The Statesman.
London, England, 1823-02-27 00:00:00

TYIK

td.rifriallnibigrrriii=o; V Weld wee 10m!
of the "eminent, feattweti of the transactions of twit
clays and, in :00st Ithid.speerh, maintained the justice
and trisikm of the prayer of the petition. Mr. Peel
deprecated suck premiere" discussion. The Ministers
were all in' their plates. The Chsncelloraf the Ezell°•
goer paid not a word ; and that which Re. Peel said
amounted to very little. That Mr. Peel should defend
his Bill is ss natural as that father should defend child.
Buil,* defence that he made last niglit seemed to em-
brace many eralifications. lt seemed to contain matter
of a very abstract nature indeed. Ale said it was just to
return to cash payments in 18141,liecause it would have
been just to return to those payments at any time after
1797. 'This was a curious sort of argument. A thing
that may be jest in itself, may be wholly inexpedient:—
But, can it be just to pass a law to-day which induces
me to bargain to giec twenty pounds two years hence for
a certain thing, and that compels tw, when the time
of p4ment comes, to pay sixty pounds for the thing in
place of twenty: can this be justUt is nonsense to tell me,
that I knew that cash-payments were to return at the peace.
I knew oo such thing; and the hest possible answer to this

stale old assertion is, that they did not return at
II the peace, in spite of those acts of Parliament; that they
have not returned even yet ; and that they will not have
returned until the let of next May. Three-fourths of
those who have been malting bargains, were actually
children when the suspension of cad►-aynstttta took
place. •The idea of returning to prices such as we see
now, never once entered their heads since they were
born. So that this is an assumption that is not worth a
straw. No reasonable person can rest upon it for a mco
Hunt. The nation was deceived ; that is enough : it

was igetaant of the consequences which would arise
from the casb-mcasures. It could not possibly have been
otherwise ; but that is no matter. Debtors were not
prized o/' their danger. They hare been wronged or
ruined by the cash-measures. The wrong has been
done; and this wrong now ought to be remedied. After
Mr. Peel came Mr. Monck, who maintained the soundness
of Lord Folkestone's doctrine with regard to the relative
prices of gold and paper, in answer to the doctrines of
Mnschet and Ricardo. lle agreed in opinion with
Mr. Bennet that the House passed Peel's Bill when it

was in a state of profound ignorance upon the subj Pct ;
and that ignorance he also traced to Mr. Ricardo. Mr.
Ricardo rose to explain. Lord Folkestone bad said that
Mr. Ricardo bad asserted at the time of passing Peel's
Bill, that prices would fell only four and a half per
cent, in consequence of that bill, but that he had since
acknowledged that the bill has occasioned a fall of

prices to the amount of ten per cent. In explanation,
Mr. Ricardo said, that the four and a half per cent.
opinion was founded upon the notion that his plan would
be adopted, and that it was the not adoping of his plan
that caused the further fall of price to the amount of ten
per cent.—Who would not imagine, from this, that Mr.
Ricardo opposed Mr. Peel's Bill. Let us now, then,

hear what he said, in a Committee of the whole House,
on the report of that Committee wbicb reported ia favour
of this very Bill of Mr. Piet. He said that " the pro-
" posed mode of resuming cash payments appeared to
" him the easiest that could de imagined." After des.
eanting upon the ignorance of the Bank Directors,
observed upon the fearful and destructire depreciation
that hal at one time exialmit he way happy to reflect

" that we had w far retraced oar steps. We itad nearly

" got" home , and he hoped that the-Right Hotjurfilia
" Gentleman (Mr. Peel) would lend them his assistance
"to enable them to teach it in safety. He would ten-
" ture to state that, in a very few weeks, all alarm would
beArgetten, and at Me end of the year we should be
" all surprised to reflect that any alarm had ever pre-
" tailed, at a prospect of a variation of three per cent.

"in the value of the circulating medium!" The Ho-
roura!,!e Member sat down amidst LOUD AN GE.
NERAL " CHEERING FROM ALL SIDE ON'
" THE HOUSE!!!" This scene aas in the 'Horse of
Commons, on Monday, May 24th, 1819. It was at this,
particularly, that Mr. Cohbett laughed in Long kind.
He sent twenty miles to bring his son up to help him
laugh ; and. he. wren them, they read this passagii over
twenty times: " Mind," said he, " James, I te you
" what precious laughing we shall have at this in 'Eng-
. land." We dare not laugh at what pants in the
House of Commons now since Si: Acts have been pltst d ;
but we may laugh at what took place there before.—
And so, he sat down amidst loud cheering from all farts
of the House! Does not Mr. Rennet wait truly, then?
And was not the Act passed in consevence of
the ignorance communicated to it by Mr. Iticarslo ? Oh.
szrvc, that the extract that we have just made Oates out
of the speech made af? ef' il Mt. Ricardo's own project had
been rejected, and another put in its pace. It wA4I4.
be easy for us to showthat bis project would lrveqpir-

duceithe same e(fect ; but fist is wholly unnecesiiity.2
Our extract is made from a speech made in favour of Mr..
Nati own report on which his Hitt was foandetl.Xisi
so. he "sat down amidst loud Cheers fi•ont all sid4 of

" the house"! He did not so sit down last night. We

imagined when we first read the report, that Mr
liroughain could not have been present; because we saw
nothing from him in support of his " oracle." We find,
however, that Mr. Brougham was pre:en', and we ee
that lie did say nothing ; though this very Surrey peti-
tion contained almost the whole of that Norfolk petition

which Mr.
of
thought proper to censure on the
first day the Session. What is become of the Norfolk
petition itself Mr. Coke will of course let us know one of
these days, when he is done with the hole and-corner
meetings in that county. He will take an opportunity,
we dare say, of presenting the county petition when he
presents that from the Hundred of Xatramtrecu, which
petition from Launditch was intended to 60 s protest
against the connty petition, bat triiich is a petition/or
the county petition ; and, what is Taber sigslar, and
must be singularly gratifying to Mr. Coke, it 'is a petition
coining from, not only his own constituents, bat, for the
greater part, FROM IBS OWN TENANTS.
This petition from the Hundred of Lanndirlfh will be
found below, and we do hope that it will not be suffered
to be presented to the House without due attention paid
to it. We repeat that a meeting of the nobility, gentry,
clergy, nwncrs and occupiers of land in the Hundred of
Launditch was held en Wednesday, 19th of February,