The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-10-17 00:00:00

The moneyoc
nl-mrd-RtrPpt

for whose welfare the

rade, in no very easy po- money in pikes, muskets, and gunpowder, during
sition ; and-are looking forward with a little trepi- the previous part of the year; or to urge upon them
dation to the approach of Christmas. There are, the adoption of improved modes of culture and the
it is hinted, some securities in their strong boxes, necessity of more constant habits of industry.
and those of their friends, which are negociable They were permitted to huddle their wretched crop
with difficulty and are -daily decreasing in value. of potatoes into the ground, only half dug and
It was fun for these men, and their organ, two trenched, and wholly unmanured, and to devote
years ago, to be sweeping out of the market bubble two or three days out of the seven to drunken re-
projects—to see stags and provisional directors vellings at feasts and "pattherns," wakes and fairs,
" hoist with their own petard," lighted by the fire whilst it was growing. The crop, which others
of leading and city articles. The fun, however, it warned them not to trust to, has failed; and we
would seem, has gone too far. The bubbles have are asked, for the thousandth time, to pay for all
effectually trodden down; but the wreck has ex- their improvidence and folly, in the first place, by
tended beyond the limits prescribed for it. It is affording employment, and in the next, "to use all
not pleasant to see Midland Stock at £75; London our influence to erect such an equitable adjustment
and North Western at £102; and Eastern Coun- of the relations between landlords and tenants as
ties at £l2 : or to contemplate the ruinous decline shall stimulate an outlay of capital, insure the em-
in every species of produce. It is perplexing to ployment of the able bodied, and increase the agri-
to find that, with all the improvement of their po- cultural products of the soil."
sition, manufacturers still continue their decreased We beg to direct attention particularly to the
production, and speculation the most legitimate passage marked in Italics, as showing the kind of
flags; that mercantile enterprize and energy are councils, by which it seems destined that the pea-
prostrate on every hand. Something, it is clear, santry and farming classes of Ireland shall never be
must be done to arrest the downward .tendency of permitted to learn the true causes of their periodi-
affairs, and to allow Christmas balances to be cal suffering, and their constant degraded and
squared off, without extensive bankruptcy and ruin pauperised condition, as compared with the people
being created. But what is that " something ?" of countries not half so gifted by nature as their
We turn to an article in the Times of Saturday to own. These people obstinately adhere to a miser-
see if we cannot discover the direction in which it able system of cultivation of the soil, which corn-
is to be sought. pines sloth, carelessness, and ignorance approaching

year o

to fatuity. And when the natural results follow—
when a crop fails or markets fall—they are taught
to cry out for "an equitable adjustment with their
landlords !" They are getting out of the land not
more than a tithe of what it is capable of producing;
and the landlord is to suffer, in the shape of reduc-
tion of rent, for their obstinacy or laziness ! They
argue that capital ought to be stimulated to employ
able bodied labour and increase the agricultural
products of the soil ; and imagine that the land-
lord is to do all this. Yet the main cause why
capital does not flow thither, as it flows to all other
countries where it can be profitably employed, is
the continual turbulence of the people, the nightly
and daily shooting and burning, and the agitation
fomented by the priesthood themselves. The pre-
sent race of tenant farmers in Ireland have no
capital of their own, and no disposition to employ
it if it was in their possession. Should the land-
lords drain, fence, and manure for them, the
chances are that, with the present habits of the bulk
of the small tenantry, at all events, they would find
their liberality unappreciated, and their land, in a
few years' time, reduced to its pristine disorder,
with the old worthless system inveterately persisted
in, and probably covered with a race of squatting
under-tenants and conacre men, defying alike the
collector of rent and poor rates.
We regret that we cannot altogether absolve the
landlords of Ireland from blame on account of this
lamentable condition of the unhappy people.
They have failed in setting them an example of
enterprise and prudence, and in the duty, incum-
bent upon the gentry in every country, of endea-
vouring to instruct in the useful arts and to school
in habits of industry the classes dependent upon
them. Some of them have looked only to the
gratification of the wants and necessities of the
moment ; and permitted their properties to be
injuriousy subdivided, or handed over to extor-
tionating middlemen and bloodsucking usurers,
whose exactions have driven the peasantry to a
state of frenzy. But the bishops and priesthood of
Ireland—men sprung from the people, and mingling
with them day by day, acquainted intimately with
their unthrifty habits, and general ignorance and
obstinacy, are not the less betraying their trust
and misleading those whom they ought to direct
aright, when they teach them that their wretched-
ness and pauperism can be best removed by equitable
adjustment, which is synonomous with landlord
robbery. The Irish farmer must he raised to the
level of his English and Scottish brother, in know-
ledge of his business, in industry, in perseverance
under difficulty, and in conduct, before he can
succeed in raising his position in the world ; and
no legislative effort can effect this for him. Give
him to-morrow the equitable adjustment with his
landlord, which is demanded for him, by which we
presume is meant a reduction of rent and something
amounting to a permanent claim upon the land ho
tills ; and will he (with his present habits unim-
proved) be in any more prosperous condition in
five years hence ? On the contrary, we should look
to see a large portion of the present race of tenant
farmers, when thus advanced in position, running
into a coarse imitation of the vices of too many
of the present landlord class.
The gist, however, of the mendicant resolutions
of their reverences, the Roinish bishops and arch-
bishops, is contained in a succeeding resolution
deprecatory of any national support being given to
their priesthood. " Having shared in the prosperity
of their faithful flocks," they say, "the clergy of
Ireland are willing to share in their privations, and
are determined to resist a measure calculated to
create vast discontent, to sever the people from
their pastors, and ultimately to endanger catholicity
in this country." Certainly if this was all that was
to be apprehended from such a measure the peo-
ple of Ireland would have little to regret the
result, seeing what catholicity has done for
them, temporally at least, by degrading them
in their condition below the level of any
Christian nation. We trust, however, that no con-
sideration of this sort will influence Government to
permit so obvious a violation of our Protestant con-
stitution. These men know themselves that, the
real security for the maintenance of Catholicity in
Ireland is the same lamentable ignorance and per-
verseness which is continually reducing them to the
condition of a nation of paupers. Teach Irishmen
to become self dependent,—to cease to rely for sup-
port upon spoliation of their landlords, or to stand
ever agape for the bounty of England ; put down
agitation, whether priestly or lay; above all things,
vindicate the law, and give security to life and pro-
perty in Ireland ; and then only will the dreaded
"danger to Catholicity" have been incurred. These
men, we repeat, are well aware of the fact, and
hence their protest against a state provision for
their clergy is prefaced with the whine of mendi-
cancy, and a demand for alms for the flock
refuse to teach to live as men, earning their food -by
the sweat of their brows

