Chapter V (5)

“Vassigny sprang to his feet, and placed his hand over his friend’s mouth. ‘No, no!’ he exclaimed, ‘the fatal secret shall die with me.’ Then, without another word, he sat down at a table, and with a trembling hand traced the following lines:

“‘Monsieur le Comte, there are tortures which human strength cannot endure. For mercy’s sake, let us terminate this sad affair as soon as may be, or I will not answer for keeping my promise. I shall pass the night at the club.’

“This letter was addressed: ‘_Monsieur le Comte de Marsanne_.’”

At the club, the husband and the lover meet and play high. Vassigny loses, as usual; affects anger, shuffles the cards offensively, and hints suspicions of foul play. A challenge is the natural result. Late upon the following night, we find Kersent pacing the Boulevard in despondent mood, accompanied by D’Havrecourt, who has acted as one of Marsanne’s seconds in the inevitable duel. They discuss the melancholy event of Vassigny’s death, which has occurred that evening, a few hours after his adversary’s ball had pierced his breast. Vassigny had fired in the air.

“‘The more I reflect on it,’ said D’Havrecourt, ‘the more convinced I am that the unworthy affection of which Vassigny made a parade, was only a feigned sentiment, a mock passion thrown as a blind to the indiscreet curiosity of the world, to mask a devoted, although, perhaps, a guilty love. To you, who loved him as a brother, and to you alone, I may divulge an episode of this fatal drama. This it is. Vassigny was still stretched upon the grass; the surgeon, after vainly endeavouring to extract the bullet, put up his instruments, with a countenance that left me no hope. Tinguy had led away Marsanne; Navailles and Lord Howley had gone off in all haste, one to have every thing prepared at Vassigny’s house, the other to summon the first physicians. I was alone with the wounded man. His senses returned; he opened his eyes, and I saw by the expression of his agonised features that he wished to speak to me. I knelt beside him. He raised his left hand, and in a feeble voice asked me to unfasten his shirt-sleeve. I obeyed. His wrist was encircled by a small bracelet of hair, so tightly fastened to the arm, that, to get it off, I had to cut the tress. ‘D’Havrecourt,’ said he faintly, ‘that bracelet was only to quit me with life; I confide it to your honour; swear to annihilate it the instant you get home.’ I made the required vow, and from that moment he spoke not a word. On reaching home, my first care was to fulfil my promise, by burning the bracelet. It was composed of a tress of fair hair, and the hair of that Francine is black. And it was secured by a gold plate, upon which were engraved an A and a G intertwined, with the words ‘14 October 1840.’’

“‘Oh! say no more, my dear friend,’ cried Kersent, interrupting the Major, ‘Alas! I have too much reason to believe that there are now upon this earth two beings infinitely more to be pitied than Vassigny. He, at least, has found in death oblivion of his sorrows; but they survive for misery and tears.’”

None, save Kersent and D’Havrecourt, suspect the true cause of the duel; they are men of honour, and the secret is safe with them. For once, the inquisitive and scandal-loving Parisian world has been put upon a wrong scent. The Count’s precautions and Vassigny’s sufferings have not been thrown away. The Countess’s reputation is saved--the honour of the De Marsannes remains unblemished. It is not without success that the ignoble Francine has been made unwittingly to play the part of the Dog of Alcibiades.

An epilogue, in the shape of a letter from Kersent, dated a year later, from the bivouac of Bab-el-Oued, closes this tragical and well-told tale. It informs D’Havrecourt and the reader of the death of the Count de Marsanne and his erring and unhappy wife. The latter had died some months previously, of a malady brought on by grief. The Count met his fate by a Bedouin bullet in the deserts of Algeria. Kersent, whom affection and compassion had prompted to accompany his cousin in his last campaign, found upon the breast of the dead officer a locket enclosing a fragment of paper, the legacy of Madame de Marsanne to her husband. It contained the avowal of a fault and a prayer for pardon.

SIR ROBERT PEEL AND THE CURRENCY.

“De Mortuis nil nisi bonum” is, when applied to individuals, a generous, if not a just rule for our ordinary guidance. But to whatever extent it may be carried in judging of men and their motives, we apprehend that it would be the height of Quixotism to admit a defunct cabinet or an ejected minister to the benefit of any such act of indemnity. The evils which statesmen may commit, either through mistaken policy or egotistical arrogance of opinion, are too serious in their results to be easily or readily forgotten: and no lapse of time whatever can screen from censure those men who have wilfully tampered with the well-being and prosperity of the nation.

