundred and fifty millions
sterling. This is ten times greater than the loss which
would have ensued if all the bank notes in the kingdom
had become worthless. And the whole of this loss, it

will be immediately shown, is to be set down to the mo-

netary laws ; no part of it, or at least a most inconsider-
able part, is to be considered as arising from the visitation
of Providence, or causes over which we had no control."

r, that it is utterly impossible
that free trade can be carried on under the present
laws, without continually recurring distress and

He spews

commercial stagnation

" Herein, then, lies the great error and ruinous effects
of Sir R. Peel's free trade and monetary system, combined

h the nation is nos- so severely la-

the legislature interposes

ree trade may
acietv,

be a 'very good thing

at least for some classes of

but then it requires an expansive currency. As it imme-
diately occasions an enlarged importation of food, which
foreigners can raise cheaper than us, because they are
poorgr, it absolutely requires an expansive currency to
Pp mercantile transactions afloat, when the precious
are withdrawn to pay for their increased importa-
'ry moment that the measures in pre-
tion, and which have now received their, full accom-
thus rendering indispensable a great
currency, the laws enacted suddenly
3ased on the principle that gold is to be

But at the ve

plishn

sion of tk
acted it.

ion beyond a certain limit of file exchange:
Ld man, the law of 1844 compels the bank

in their note

nportation of subsist-

;old, than another set, at the

very same instant, contracts the paper also. Credit is
shaken, accommodation is stopped, distrust is sown at the

very time w

hen eug

!merits

heaviest,

loans most re.:

mitred, labour most-largely embarked in undertakings.
With the right hand government gives the greatest pos-
sible encouragement to domestic railways, and does every
thing in its power to extend foreign trade, while with the
left it fetters the hands by which these undertakings are
to be carried on, and renders the very causes which re-

quire any augmentation of the currency, the certain means
of ruinously contracting it. Sir R. Peel's measures of
' Free Trade and a Fettered Currency,' acting together,
not only ruin credit at the very time when its establish-
ment is most required, but, by a perverse ingenuity in

„ .
mischief, establish a machinery which permanently renders
the one the cause of the other. Is it surprising that un-
der such a system, a monetary crisis follows the first ex-
nanginn of forpivn and domestic industry. and that hank-

;uptcy to thousands, ruin to millions, Invariably succeed
the first symptoms of a delusive prosperity ?"

With another important quotation, in which it
is shewn that instead of our present laws operating
to discourage undue speculation, they have infinitely
increased it, and imparted to all commercial trans-
actions the character of gambling, we must close
our observations for the present :

" So far has the system of basing our currency exclu-
sively upon gold been from providing, as it was prophesied
it would, a check on improvident speculation and over-
production, that it has greatly aggravated both these
evils. Never has absurd and extravagant speculation been
more general in society, and more ruinous in its effects,

than since the gold si'stem was introduced. The enor:
mous folly of the South American mania in 1825, of the
Joint Stock mania of 1835, of the Railway undertaking in
1845, all took place under the boasted system of golden
checks against such absurdities. Nothing of the kind
had been experienced before for above a century, when
the Mississippi Scheme in England, and Law's still more
ruinous undertaking in France, shook society in both
countries to its foundation. Nay, as if to place it beyond
anuht that the bullion system, so far from being an an-

tidote to the evil, is its greatest aggravation, absurd and
ruinous speculation has been much more pravalent in
England of late years, where one-pound notes were pro-
hibited, than in Scotland, where they still exist under re-
strictions, and till 1844 were wholly unrestrained, except
by the obligation to pay in Bank of England notes or

specie. For one irrational and ridiculous railway specu-
lation which has been hatched in Glasgow with Scottish
notes, ten have been pre
pool with English sover(
Scottish birth, more

.ster and Liver-
se which are of
been supported by
and the English

,nd of ti

listrict

bullion system has aggravated