The text, upon which our contemporary has
chosen to dilate, is a speech by M. Thiers, in reply
to a proposition of M. Ledru Rollin, to raise two
milliards of assignats, on mortgage of land and na-
tional workshops—a socialist measure, similar to
that which so disastrously failed when attempted
by the anarchists of the French Revolution of 1793.
With this theme in hand our contemporary sets
out upon a discussion on the subject of currency
generally.
"M. Thiers," he says, " reminds one of the golden
days when Peel was in his glory, propounding the great
question, " What is a pound ?" His brilliant essay on
the tirMit Fancier delivered last Tuesday will ever re-
main a text on the currency question. He pointed out,
with clearness and with wit, that it was in fact impossi-
ble to add either to the property or the currency of a na-
tion by merely multiplying the symbols of wealth. Pro-
perty is a definite quantity of the gifts of Heaven, and of
the works of man. Money is the token of its possession.
The currency in whatever form, whether gold, silver, or
Paper, is an instrument of spontaneous growth which
'eself to the uses of society, and rises and falls
vel of the national wants.
artificial, nothing within
ive enactments, except the
.ice farm of the institutian. Property and currency are
matters of fact, as much so as the breadth and quality of
the soil, the climate, the number and character of the
population, and the national resources. It would indeed
be quite as possible to double the population of a country
by a circulation of counters standing for men, as to double
its wealth by a circulation of pecuniary counters. If the
counters be convertible they will be presented for pay-
ment; if not they will be thrown into the fire. But
poverty, and that cupidity which is still more hungry
than want, inspire all sorts of hallucinations on this cap-
tivating topic. An indefinite multiplication of tokens, a
mortgage on everything moveable or immoveable, ti loan
borrowed from the future to be re-paid five years hence,
or at the Greek Kalends, are only some of the brood of
tinsel knaveries ever rising to this earth from the Limbo
of Fools."
The admissions made in the commencement of
this extract are valuable, as showing the tendency
of the writer's views, as to the nature of money,
which is, not "property," but only "the token of
zssion." We like much the sneer at "the
golden days when Peel was in his glory, propound-
ing the great question 'What is a pound ?'The
latter portion is only a quixotic assault upon an
imaginary windmill, and is introduced with a pur-
pose. No man of common sense ever fancied that
"an indefinite multiplication of tokens" was an
indefinite multiplication of wealth ; although it
might be its result if we are to consider that money
is the token of the possession of wealth. We
repeat, however, that our contemporary is only here
figtting a shadow of his own creation. Proceed
then to the conclusion of the article :
" The peculiar value of M. Thiers' arguments is their
bearing upon the general question of agricultural banks,
or any paper issue on the security of estates. Experience
has established the possibility of such banks under certain
very limited conditions. They answer as the pecuniary
instrument of regular agricultural operations. In a purely
agricultural and thinly peopled country there is great re-
gularity and security in the produce and sale of cattle and
corn, in the parties between whom the sales take plaee, in
the times of the fairs and the departures of the droves, in
the savings for rent, and all the other payments.
these circumstances banks of long-established character,
in having little opportunity of deviating into new and
doubtful speculations, and running no risk beyond an oc-
casional advance before rent-day or a fair, have certainly
much less need of gold or silver in their coffers than the
banks in the speculative regions of manufacture and com-
merce. But experience, which has so far borne witness to
the safety of a paper currency under certain circumstances,
also testifies with equal plainness to the fact that such
banks suffer the common fate as soon as they attempt to
enlarge their sphere of operations, and to create wealth
instead of representing and negotiating it. It is the
fallacy of schemes like that proposed by the Committee of
Agriculture to the Assembly to exaggerate into infinity
the power of a very finite instrument."
Here again we have to thank the Times for an
admission of no slight importance. Paper money,
medium of the exchange of commodities,
or of temporary accommodation, may be safely
based upon land or property generally—nothing
said about the necessity of basing it upon gold at
a price arbitrarily fixed by law—nothing about its
quantity being limited by. the quantity of gold in
the country for its redemption. "An occasional
advance before a rent-day or a fair" may be safely
made, without any great need of the banks "having
gold or silver in their coffers." But we must guard
against their "creating wealth instead of represent-
ing and negociating it ?" Of course, every well
devised system of currency should be restricted to
represent wealth or property. The objection may
well enough he urged against the visionary projects
of M. Ledru Rollin and his confreres of the French
Committee of Agriculture,, but not against a pru-
dent reform of the currency of the country.
We cannot but think, from the peculiar tender-
ness with which be discusses the subject, that the
limes is beginning to feel where the shoe pinches
us. His very attempts to guard himself against
the suspicion are full of inconsistencies. In the
first quotation which he
,has given, we find him
stating that "the currency in whatever form,
whether gold, silver, or paper, is an instrument of
spontaneous growth which adapts itself to the uses
of society, and rises and falls in amount according
to the level of the national wants." How does this
square with the working of our present system,
under which money is in abundance, when it is not
needed, and, during a period of great national want,
when the country requires an increased supply of
food or any other commodity, is suddenly decreased
in quantity, and beyond our reach, except by sub-
mitting to _ruinous sacrifices ? What we want is
precisely the sort of currency described by the
Times—one which will expand with the expansion
of our commercial manufactures generally, not one
which is regulated and contracted by the diminished
possession by us of one commodity—gold—and we
expect to see the Times heralding us at no distant
period to the adopticii of the former.