It will, we think, be admitted on all hands, that the present ministry, however well disposed, are most wofully infirm of purpose. We make every allowance for the situation in which they found themselves when called to office. However sanguine may have been the dreams of the Whig partisan, he could not, some eighteen months ago, have entertained the slightest idea of that extraordinary combination of chances which led to his return to office; neither do we believe that the leaders of that party ever expected to obtain even a temporary ascendency during the existence of the present parliament. When Lord John Russell and his confederates threw down the gauntlet of Free Trade, they could not have calculated upon the possibility of its being picked up and appropriated by their old antagonist of Tamworth. Well as they may have known, from former experience, the nature of that “tricksy spirit,” they never could have been prepared for that crowning denouement to a drama of political apostasy; and we are certain that no section of her Majesty’s subjects were more amazed than the Whigs when they found themselves again in possession of their coveted quarters in Downing Street. Without plan, and without preparation, we freely admit that they were entitled to a large share of public indulgence. In ordinary times, their administration might even have been productive of good. Schooled by adversity, and instructed by previous failure, they this time put forward in the van no opinions of a revolutionary tendency. They promised to apply themselves in the first instance to the mental and physical amelioration of the people--they offered to become the patrons of educational seminaries, directors of public baths, and inspectors of extended sewerage; and no one could gainsay in these respects the purity of their projected measures. But, unfortunately for them, the necessities of the time required more than sanatory legislation. The prodigious increase of national wealth which was prophesied as the immediate result of the change in our commercial policy and the repeal of agricultural protection, did not arise, like Aladdin’s palace, in one night from the liberated ground. The various and complex questions of Irish policy became all at once merged and confounded in the cry of common famine. The staple food of an unenterprising and improvident people had failed; and the Celts of the western islands, desisting from their absurd denunciation of the Saxon, were fain to supplicate Great Britain, herself by no means exempt from the calamity, for the means of absolute existence.

We do not intend to criticise in detail the means which were adopted by government for the relief of the suffering districts. We believe that they were actuated throughout by a liberal and a kindly spirit; and upon such an occasion as this, it was truly difficult to steer between parsimony on the one side, and reckless extravagance on the other. At the same time it is very evident that they were utterly unprepared for the crisis. They neither adopted an intelligible principle, nor laid down an extensive plan for their guidance. They vacillated every week between one method of relief and another. At one time they were for the promotion of useless works, which could tend to no profitable result, but which were a mere excuse for opening the public coffers to the relief of the starving Irish; at another, they rejected the proposal of Lord George Bentinck for extended railway employment--a scheme which, however objectionable from its magnitude, at least held out a feasible prospect of ultimate reimbursement of the loan. It is right to observe that in this refusal they were strengthened by the co-operation of Sir Robert Peel, their former opponent, but now their confidential adviser; and that the only ministerial measure of which the late autocrat has been pleased to disapprove, was a subsequent veering towards the principle recommended by Lord George, and the concession of a restricted loan towards the promotion of the Irish railways. But, as we have said before, the question of Irish relief was attended with much difficulty. The most experienced and sagacious statesman of the world might have gone astray in providing for a calamity so extended and so new; and, upon the whole, we are not inclined to find much fault with the Whigs in this respect, beyond what is implied by our decided conviction of their weakness, or rather want of purpose.

But, unfortunately for us all--most unfortunately, we fear, for the great bulk of the community--there are other questions not only impending but absolutely pressing upon us at this moment, of even greater vital importance than either Irish famine or British scarcity. It may be that, through the mercy of Divine Providence, these scourges maybe speedily removed. The soil may again be restored to its former fertility; and if such should prove to be the case, we trust that this calamitous lesson against idleness and improvidence will not be forgotten in those quarters where the visitation has been most severely felt. We trust that, in Ireland especially, and in some parts of our own country, both landlord and tenant will be roused to a more active sense of their respective liabilities and duties; and that, notwithstanding the tendencies which are too likely to follow from our late pernicious course of legislation, they will become alive to the conviction that no nation whatever can hope to maintain its independence if it neglects the paramount duty of cultivating and rearing within itself that supply of food upon which its inhabitants must depend for their support. It is not much more than a year ago, since we pointed out the miserable consequences which, in the event of a war or a famine, must ensue from a decrease of the cultivation of the soil, such as was not only contemplated, but openly recommended by some leading partisans of the League. Since then, we have had an opportunity of testing the strength of our actual position under one of those terrible emergencies. Scarcity has come, though not famine in its most gaunt and hideous shape; and not only are our own supplies deficient, but the greatest difficulty has been found in procuring a substitute from elsewhere. Had this occurred in the time of war, not in the season of unbroken peace, when the highway of the ocean is free, it is hardly within the power of man to exaggerate the horror of the consequences.

