And this was done at the very time that the supply of the metallic circulation in the whole world had sunk from 52,000,000 dollars to 28,000,000, and that the consumption of gold and silver from many causes had so much increased; and in a country weighed down with public and private debt, almost entirely dependant upon the price of the articles of industry, and where millions were the holders of commodities upon which a fall in price was necessarily ruinous! It may be doubted whether speculation, miscalled philosophy, ever yet conferred so disastrous a gift upon mankind.

The necessary effect of this prodigious diminution in the circulating medium, was a great fall in the money price of all articles of commerce, a great enhancement in the weight of all money debts, and a great contraction in the efforts of commercial enterprise. Grain, and with it almost all the articles of commerce, fell to nearly half their value; wages declined, consumption decreased; the holders of commodities found them constantly getting cheaper on their hands. Speculation, instead of being profitable, turned out ruinous, and all dealers with slender capital speedily found themselves in the Gazette. Industry was blighted by the constant fall in the price of its produce; and enterprise cramped by the experienced impossibility of finding the accommodation requisite to sustain its exertions. Thus distrust, gloom, and despondency became universal; credit, that most sensitive of created things, was suspended, and successful enterprise, confined to the class who could command considerable capital, was limited to a comparatively few hands, and that among the most wealthy, among the promoters of commercial undertaking.

The effect of the change upon public and private debts, was, if possible, still more disastrous. By reducing the price of every article of life, and consequently the income of every person dependant on productive industry, at least a third, it added by that amount both to the national and every private debt. The debt of L.800,000,000 has become as burdensome as twelve hundred mil

lions; and every bond for L.1000 through the kingdom, has become as heavy as one of L.1500 would have been during the war. The universality of this increase to burdens from the change in the value of money, is the great cause of the desperate and almost hopeless state of insolvency into which debtors have every where fallen of late years; of the immense increase of bankruptcies in trade; the growing embarrassments of the landed proprietors, and the unprecedented extent to which landed property has changed hands.

The contraction of credit which has arisen from this enormous diminution of the paper circulation of the country, is one great cause of the extreme distress which has prevailed in England of late years. Loans and accommodation of every sort, it is to be recollected, are plentiful or scanty just in proportion as paper is plentifully or scantily issued from the great fountains of credit. The moment the Bank of England contract their issues, every bank in England does the same; credit is suspended; every man finds his whole creditors on his back at once, while he experiences proportional difficulty in getting payment of his own accounts. In such a state of things, industry is necessarily palsied, and expenditure diminishes from the contraction of the supplies on which it is dependant. Every man practically acquainted with business knows that this is precisely the state in which industry has been in England ever since the suppression of the small notes fully took effect.

From these considerations we may perceive the practical wisdom of the vigorous stand which the Scotch made against the destruction of their paper currency in 1826, and the fatal rashness with which political speculation then threatened to dry up all the sources of our national prosperity. By rising like one man against the ruinous innovation with which English theory threatened to visit this land, the blow was averted, and what has been the consequence? Scotland has eminently prospered during the period when England has so grievously suffered, and till the Reform agitation commenced, no distress was here perceptible: while the English revenue has been constantly declining, that of Scotland has been constantly increasing, and is now L.5,113,000; being L.700,000 more than that derived from Ireland, though it has at least four times the extent of arable land, and more than three times the number of inhabitants. The revenue is indeed now declining, and distress is universal; but that is from the agitation of Reform, which, like a destroying angel, is wasting all the energies of this once prosperous land.

