The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-01-06 00:00:00

coming session of Parliament, will be one to place on

a satisfactory basis the currency of the country

portion of such a measure, we trust to see an attempt
to correct the hitherto mischievous working of the
system of joint-stock banking. To the enormous
facilities imprudently afforded to favoured individuals
—and principally to the scheming and the reckless—
by these ill-managed concerns, is to be attributed. a
vast portion of the suffering and disaster which h.aee
recently pervaded the commercial community through-
out Great Britain. In our own town we are proud to
say that hitherto the operation: of the system, in the
Ime of our local joint-stock banks, has produced no
such disgraceful crises as we have had to notice in
some other towns. We have had, in Liverpool, no

" Northern and Central Swindle ;" no " Imperial
Swindle;" no " Bank of Manchester Swindle." But
it is sheer folly to imagine that the merchants and
brokers of Liverpool—the importers and factors of the
great staple of manufacture of the neighbouring dis-
tricts, can have passed uninjured through the dis-
arrangements and disasters produced by these dis-
graceful affairs. We have suffered—as the whole com-
munity has suffered—from the revulsion of credit and
the stagger which confidence has sustained by these
failures; and we can never count upon a year's un-
checked prosperity of our commercial affairs until the
entire system be revised and placed upon a t.tally
different foundation.

Ns a system, we conceive that joint-stock banking is
alike unsound and unsafe in principle. We have
watched the rise and progress of many of these insti-
tutions; and we know their organisation to have been
ind their subsequent operation baneful.
It is unsound in principle and unsafe in practice, that
such an undertaking as a bank 'should be conducted
with a view to immediate divisible profits, by officers
tempted, in order to curry favour and exact praise
from proprietors, to make those apparent profits large,
by running unjustifiable risks. It is unsound in prin-
cipl9 and unsafe in practice, that the arbiters of credit
to be given to the customers of a bank—the arbiters
of the mode and extent to which its funds should be
advanced to this or that tradesman—should be rival
tradesmen, themselves, in too many instances absorb-
ing its favours. Experience, we think, has fully proved
these positions. The principle, too, that shares in
these undertakings should be transferable, is, we
think, not calculated to lead to steady and safe busi-
ness. The temptation to declare large dividends,
which circumstances do not justify, is thus kept up;
and whilst we may imagine that some particular con-
cern is rapidly progressing in prosperity, it may occur
—and such has occurred—that its proprietors are only
draining the store-room and emptying the strong box,
before deserting the sinking ship.

dtilihonest

It is said, indeed, that joint-stock banks are safe for
the public. The private banker, if he fails, may pro-
bably not pay more than a- dividend of ss. in the
-found, whilst- the joint-stock bank, consisting of a
large number of proprietors, satisfies every claim. Be
it so, as far at least as the public creditor of the bank
is concerned. But, we ask, is the amount of suffering
and ruin incurred less from the failure of the joint-
stock banker than from the failure of the private
banker ? We say, unhesitatingly, NO ! The number
of poor shareholders —of industrious tradesmen,
widows, and orphans—robbed of their little depen-
dencies by the failure of such undertakings as the
Bank of Manchester and similar bubbles, is greater
than by the failure of any private bank; and there is
this additional injustice connected with the former,
that whilst the private banker gives up every shilling
of his property to satisfy, so far as it will go, his, entire
defalcations, the rich shareholder of the joint-stock
bank—who has been, in fact, the banker—who has be-
come rich from the facilities which he has been enabled
to appropriate to himself, and from dabbling in the
shares of the concern—can, if no further loss than that
of the entire banking capital has been sustained, snap
his fingers at the sufferers, and, in the " otium cum
dignitate" of his suburban villa, laugh, over his port
and claret, at the gullible qualities of the world, in
which he has raised himself from the position, say of a
cow-jobber, to that of a prince, or a pawnbroker,
amongst merchants.

We shall not of course presume to speculate upon
the particular course to which the government of Sir
Robert Peel may have recourse, to meet the difficulties
of this question. We may suggest, however, as one
step by which safety to the public from the malversa-
tions of bank directors may, in some measure, be
secured. Let transfers of bank shares be gazetted as
dissolutions of partnership; and we shall have, we feel
assured, sounder and more honest proprietaries. We
shall, moreover, know them.

At a meeting of the Anti-Corn-law Leaguers, held
in Birmingham on Tuesday last, Mr. Richard Cobden
is reported to have delivered himself after the following
fashion :—" There was not a class of men in Birming-
ham who, if compelled by necessity, could not, abroad,
either in America or on the continent of Europe,
maintain themselves respectably. He could not say
the same thing, however, of the aristocracy, whether
members of the House of Commons or House of
Lords. (Cheers.) The members of the British aris-
tocracy of the present day were not like the old French
noblesse; if driven abroad by adverse circumstances,
they could not emigrate and turn dancing and drawing
masters. (Laughter.) They were only fit for grooms,
jockeys, or coachmen; the business of the stable-yard
or the chase was their principal occupation ; the aristo-
cracy of this kingdom POSSESSED NO HIGHER AC=
COMPLISHMENT, that he (Mr. Cobden) knew of.
(Loud cheers.)"

It has been well said that " there is nothing in the
creation which, by a wise man, ought to be regarded
as contemptible." The most loathsome reptile, the
most noxious insect, exist for some beneficent purpose,
known to the mighty hand which formed them ; and,
if we would examine it rightly, scarcely a sentence or
a sentiment falls from the lips even of a fool which is
not susceptible of being made to convey a moral. To
the reflecting there are

" Sermons in stones, books in the running brooks,
And good in every thing ;"

and though, on a first perusal, the reader of the above
balderdash of Mr. Cobden may see in it only an in-
stance of the pert puppyism of the utterer, and the
coartenears and stupidity of the male and female bibbers
of tea and guzzlers of bun-loaf, by whom it was re-
ceived with " cheers" and " laughter," it will be
found, on examination, to present a tolerable index to
the mind and the philosophy, as well, of the League
body.

We pass over, for the present, the puppyism, the
falsehood, and the insolence, which characterise the
passage; and proceed to examine the argument which
it is intended to convey. The British peer, if com-
pelled to emigrate, could not make a Brummagem tea-
tray, a plated candlestick, a gun, or a pair of snuffers;
the Brummagem artist could, and thereby " make a re-
spectable living :" ergo, the British peer is a less va-
luable member of society, and his well-being less to be
regarded than that of the artisan. The members of
the British aristocracy cannot expeditiously convert
themselves into " dancing masters and drawing mas-
ters ;" the French noblesse have proved their aptitude
in both these distinguished professions ; ergo, the
former is to be regarded as inferior to the latter. The
concluding portion of the sentence would only entitle
its utterer to have his nose pulled, if there could be
found amongst the slandered any one who did not
consider the office beneath even his groom or the
lowest help in his stable-yard ; and we therefore leave
i not I •
its consideration.

In Mr. Cobden's estimation, then, and that of his
fellow-agitators, a man or a class is only valuable in
proportion to his, or its, ability to produce, or to per-
form some office by which, if cast upon any society or
into any country, a respectable maintenance can be
earned. All classes above such are, in the new state
of society which the Leaguers would bring about,
superfluous and valueless. The intellects, the tastes,
the ill-requited occupations and pursuits, by which