But, though the heavens may again smile upon us, there are evils of man’s creation which may not be so speedily removed, unless the nation can be brought to a clear sense of the predicament in which they have been placed by the insensate obstinacy and insatiable conceit of one minister, who, though ejected from office, is yet powerful in the councils of the empire. We cannot explain, because we do not understand, the nature of that mysterious and undefinable power which Sir Robert Peel seems to exercise over the proceedings of the present cabinet. We do not know the secret composition of the philtre, or love-potion, which he appears to have given to the Whigs; but we have seen quite enough in the recent discussions in parliament with regard to the monetary pressure which is now in the act of crushing and grinding to dust many thousands of the commercial and industrious classes, to be aware that the Russell ministry are entirely at one with Sir Robert in the maintenance of his favourite crotchet, and that they are prepared to abide by his delusion with regard to the currency, be the consequences to the country what they may.

This question of the currency is at once so vast, and so vital to the interests of every man who has any stake at all in the community--it presents itself at this moment in so alarming, and yet so palpable a shape--that we would be inexcusable were we to remain silent at a crisis when the evils of circumscribed credit and bank restriction are driving the honest trader into the Gazette. Long before the late premier had absolved us, by his unprincipled tergiversation, from all ties of party and support, we sedulously and earnestly protested against his perpetual meddling and tampering with the circulation of the country. In particular we were amongst the first to oppose his wanton, because uncalled for interference with the Scottish Banking System, under the operation of which the country had advanced, without risk or injury, at a ratio which probably never was equalled, and which certainly never was exceeded. We then warned, not only the bankers, but our national representatives, and the public, that if they permitted one single wedge to be driven into the fabric, the stability of the whole was endangered; and we showed that the retention of our one-pound note circulation was, though an important item of profit to the bankers, and of convenience to the public, of little consequence compared with the results which must ensue, if the circulation of the banks was arbitrarily limited, and all extension of credit made to depend upon the possession, or rather the purchase, of a large sum of useless and unprofitable bullion, which, so far from increasing the wealth of the country, must inevitably render it powerless in the event of a commercial panic. We believed then, and we believe now, that history does not afford a parallel instance of so reckless and shameful a disregard of public feeling and opinion on the part of any statesman; and the confidence and perseverance with which Sir Robert Peel proceeded to thrust his measure down the throats of the Scottish bankers, was, in our opinion, little less than a deliberate insult to the country,--because we never can forget this great and pregnant fact, that no grounds for tangible accusation could be drawn, or were attempted to be established, from the practical working of the system. That system was created by a somewhat neglected people for their own convenience, and without any legislative interference at all. It had supplied all the necessities of the country, and had been found perfect in its operation during periods of more than common exigency and distress. It had stood the test of experience successfully at times when the monetary system of England had been proved insufficient for the pressure. It possessed the full confidence of the nation; and yet--we can hardly write the sentence without a blush--it was surrendered after a faint opposition, merely because Sir Robert Peel considered himself an accomplished currency doctor, and was desirous to try the effects of his _aurum potabile_ upon a sound as well as a sickly subject.

The one-pound notes, however, were spared, and the bankers in some degree reconciled to the change by the promise of a future monopoly. Had not that bait been thrown out to them, we can hardly believe it possible that so unnecessary and unpopular a measure could have been carried at all, but, the wedge being once inserted, it has since been driven home to the quick. We appeal now with confidence to the merchants and manufacturers of Glasgow, Paisley, and Greenock--to the landed gentry, who are suffering under the tightening of the screw--to the enterprising tenant, who, under a long lease, is seeking to improve his land--to the trader, dealer, and shopkeeper of every kind throughout Scotland--whether they ever experienced such a monetary pressure as the present. And we ask them further to consider for themselves, and that very seriously indeed--for an evil too long submitted to may grow beyond the reach of a remedy--what is the real cause of this distress, and unparalleled scarcity of money? How is it that, with property of the most undeniable value on their hands, which they are ready to tender in security, they cannot by any means whatever obtain their accustomed credit? And then we ask them to compare the present state of matters with the past, and point out, if they can, any one period or crisis, before Sir Robert Peel was pleased of his own accord to substitute his banking system for that established by the progressive intelligence of the nation, when money could not be obtained and credit given, at fair but not exorbitant rates, for good and sufficient security?

