The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-12-05 00:00:00

ratepayer

making!

railway property

calculateu

is the question

leavour to gi

n his pocket,

1 calicoes,

1 commercial

n the adop-

's which

iat we have

ting capital

t he will run

with
ek to

Rious failur

1 in taxation

annum in that market

,currence of

1 the c

y procurable

.ature of

bleb is

that when the B

way and

interest, being
and only ten

)wners of for-

of labour and eommoi
We had this

1 do no s

co mm er

ine in

Se mar

ue or every c

'e it is

of securities a

s is put

amount to at le

Fin-an-

n an enquiry

little what
at the best

which b
The nue

:o and

f one set o:

if comme

he absurd

ich-went out of the wa

break up his table

or chairs to perf

of sinking

fluctuation► whi

the hard

It is not

of fiction;
mas" this

a.ders, with
s ; and we

rd into

intelligibi

h wha

1 working brethren to ponder deeply upon this state
of things; to ask themselves how it is brought
about, and whether it is in accordance with the
laws of nature and of God. The essence of a so-
cial state is the dependence of one class upon
another. The rich man wants the poor man's la-
bour. The p:)or man wants a portion of the rich
man's superfluity. Both are willing and anxious
to make the exchange; and why are they not able
to make that exchange ?
We give a case; and it is precisely that.- to a
mistake with respect to which our present difficul-
ties are, in a great measure, attributed. We
wish to improve the internal communications of
our country; and railways we find the most eeoz
nomical and rapid of transit. We have the mate-
rials at our command. We have land, stone, iron,
timber, tools, food, and skilled labour ; and the
owners of each are willing to devote them to the
required purpose. Yet so simple a transaction our
philosophers and statesmen cannot arrange; nod
hence the land remains untouched, the stone re-
mains in the quarry, the iron in the mine, and
the food in the warehouse or the shop. and the
maker of pickaxes and spades, the bricklayer, the
mason, the smith, and the navvy walk about our
streets without the value of a meal in their pockets.
We are told that we are suffering because we
have invested too much of our floating capital in
these railways; because we have converted to a
useful object, and one by which the march of civili-
zation is promoted, too much iron, stone, timber,
and human labour. How can this he the ease ?
We have never yet felt a scarcity of any of these
commodities. We have never experienced a want
of iron, stone, timber, or labour to devote to other
and ordinary purposes. Into whatever part of the
country our railway works have been carried they
have borne with them employment to the labourer
and prosperity to all classes; and yet the labourer,
we are told, is suffering from too much railway

Again, we have pointed out to us the great
,nrerintinn whinh hnci tnizAn

: and here we approach to the key
We may some of us have mis-
alue of such property. A. may

. .
be poorer to-day by half his fortune than he was
yesterday ; but B. will have got the property of A.
for half what it cost. As a nation we are n:) poorer
than before. The railway is of the same public
utility as before. But it will not sell for so much
of the conventional representative of value, money ;
and here is the pinching point of our difficulties,
so far as railways are concerned. A., havir
vested a temporary surplus of, say £lOOO, in a
railway, requires it back again for his ordinary
business. In the meantime, however, we have had
a monetary panic ; and as the result, his £lOOO is
only worth £5OO in the same conventional article,
money, and, to some extent, in commodities. Hence
A. cannot pay his Christmas bills so readily; and,
perhaps, may have to discharge a servant, or to
limit his business operations, which in the ordinary
nature of things would lead to the increase of a
neighbour's, who has been more fortunate

g

But, what was the cause of the monetary panic ?
What is the nature of the myste-
rious operation by which half of A.'s £lOOO has
unding new been lost? We will ene
planation, which shall be int

doing so. it may appear to any of our readers that
we are stating matters which are well known to
them, we must remind them that we are appealing
to parties who are not so well informed. When A..
the earth so —it then, invested his £lOOO in, say London and North-

western Stock. at £2OO per share, and paying ten
per cent. dividends, the return which he could have
had for that money, placed at call in his banker's
hands_ nr emninveri in the disennnt mArlzpt WA R

21 per cent. The railway was, there-
fore, even at £2OO per share, his
But when A. had to sell, money was worth 10
to 121 per cent. interest in the discount market ;
and the security which only returned 10 per cent.
on £lOO, became worth something less than the
amount—£loowhich then would produce £lO per

But how did it o
_ currency—a mere vehicle for transferr
commodities from one man's hand to another—had

ank of Eng-

land parts with a few millions of gold, she is com-
pelled to withdraw from circulation the same
number of millions in paper, thus withholding from
the community the vehicle in question, by which

es for

commodities is effected
gold last year to pay for our heavy imports of
breadstuffs, and a the consequent contraction of our

which we have been e _
Ind industry of the country, and in the

five hundred-millions sterling

townsmen to reflect neon

e state of things. existing in a nation

sts of its advancement in civilization.
not the difficult one which it is

.stanrl

If any of our readers had a pair of boots which
additional mile he had to walk,

every time

arm that

necessary operation, he would speedily arrive at
some correct notions of this very complicated

WANT OF CURRENCY. NOT WANT OF CAPITAL
THE CAUSE OF LOW PRICES.

arice of

month of Novem-

of discount by the BOnk which
"iols, it will be observed, have