The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1857-11-25
Highly Important from Engiand-Saspens,on
Of the Bank Act

Highly Important from England Suspension
OF the Bank Act.
The news from England, which we publish
to-day is the most important that has ever been
borne westward across the Atlantic. The action
Of the American crisis upon the English COM
munity had reached its height on the 18th
instant, when universal panic took possession
of the public mind in Great Britain, and on the
next day the government issued Treasury
circular suspending the Bank act of 1874, and
authorizing the unlimited issue of paper money
by the Bank of England.
In this event, the views which the HERALD
has expressed for a long time back-views which
were founded on comprehensive, logical and
rational study of the state of affairs, both on
this continent and in Europe, and careful sur
vey of the ramifcations of material interests,
unbiased by the hopes or fears of interested
parties-have been singularly and truthfully
borne out; while the efforts of all the jour-
nails, from the London Times down to the
New York Courier and Enquirer, have
been ceaselessly employed to convince the
world that with their little brooms they
could repel the advancing waves of the great
financial tempest
We publish elsewhere succinct account Of
the several suspensions which have been made
by the Bank of England; but the present one
must not be COMPOUNDED with nor its effects
Judged of by those. Commerce was not king
then as now; nor did England have, at the be-
ginning of the present century, young and
powerful rival who could dispute with her for
its crown. The present suspension is far more
than simple bank failure; it is the failure of
the whole monetary and currency system of the
empire, and will produce the widest spread and
most lasting effects The Bank act of 1874, con-
trived with all the skill and experience of Sir
Robert Peel who began his career with the gold
bill that brought about the resumption of specie
payments in 1921, after twenty-three years of
bank suspension, and which was counted upon
as being the great preventive of the very
thing that has now occurred, is demonstrated to
be as weak as all the other devices that have
been brought forward to stay the crash that
comes upon the immense system of bank credits
whenever public confidence is withdrawn.
Much of the supremacy of England's mer-
chant princes will now pass away from them,
and pass into the hands of their younger rivals
on this side of the Atlantic. Her merchants
have not the recuperative energy possessed by
our own; and though the measure she has now
adopted as a palliative for present disaster
may afford relief for time, she must 60
through the struggles of a resumption of specie
payments, which may produce effects as perma.
nent, though less Immediately evident, as those
of the panic. For these struggles she has not
those vast resources that exist with us in our
surplus crops of cotton, wheat and other pro-
auctions of our vast fields and varied climates
Any speculations as to the effect of q recur-
renee to an Unlimited paper issue in England
upon trade would be premature. 1t will be seen
from our advices that the immediate effect was
to cause reaction in the declining tendency of
cotton and other staples, as also in the public
fnnda Exchan ocs hafucan Eurona an1 A no
RIGA have now become utterly deranged, and
what may be their course and their effect upon
trade can only be known when we learn the re-
suit of the license to issue paper, now given to
the Bank of England.