We crave the pardon of our English readers if, in the first instance, we place this point more exclusively in a national view. It is quite true, and we are fully alive to the fact, that, thanks to the crotchet of Sir Robert Peel, England and Scotland are now placed in exactly the same monetary difficulties, and we are not without hope that, on that account, our united efforts to get rid of the nightmare which is stifling us both, may prove more effectual than if either country were struggling singly for liberation. But it must not be forgotten that with us the experiment has been recently made. We are still most vividly alive to the advantages of a system which we ourselves founded, upon principles of mutual support among all classes of the community--under which we have risen and thriven--and which has not been sacrificed on account of any alleged fault or deficiency in its working, or from any intelligible motives of public policy, but simply to gratify the whim and feed the vanity of a minister who considers himself wiser than a nation, and who never can be happy without change. A monetary crisis and a panic are new things to us; for we have hitherto been accustomed to associate public distress with low wages, low prices, and a want of demand for products. But we find ourselves now for the first time in this position, that with higher wages than are the average, more demand for labour than can well be supplied, and more orders on the hands of our manufacturers than can well be executed, we are yet brought to an absolute stand-still for want of money. We go to our bankers with security which is both unquestioned and unquestionable, and we proffer it in security for that which, according to our old ideas, we think that we are absolutely entitled to have on such terms--for money, the life-blood of a commercial community; and we are told that it cannot be given to us! And when we inquire the reasons for such refusal, we are told that the banks cannot afford to increase their circulation; since, under the new system, they are compelled to stock their own coffers with gold for every single note which they issue beyond a given point--and gold to be had must be paid for.

Had we a Pactolus among ourselves, this state of things might possibly be endurable; but, unfortunately, we are not rich in that kind of bullion, and our Mint--somewhat needlessly secured by the Treaty of Union--has since very coolly been abolished. But we have iron and other sorts of produce in abundance, and land tolerably valuable, and stocks of various kinds, upon all or any of which we were wont, in former times, to raise money without any difficulty, and so to make our capital available in the prosecution of our different works. These are now rendered absolutely and practically useless. We cannot raise money upon them, because the bankers cannot afford to buy an exorbitant amount of golden counters to remain in their cellars profitless and unseen; and thus trade is brought to a stand-still, public enterprise is checked, and the market is disappearing from our grasp.

In short, the present system under which the whole of us are groaning, and which, if not speedily abandoned, must land us in irretrievable difficulties, is neither more nor less than a most culpable interference with credit, by restricting the ordinary circulation of the country to a point far below that which is absolutely necessary for its exigencies, and by making any further issue of paper dependent upon the purchase and the hoarding of gold.

It may sound paradoxical when we say that we are almost glad when a crisis like the present has arisen, because we are convinced that nothing short of actual and painful experience will open the eyes of the community to the miserable fallacies upon which the views of their former and their present rulers are founded. Of all questions which can be agitated we are quite aware that that of the currency is the least palatable to the general reader, and the one which he most gladly escapes from in a kind of mazed bewilderment, and generally with a confession that its intricacies are beyond his comprehension. It is now full time that this state of general apathy should be ended. If we hope to preserve much longer our course of national prosperity, we must face the question manfully, and not shrink even from the array of figures which quacks in currency invariably adduce for the purpose of mystifying their audience; just as their medical brethren contrive to render themselves unintelligible by the use of a peculiar jargon. There is, after all, no great mystery in the matter, if men would take the trouble of reflecting for themselves. The laws which ought to regulate the currency of a country should have reference to the real property of that country as its basis, and not an artificial substitute like gold, which, in addition to its scarcity and its liability to fluctuation, is incomparably the dearest circulating medium which has ever yet been adopted. In the words of the authors of the Gemini Letters--a publication, by the way, which is well worthy the attention of every man who seeks to make himself master of the details of the currency question--“we must not expect to be relieved from the distress, and difficulties, and dangers which overshadow the land, so long as we are determined that the value of the produce of our lands, mines, and manufactures, and the amount of the wages of labour, shall be dependant upon the possession of a few millions more or less of gold coin. Will some stickler for a high metallic standard tell us what proportion the value of the whole of the gold generally to be had in the United Kingdom at one time, bears to the value of all the other property of the country? If this question were satisfactorily answered, it is probable that we should not much longer be

“Resolved,
Like sugar-loaf turn’d upside down,
To stand upon the smaller end,”

but rather be disposed to treat this particular metal in the way that we treat all other marketable commodities--namely, suffer it to find its proper level.”

It is edifying to remark the different interpretations which are given, by different supporters of the bullion representative system, of the present acknowledged distress and unparalleled tightness in the money markets of Great Britain. Sir Robert Peel--the apostle of the system, upon whose shoulders, we maintain, the primary burden of this enormous responsibility must rest--cannot but admit the fact of the gloomy deficiency; but he falls back upon the ultimate causes. These are, according to his view, over-speculation in railways, joined with a scarcity of food and an increase in the price of cotton. Granting all this to be true, what has that to do with the great question at issue? We are perfectly ready to admit that at the present moment there is an immense demand for money, and that the demand may be owing, in a great measure, to these and similar causes. We know perfectly well that if there exists a drain upon this country for gold, in order to purchase from abroad the supply of food which is deficient in consequence of the scarcity at home, the currency must necessarily be contracted, so long as a five-pound note of the Bank of England, or of any other bank, is held to be, in the eye of the law, not the representative of so much real property--be it land, or stock, or iron--but the eidolon or shadow of five golden coins of a certain weight and fineness, which cannot escape from the empire without annihilating the existence of the subsidiary paper. What we complain of in effect is this, that the whole enormous property of the three kingdoms should be represented merely by the insignificant and insufficient issue of thirty-two millions in bank-notes, and that the whole remainder of the currency is entirely metallic. For although there may certainly at times be a larger amount of paper in circulation, that paper, beyond the thirty-two millions, must be represented by bullion in the bank, and if the latter be withdrawn, the representative issue must be recalled. So that, by a large drain of gold, we may be reduced, and are at this moment becoming so, to so contracted a circulation, that trade must necessarily stand still for the sheer want of a common representative of property.

