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

aid the

TUE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

to the precious metals which are exempted from taxation,
and because it fixes the price of gold, in utter defiance of
the law of supply and demand. Ido not object to fixing
the weight of the sovereign at 5 dwts. 3 grs., but I protest
against fixing its price. (Hear.) We fix the weight of
the quartern loaf at four pounds ; but we do not fix the
price of the quartern loaf; its price is permitted to rise
or fall, just as wheat is scarce or abundant ; and on what
principle of free trade, let me ask, can you treat the ounce
of gold differently than you treat the quartern loaf? This
is the basis of the argument in favour of the formation of
an Anti-Gold-Law League. The proposition recommends
itself by its simplicity, and deserves the support of eyery.

commercial reformer. The fixed price of gold in our legal
tender money permanently reduces the wages of labour
and the prbfits of stock, for the foreigner treats our sove-
reign not as money, but as a commodity possessing

intrinsic value. 'When he has sold his goods in
our market, he will take back in payment that
article which is cheapest. Now, as gold is untaxed;
and kept down permanently by Act of Parliament at
its untaxed level, while all commodities require to be
raised in price in proportion to the amount of customs,
and other fiscal obligations, they are compelled
air), it follows that if that increased price is ob.
ti- talr^ and

excise

to sust

tained the foreigner will take away our untaxed gota, ant.
leave our manufactures in our warehouses. How, then,
are we to tempt him to take our manufactures ? There
is only one way, and that is by lowering the price of our
goods down to the level of untaxed gold, by which means
alone we can destroy the competitive antagonism between
our manufactures and the precious metals. Hence wages
must be kept permanently low, and the producer, instead
of the consumer, must pay the customs and excise
charged on the food on which he lived while engaged in
the act of production. In this cheapness the rich at
home participate, for as there cannot be two prices in the

same market-, in.the same kind of money, the producer
is unable, even in the home, market, to add taxes to tht-,,
cost of production. The taxes, therefore, again fall
upon him, so that labour, crushed under customs and
the purchasing power of the

mer, and a

that it was a war tax ; to which t answer that the war
debt remained, and till its liquidation the war tax ought
to have been levied. This same legislature then imposed
the corn laws, with a view to sustaining rents, and then
returtf6d to cash payments, which permanently lowered
the value of all industry, excepting that of agriculture,
which was protected by monopoly. (Loud cheers.) Under
the bill of 1819. the Bank of England was compelled
to pay its notes in gold, at a fixed price, but it ex-
ercised a discretion in the amount of its issues ; but
this discretion was taken away by the bill of 1844, in
which Sir Robert Peel most grossly contradicted himself
and falsified his own principles. He laid it down as the

ligation

meant the obligation to pay at all times on demand sdwts.
3 grains of gold, and then he deviated from this basis in
five different directions. He allowed the Bank of Eng-
land to issue eleven millions of inconvertible paper, be-
cause that amount is due to the bank by the people ;
..0, redly. he nermitted that establishment to issue three

_
he gave the power of putting out eight
ietallic basis whatever ; to Scotland
.nd to Is

millions of inconvertible paper on the unfunde
the country ban►-

a debt ; to

millions without any
he granted three millions,
that in the aggregate we have now afloat thirty-c
ands, which, for anything known to

contrary, may one day be converted into saw
(Applause.) There is no legal obligation wh
vert any portidn of these thirty-one million
grain of bullion. Such is the gros-
man who affirms that the true h
is to insist that every pound of account
convertible on demand - - •

then, in the ve

iatever to

a mone

loald