The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-02-29 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

the means of sustaining life. Besides this, when money
becomes scarce, the national expenditure would be greatly
We have received several remonstrances against permission
ranted for the publication of Paddy Kelly's Budget. relieved in the amount of interest on stock so deposited,
- - authorities will take immediate steps to prevent interest not being paid during the time the certificates
_F so great a nuisance. were in the National Bank."
''hided to by "F. H. W." would be We have quoted at so great a length that we

being
We ho
the col

re think the i
very likely to

cannot give even a brief notice of the arguments
with which Mr. Watson rebuts the few objections
which might be urged against his proposition. We
must therefore refer our readers to the pamphlet
itself, HER Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer perusal.which is well worthy of their attentive
,gines, no doubt, that, by the device of a corn-
-, he has shelved for the present session all There is a certain class of legal pettifoggers and
discussion in Parliament, and all legislation upon, other seedy professionals, who swarm in our public
the important question of the currency. That thoroughfares and infest our smaller towns and
question, however, must and will force its way villages, in whose upturned and hungry-looking
amongst the inquiring portion of the commercial visages, as they snuff the air in search of a coming
classes; for to no other source than to the operation job, you may read legibly imprinted the imploring
of our present currency laws neither to the opera- query of a certain Scottish official of the olden
Lion of our free trade policy, per se, to potato rots, time—" Wha wants me ?" The poor beings feel
to excessive railway investments, nor to excessive themselves growing rusty for want of use ; and
s
importations of food—can the practical commercial snatch eagerly at any small matter which offers to
a (--.^e the disaster and havoc which have recently assist them to keep their hands in. Her Majesty's
--1-ion of the commercial world. Whig Ministers appear just now to be animated
with the craving spirit of the pettifogging and
To no other source, except to a currency regulated
upon principles adverse to the safety of commercial seedy persons in question; and, in their eagerness
operations, can we trace these alternations of mo-
to be doing business, are ready to legislate upon
any subject, and more especially ready to try their
netary glut and scarcity, which at one time enhance
ingenuity upon those which they understand the
the price of all commodities, and encourage the
erection of vast fabrics of paper credit; and then, least. A member has but to put a question in the
suddenly, and without warning, prostrate those house, or to furniah an exparte case of grievance,
fabrics, destroy all confidence between commercial and the assurance glides trippingly from the tongue
nen, and, depreciating the,value of all public secu- of some member of the administration, that " the
rifles, foreign produce and merchandise, and the attention of her majesty's government has already
products of the national industry, prohibit the been drawn to the subject, and that a measure will
merchant and the speculator from converting the be introduced in the course of the session."
stocks which they hold, except at prices absolutely We had last year to deplore the existence of a
very high rate of mortality amongst that portion
of our population who were driven to emigrate to
our North American Colonies. Of 106,000 men,
women, and children, who left the various ports of
1 Great Britain and Ireland for British America, it is
computed, on government authority, that 6100 died
on the voyage, 4100 on their arrival, 5200 in the
hospitals, and 1900 in the towns to which they pro-
ceeded—in all, 17 per cent of the whole number.
This was melancholy enough ; but that it could
excite the least surprise in the mind of any man who
had an opportunity of observing the condition of
the majority of the poor beings thus expatriating
themselves—flying from famine and disease in their
own land, to seek health and food and the reward
due to ind ustry in a strange country,—weutterly deny.
Yet it has aflorded a sufficient excuse for the Colo-
nial-office to originate a measure—the Passengers'
Act Amendment Bill—by which the whole onus of
the increased rate of mortality, observed last year,
is laid at the door of the British shipowner; and
regulations are proposed, the stringency and' costli-
ness of which, not to mention their impracticability,
threaten to put a stop altogether to voluntary emi-
gration to our colonial possessions, in British

Ibt Eibtrpooi gptanbarb

TUESDAY MORNING, FEB. 29, 1848

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Amongst the various propositions broached for
the correction of the admitted evils of the system,
and the efforts of practical writers to trace its
operation in producing periodical monetary crises,
a pamphlet, just published byMr. William Watson,
entitled, "New System of Currency,
. .

which

panic is rendered iMpossible," contains soine posi-
tions, clearly and forcibly stated, which are calcu-
lated to arrest the attention even of those—and
there are but too many such amongst the educated
commercial classes—who are in the habit of turning
away from the subject of the currency as from one
which is too abstruse and full of mysterious diffi-
culties for practical men of business to grapple
with. Mr. Watson goes at once to the root of the
Enhject—an explanation of the relative meaning of
the terms capital and money. The former he lays
down as the accumulated excess of the produce of
labour, skill, or enterprise, which its owner has to
exchange for the accumulated excess of his neigh-
bour, or of the foreigner. Money, on the other
hand, is only the artificial medium by which such
accumulation is exchang.ed; and ought'at all times
to bear the same just relation to the value of one
day's labour, or a given quantity of accumulated
labour. Such equability of value, however, he
contends, is not the characteristic of our present
gold standard, inasmuch. as the supply of such
money does not keep pace with the increasing
accumulation of the commodities which it has to
ilains his position by the fol-

In addition, moreover, to the deplorable igno-

rance, oh the part of the government, of the subject
upon which Mr. Labouchere has volunteered to
legislate, the conclusions upon which his proposed
bill is founded, as to the share of blame attributa-
ble to the shipowner, and the defects of the ex-
isting law, are, in the teeth of evidence in their own
possession, furnished by their own commissioners
and other authorities at home and in the colonies.
Thus, in enclosing a report of the Land and Emi-
gration Commissioners, forwarded on the Ist De-
cember last by Earl Grey to the Governor-General
of Canada, and characterised by his lordship as a
"very able document," his lordship states, with
respect to the emigration of the past year, that
" It would have been practically impossible, and that
if possible it would have been inhuman and unjust, to
have interfered by any exercise of the authority of the
Legislature or of the Executive Government, to detain at
home the multitudes, who, during the past year, have
endeavoured to escape from mispry anal '

resent

and he e

r•••• • • N/111 amocL y dim bLarvaLum, ny
ing from Ireland to America ; and also that the
ion of so large a number of persons who had
31y suffered so severely from the consequences of
itation with which it had pleased Providence to
g, inevitably led to the breaking out of disease,
mild not llp nreventoil r__

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