Why, and on what principles, the amount of our paper circulation was fixed at so low a point, we are utterly unable to conceive, unless it was for the purpose of compelling a large portion of our trading capital to remain fruitless and withdrawn from use in the form of unprofitable gold. Thirty-two millions, even in ordinary times, is not above one-half of what is required for the needful circulation of the country. In 1810 the currency of the paper for the three kingdoms was not less than sixty millions; and during the thirty-seven years which have elapsed since that time, not only has our population increased at an enormous ratio, but our trade and enterprise augmented in a more than corresponding degree. The tendency, however, of our improved system of banking has been to reduce the circulation within the lowest possible limit; but that limit was necessarily variable, and adjusted itself to meet the occurring contingencies of the country. Now it is fixed by the legislature at a point so low, that we are absolutely dependent upon the amount of gold which we can retain in the country, for the means of commercial interchange. We are obliged at present, it seems, to transport a large portion of our gold to America for the purchase of food. For every sovereign which leaves our shores a note is taken out of circulation, and no means whatever are permitted to individuals or to banking companies to supply the deficiency. In ordinary times, it might be expected that the gold would again find its way to Britain; at present, however, it is absorbed and scattered for the purpose of enabling America to prosecute her aggressive war against Mexico. And of what use, we ask, to the nation at large, are some ten or twelve millions converted into specie and stored up in the vaults beneath the Bank of England? Sir Robert Peel tells us, with a smile of peculiar complacency, that the hoarding up of so much bullion is a safeguard against a panic, because it renders any run upon the banks for gold a matter of absolute impossibility. With only thirty-two millions of paper extant for the common circulation of the nation, we shrewdly suspect that any apprehensions of a run upon the banks are as visionary as the dreams of El Dorado. No one knows better than Sir Robert Peel that the paper currency of a country must be sorely depreciated indeed before any such event can take place; and surely there are many means of preventing an over-issue, without bringing us to such a pass that in every season of scarcity or of war we must be reduced to an absolute halt--which, in a commercial country like ours, is a word equivalent to the impoverishment and the ruin of thousands.

We presume that Sir Robert Peel, when he carried through the Banking Restriction Act, intended that measure to be a permanent one. We cannot suppose that he meant it merely to apply to the present situation and necessities of the country, or that it was left to be repealed and altered every session of parliament, to suit the state of the money market, and the fluctuations of the national prosperity. If so, we think it must at once become apparent to every reasonable man, that a gross and palpable absurdity was involved in the very principle of the measure. For to limit the supply of the ordinary circulation in a commercial country like ours, liable as it is to expansion and contraction, to periods of peculiar activity and of occasional serious depression, is quite as preposterous an idea as it would be to declare by statute what amount of food or what extent of water should in all time coming be used by the inhabitants of the British Islands. To interfere with the operation of credit, which is the object of Sir Robert Peel, is practically the greatest blow that can be given to the enterprise and the advancement of the country; for it just amounts to this, that not having a sufficiency of straw wherewith to manufacture our bricks, we are even denied the privilege of going out into the fields to collect the subsidiary stubble. The Pharaoh of Tamworth is a heavier taskmaster than the Egyptian. He demands our daily rate of taxes, but will neither furnish us with the material, nor permit us to gather it for ourselves.

If permanent, it is incumbent upon the supporters of the Banking Restriction Act, who are the very parties at present refusing to relax one iota of our bondage, to show that their measure is well adapted for every political contingency. That, we apprehend, would require greater hardihood, and certainly more ingenuity, than they have yet enlisted on their side. There are many things besides a scarcity or a famine which may occasion a drain of gold. That metal has a peculiar facility of finding its own level; it is liable to sudden demands, and its price is variable accordingly. Were this country to be again engaged in a European contest like the last, we should have a recurrence of the drain of 1814, when gold was at the rate of £5, 8s. per ounce, or upwards of one pound ten shillings and two-pence above its present value. No political foresight, no legislative enactment whatever, can guard us against such a state of things; and the consequence would be an entire disappearance of bullion. According to our present system, the loss of bullion would necessarily produce such a contraction as would lay the credit of the country prostrate. All our extra circulation, founded on the metallic basis, would immediately be called in; taxes could no longer be paid, and the result would be a revolution or the sponge. Are the capitalists of the kingdom, who, we were told some time ago, were the chief supporters of Sir Robert Peel, anxious that the experiment should be made? We can assure them that if it is intended to maintain the circulation of the country permanently upon its present basis, they stand in imminent danger, not only of occasional panics, but of that repudiation which in America was the consequence of a similar tampering with the banks, and the like metallic delusion. At best they must make up their minds for the recurrence of many seasons as hard and as cruel as the present; and it will be well if many of their class are not involved in the ruin which is impending at this moment over the heads of the minor traders.