to the 1

lig arbitrary an

the immediate reach of le-gis

its poss

Under

or an

We understand that the Rev. J. H. Stewart, who is at
present in Liverpool, as one of the deputation for the
Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, will
prolong his stay over next Sunday, and preach in the
morning at St. Bride's.
SERMONS BY A COLOURED CLERGYMAN.—On Sunday,
three sermons were preached by the Rev. Elie W. Stokes,
a clergyman of colour, ( in connexion with the Episcopal
Church in the United States,) in St. Michael's Church,
Pitt-street. The sermons in the morning and evening
were on behalf the South Church of England Schools ;
and the funds gathered in the afternoon were for the benefit
of the dusky gentleman's own church, in Providence,
Rhode Island.
MR. STEWART AS A COUNCILLOR.—At a dinner given
by Mr. Hay, the architect, on Tuesday, to the workmen
employed in erecting the new church at the south end of
the town, he proposed the health of John Stewart, Esq.,
the Councillor for St. Peter's Ward, and in doing so said,
that he felt proud in saying that no man was of easier ac-
cess, none more ready and able to give his opinion and
assistance in anything connected with their profession.
He (Mr. Hay) was prepared With a phalanx of evidence
in the case that day before Mr. Rushton, [reported else-
where] but that the magistrate was assisted materially by
Mr. Stewart, who gave his opinion on points of architecture
with great clearness. They were highly honoured in having
a member of the profession qualified to take his seat upon
the bench. The services of suoh a gentleman were inva-
luable to a town like Liverpool, and none knew this better
than those who were entrusted with the ras,uagement of
the corporate estate and local affairs.

WE cannot imagine a spectacle so anomalous as
that which Ireland presents at the present moment.
We have recently been called upon to put down,
at a vast expense of money, and of the exertions of
our soldiery, although at no expenditure of blood,
a rebellion in that country, the object of which was
to separate her from Great Britain, and to place her
in the position of an independent and self-support-
ing power, We are still engaged in the duty which