The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1895-05-24

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Brown and Lincoln. The "AbOli-
ton Movement absorbed the mind
of the age. For a quarter of a cen
fury nothing else could command
attention, and monetary economics
became a lost art.'
Not so in England. There,
nations most frightful sin, with the
lesson taught by it, was too recent
to have sunk out of sight. In 1897
Britain was at war with Buonaparte.
During great, prolonged war, no
nation has ever had, or ever can
have, enough metallic money
whether gold or silver, or both-to
meet expenses. So the British gov
eminent ordered the creation of
paper money, in large issues,
through the Bank of England, and
suspension of specie payments"
What was the consequence? Why,
exactly what is always the conse-
quence when all the people of a
country have a fair chance to work.
For quarter of a century, England
was prosperous in spite of her great
wars.
In 1897, the public revenue was
a hundred and fifteen millions of
dollars. In 1915, it had easily
been raised to three hundred and
sixty millions. The lowest annual
collection from loans and taxes was
two hundred and thirty six mil
lions, and in 1913 it reached five
hundred and forty millions. The
suspended bank borrowed for the
government seventeen hundred and
fifty millions. Three million acres
of waste land were improved and
cultivated; and the expectation of
the single class of articles comprised
in cotton manufactures increased
from thirty-tive millions of dollars,
in 1901, to a hundred and thirty
five millions, in 1922. And, for
this one-quarter of a century, there
was no commercial crash, no run on
the bank, no money panic. The
great land owners, the great stock
and bond jobbers, the great bullion
loaners, did not want money
crisis: it was not for their interest
to have one, and be eaten up,
pound, shilling and pence, by the
French.
But as soon as Waterloo assured
the continuation Of European king
craft, with it's various oligarchies
and monopolie;, the aristocratic
wealth and intelligence of Great
Britain combined to rob the poor
and ill-infOrmed classes, whose
labor and commercial activity had
saved the realm. A parliamentary
act was passed, under the whip of
the stock gambling Ricardo, to
resume specie payments-which
meant simply to withdraw from use
the larger part Of the monetary
| facilities of commercial exchange.
Inevitably, the result was the most
stupendous crash in business, the
most cruel wreck Of a peoples
property, the most murderous i'm
poverishment of innocent labor,
that had ever taken place in mod
ern times. Producers, manufac-
turers, merchants, were ruined by
thousands, and wOrkmen were
dropped into idleness by tens of
thousands. Crime was necessitated
at wholesale by law and order, and
then punished at retail by the same
forces that were the real projectors
of it. Revolution was threatened,
was begun, and was finally sup
pressed by military force. But the
few who held bullion, or were rich
enough to stand the strain, swiftly
increased their possessions, and
forty Thousand powerful owners of
real estate absorbed hundred and
ten thousand weaker ones. 1t was
the most diabolical invasion OF
English welfare since William of
Normandy, with his brigands in
mail, had landed at Hastings. AS
far as the British masses were con-
cerncd, they could have lost little,
if anything more, had Buonaparte
been permitted to take the island.
In 1861, when our civil war
broke out, these events. though
forgotten by Americans, were well
remembered in England, especially