But, say some of the bullionists, this measure is not intended to be permanent. It is, like all other legislative enactments, subject to modification; and we are prepared, when occasion presses, to alter it accordingly. Why, then, in the name of common sense--nay, in that of common humanity--has not the alteration been made? Is it intended that the public shall sink beneath the pressure of this law before the smallest portion of its burden shall be removed? Is it wise to delay all relief until the Gazette is full, and to keep credit suspended at the very moment when it is most urgently and clamantly required? And what kind of law, we ask, is that which in prosperous times--that is, whenever gold is abundant--confessedly puts no check whatever upon speculation, but which, at the least turn of the tide, is an absolute engine of destruction? Look at it in any view, and we maintain that a more miserable instance of legislation upon false and contracted principles was never yet invented by the brain of a political economist.

The host of pamphlets which has recently issued from the press, upon this momentous and interesting topic, sufficiently demonstrates the pressing nature of the crisis. Whatever difference of opinion may be found amongst so many writers, with regard to the intermediate basis and proper representative of property, they are almost to a man combined in denouncing the impolicy of the late restrictions. Lord Ashburton, the advocate and apologist of the Bank of England, is at one with Mr Enderby, the able opponent of the gold standard, as to this particular point. They are all agreed that the system which professes to rectify an inevitable drain of gold, by crippling the trade of the country, and forcing down the value of its property, is nothing short of absolute infatuation, and that, considered by itself, it admits of no intelligible defence. It would be well, therefore, if an effort were made, in the first instance, to get rid of the odious and absurd restrictions, or at least to substitute for the present miserable driblet, a much larger amount of paper currency, which may be based upon government securities. There is but one opinion prevalent throughout the country with regard to the present insufficiency of the currency, so long at least as the Bank is compelled by statute to deprive us of the means of fair and legitimate accommodation. Sir Robert Peel has placed the directors in this anomalous and invidious position, that they _must_ put on the screw whenever there is a prospect of adverse exchanges; and the immediate effect of that measure is a stoppage of trade, and at the same time a depression in the value of every kind of merchandise and product. Taken singly, this is an evil of the very worst description--in fact nothing worse could be expected from the most formidable combination of natural and political causes. Taken in connexion with the late tariffs, which, without securing reciprocity, have opened the home market to the competition of the foreigner, who is less taxed and cheaper fed than our own redundant population, each recurrence of it is a blow to our commercial prosperity, which if often repeated would bring us to the verge of ruin. The first measure, therefore, which ought to be taken--and we entreat the serious attention of every man who understands the currency question to this--is to emancipate the Directors of the Bank of England from their present false position, by removing the restriction of their paper issues, or at least by fixing these at a point which will enable them to supply the ordinary wants of the community, without reference to an accidental or inevitable drain of bullion, so that the internal trade and production may never be checked so long as there is a remunerative demand. A similar regulation must of course be made with regard to the country bankers; and were this done, we have very little fear indeed that any crisis at all equal to the present one could arise. But we must not be left in absolute dependence for our circulation upon the state of the harvest, or cripple labour at the very season when employment is most urgently required.

We do not say that the repeal of the Act of 1844, or the increase of the paper issues to a larger fixed point, can set the question of the currency at rest. No thinking man who has devoted his time and energies to the study of our monetary history, would be bold enough to make so rash and confident an assertion: on the contrary, we think that the time is not far distant, when the leading theories of the bullionists must be thoroughly probed, and the consideration of the expediency of a fixed gold standard most seriously and deliberately resumed. The experience of some thirty years of peace has furnished data to us which were not known to the older political economists, and we are now far better enabled to explain the phenomena of commercial fluctuation. But it would be extremely unwise at the present moment, when a palpable and tangible evil is before us, to attempt too wide a reformation, and so to peril the chance of a present amendment, on the necessity of which we are all most thoroughly agreed.

From some quarters we have heard an expression of extreme surprise that the late Premier, who cannot but be awake to the mischief which he has so wantonly caused, should have been so obstinate and inflexible in his adherence to the restrictive system. Very little consideration indeed is requisite to discover the reason. Upon this question of the currency the whole character and repute of Sir Robert Peel as a financial minister are staked, and he dare not abandon his measure of 1844, without tacitly admitting that he has committed a most serious and unpardonable blunder. Accident has intervened to postpone any actual test of the efficiency of his other measures. We do not yet know what effect the alteration of the corn laws may produce upon the welfare of the nation in an ordinary year, or whether any of the blessings so abundantly promised may be realized to the poor without a more than corresponding depression. The tariffs abroad continue still hostile and unrelaxed, and although the smaller manufacturer, artisan, and workman, are already beginning to feel the baneful effects of foreign competition in the home market, their cry is not yet loud enough to excite a large share of the popular commiseration. Two great events stand prominently forward in the aspect of the present year--the scarcity and high price of food, and the want of commercial accommodation among ourselves.

The first is the act of Providence. No human foresight, no political skill, could have prevented it, and the scourge has mercifully fallen at a time when the demand for labour has materially lessened its severity in Great Britain. But that same scarcity, by leading to an exportation of the precious metal, has been undoubtedly the means of testing the soundness of our monetary system. As the prosperity of these islands, and our wonderful ascendency in the great markets of the world, depend upon the state of our trade and our manufactures at home, it was obviously the duty of a minister, who, more than any other, professed his intimacy with commercial principles, to take care that the evil of a scarcity should not at the same time be combined with the still greater one of a monetary crisis. If gold must be paid away in order to purchase the necessary supply of food for our population--if in addition to our own wants we are compelled to ward off starvation from the thoughtless and unenterprising Irish--we were doubly bound to take care that our great staple resources, our trade and our manufactures, should not suffer from any cause over which we had the evident control. And yet, how do we stand at the present moment? No sooner does the drain of bullion begin, than the Directors of the Bank of England, placed by this odious and uncalled-for measure of Peel’s in sudden jeopardy of their charter, begin to put on the screw. The country bankers, who must take their cue from, because they are rendered entirely subordinate to the great establishment in London, are compelled to follow the example. First of all the rates of discount are raised, and then credit is peremptorily refused. This, be it remarked, is at a time when the solvency of individuals is unsuspected,--were it otherwise, the crash must have been tremendous ere now. The enormous bulk of the _real_ circulation of the country, which is represented by bills of exchange, and which never can be estimated with any thing like an approximation to its amount, is thus instantaneously checked. The Banks cannot discount--the bills become useless, and the property on which they are based, can not now command its representative. Fifty thousand pounds of silver bullion could not command five thousand pounds of money in the public market of London. The manufacturer saw his credit stopped, his bills unnegociable, but he had still to pay the weekly rate of wages, or suspend labour, as indeed in many instances has been done. And all this, because Sir Robert Peel has forced the fountain of our currency to run dry. And then comes a depreciation of the value of property, the extent of which would be almost incredible, were not every one of us, except the Capitalist and the Annuitant, aware of it by melancholy experience. According to Lord Ashburton--“It would not be easy to estimate this depreciation, extending over all merchandise, stocks, railway shares, &c.; it would probably not be overstated at FROM TEN TO TWENTY PER CENT.; but what is worse, it has paralysed this property in the hands of the possessors, rendered it unavailable towards meeting their engagements, and thus produced in many cases pecuniary sacrifices much beyond the mere depreciation of the property itself. It has further occasioned the suspension of the execution of orders from our customers in every quarter, thus distressing manufacturers, and impeding those very operations which would have corrected the tendency to an unfavourable balance of trade, and given safety to the circulation of the Bank.”

Now whatever we may think of the extreme candour of the Right Honourable Baronet, it is perhaps rather too much to expect from human nature that an individual who has been the cause of all this monstrous mischief, should stand forward at once, and manfully plead guilty to the charge. Sir Robert Peel has not yet played out his full hand of political cards; and he is perfectly well aware that after such an admission, very few persons indeed would be inclined to cut in with him for a partner. In short, were he now to acknowledge himself in the wrong, it would be at the sacrifice of his sole remaining qualification as a statesman--the _prestige_ of his financial sagacity. If he loses this, faint though the recommendation be compared with the far higher qualities of consistency and open dealing, he is indeed a bankrupt in his fame! Need we wonder then that he clings to his darling measure, with a tenacity absolutely startling when we reflect on his former degrading versatility? Need we wonder that he eagerly attempts to fasten the blame of the monetary pressure upon the railroad speculators, the Bank Directors, or any other body of men who can at all be brought into question? As to the Bank Directors, we quite agree with Lord Ashburton that it is most unfair to make them the scape-goats in this matter. Had they not been bound down by stringent statutory fetters--had they been allowed to use the common caution of every commercial dealer by measuring the amount of their accommodation by the known responsibility of their customers, there would have been no financial crisis. But Sir Robert, in his infinite wisdom, would not suffer them to retain the prerogative of thinking and rational beings. He made them mere machines for contracting the circulation, and prohibited them from supporting credit: and surely they are not blameable if they shaped their conduct according to the clear letter and distinct direction of the law. In dealing with the railway shareholders Sir Robert Peel cuts even a sorrier figure. He talks about absorption of capital and over-trading, as if these things had in reality any thing to do with an arbitrary restriction of the currency. Now we do not require to be told that there is a certain limit at which accommodation must stop; but we maintain that it is the function of the banker to decide when that limit has arrived in the case of each particular customer. If a man has embarked the whole of his available capital in undertakings which are not yet profitable, or which do not speedily promise to become so, it is unquestionably in the option of the banker at his own risk to refuse or to increase his credit. But, as matters presently stand, not only has the banker no such option, but he cannot afford the required accommodation even to parties whose capital and property are undoubted, for the very simple reason that the law, as amended by Peel, deprives him of the means of doing so. If gold goes out of the country, from whatever cause, the issues must be correspondingly contracted. And is it expected that the whole ordinary business of the country can be conducted with something like one half of its usual amount of circulation? It will not, we presume, be denied by Sir Robert Peel and his Whig financial adherents that the increase of internal railway enterprise, and the vast additional labour which it may be said to have created, require a larger amount of ordinary circulation than in the year when the Bank Restriction Act was passed. And yet, not only have no means been taken to provide for such an expansion, but when the scarcity and drain arise, and the issues are arbitrarily contracted, our candid economists, instead of acknowledging their own normal error, have the coolness to attribute the pressure to the employment of labour at home! Had it not been for that labour and the expenditure of capital among ourselves, the situation of the working classes during the past winter, when the prices of provisions were so high, would have been lamentable indeed.

However, since the currency debate in the House of Commons, Sir Robert Peel seems to have changed his ground a little. It is curious to remark that, in all these financial discussions, the members of the present administration appear as absolute ciphers. They hardly profess to understand the question, but give their absolute faith to the doctrines of Sir Robert, who, with some two or three of his remaining adherents, is put forward to do battle, with the Protectionists and the mercantile party. The member for Tamworth is now desirous of falling back upon his old bullionist theories; and, with the utmost gravity, has invited a serious discussion upon the following subject of debate, “What is a pound?”

The object of this question is sufficiently clear. The astute ex-minister, finding himself so vigorously assailed on all quarters, for the absolute failure of his model banking act, and being unable to defend it upon any intelligible principles, would fain rake up a point upon which the opinions of his opponents differ, and so escape from the dilemma under a cloud of contradictory theories. It is an old device, and not a very creditable one; but we trust that, on the present occasion, it may prove utterly unavailing. The question is not now of the convertibility or inconvertibility of paper; for, if it were absolutely this, there are materials enough in Sir Robert Peel’s own banking measures to refute the notions which he professes to maintain as a principle. His own currency is not altogether based upon gold. _Fourteen millions of the Bank of England’s paper is unrepresented by the precious metals_; and yet every one of these notes is an actual engagement to pay the bearer of it in gold! Notwithstanding all the arguments of the bullionists, the plain matter of fact is just this, that the Bank of England, like every other institution of the country, is substantially based upon credit, _and that it never had, at any one time, the means of liquidating its engagements by payments in specie_. The issue, therefore, of paper, as it cannot be made to depend entirely upon the amount of hoarded gold, ought to have reference simply to the absolute wants of the community--wants which are, as all experience has shown, remarkably but inevitably variable, and which must be supplied in order that trade, and manufactures, and agriculture may go on, and that our internal products may adapt themselves, with out any difficulty, to the demand.

The question as to the real nature of a pound is useless at the present time. We are not now discussing the older banking acts, but the wretched abortion of 1844, which has led to this unnatural crisis. It is, in fact, a question which ought not to be mixed up with the others, because if, as Sir Robert Peel maintains, a pound is neither more nor less than a piece of metal of a certain weight and fineness, to which he, in opposition to the practice and experience of the whole world beside, has attempted to give a fixed unvarying price. He should in the first instance be prepared to defend it as the sole basis for every kind of representative circulation. In short, if his theory be correct, no banker should be permitted to issue a note, unless he has within his coffers a “pound,”--that is, a sovereign, to redeem it. Were the bullionists consistent, such indeed would be the proper result of their arguments, and the consequence would be, that at the present moment the legal circulation of England would have been something under ten millions. We shall not pause to demonstrate the absurdity of such a position, because it carries distinctly upon its face its own triumphant refutation. It follows therefore, and is admitted, that the basis of our circulation is mixed--part of it, which fluctuates, being the representative of these precious “pounds,” and the larger portion being based on credit, or inconvertible government securities.