We never can be sufficiently proud of that great national stand which the Scotch made against the suppression of their small notes in Spring 1826, and the defeat of that stretch of theoretical tyranny which prompted the English Political Economists, and so large a portion of the Government, to declare Bellum ad Internecionem against the system of Scotch Banking. Had their efforts proved successful: had they not been met and defeated by a national feeling as strong, and a national union as complete in this country as that which defeated Edward II. at Bannockburn, the admirable system of Scottish Banking, tried by a century's experience, which had been weighed in the balance and not found wanting, would have been sacrificed at the altar of English innovation. Because the English country banknotes were on a bad footing, therefore they were clear to demolish the Scotch bank-notes which were on a good footing; and because bankruptcies to an alarming extent had followed the rotten English paper, therefore sweeping destruction was to visit the sound Scottish circulation. It may be doubted whether reckless innovation, blind theory, ever yet proposed so unnecessary and perilous a change in any country. And we tell the innovators of England how it was defeated; notby reason, not by eloquence, notby facts, for they were brought in as great profusion against it, as they have lately been against the Reform bill; but by national exertion and steadfast resolution. Slowly and reluctantly the English Government were brought to allow Scotland to retain the system which had covered its valleys with harvests, and dotted its

mountains with flocks; which had multiplied its cities, and quadrupled its riches; which had studded the Atlantic with its ships, and covered the world with its fabrics.

Experience has now abundantly proved the admirable wisdom of the Scotch system of banking. It has stood the terrible trial of December 1825, which produced such widespread misery in the southern part of the island, as well as of an hundred years before that time. It has sustained the fortune of this part of the empire amidst much subsequent suffering, arising from extraneous causes; and while the revenue of England and Ireland have been constantly declining under the contraction of industry, consequent on the destruction of so large a part of their currency and credit, that of Scotland has been constantly increasing, under the fostering influence of the banking establishments;-amemorable example of what can be effected against the combined force of philosophers, innovators, and government, even by a small portion of the empire when cordially and firmly united; and a lesson to present statesmen in a still greater cause, and in defence of yet more important interests, never to despair that the voice of truth will at last prevail, rail, if sent forth by united bands, and supported by courageous resolution.

This cause, indeed, is of such universal and powerful operation, that it must have produced effects of still more wide-spread misery than have actually occurred, if it had not been counteracted by other circumstances of an opposite tendency, which helped to support the drooping energies of the nation under so rude a shock.

The first of these was the vast and rapid increase of the population, amounting to no less than 16 per cent on the last ten years, which has extended the domestic consumption of manufactures to a very considerable degree, and compensated to many branches of industry the failure of the national income. These additional mouths behoved to find subsistence: they set themselves accordingly vigorously to discover channels of employment; and thus under the pressure of necessity have contrived to bear up the national fortunes, even under the most adcircumstances.ath

verse

The second was the great addition which this change in the value of money made to the wealth of all those who were possessed of fixed money incomes. This has been a most important consequence, and furnishes the true solution to the singular appearances which society has exhibited in the British empire for the last ten years. The industrious classes, that is those who live by their labour, or the sale of its produce, have generally laboured under difficulties, and experienced at intervals great suffering. The owners of money, on the other hand, the fundholders, the holders of bonds, annuities, and all fixed annual payments, have found themselves fully a third richer by this change, and have in the same proportion augmented their luxuries, their expenditure, and their enjoyments. The repeal of the income-tax, and the change in the value of money, have totally changed the comparative situation of this numerous body. This must have forced itself on the

observation of the most inconsider

ate. Universally we see that the middling ranks in towns, who are, generally speaking, the holders of stock, bonds, and debts of every description, have increased their comforts and enjoyments to an unprecedented extent of late years; and that the vast increase in the inhabitants of towns is mainly to be ascribed to their increasing opulence. It has existed, in strange and painful contrast to the extreme suffering of the industrious classes, and of debtors of every description during the same period; but there can be no question that great as the suffering of these classes has been during this period, it would have been incomparably greater but for the great addition made to the means of a considerable portion of the community by the operation of the same causes.

ojas

This reduction of the circulating medium, however, has told most seriously on the public revenue. The following table puts this beyond a doubt

από lu et ποση baslona to sit Table of the British Revenue from 1818 downwards.bory zb 18182710199154,100,000

1819

53,440,000

1822

55,840,000

57,000,000

53,650,000

1823

51,600,000

1824 (Joint-stock mania) 56,000,000

1825 1827

57,662,000

54,895,000

55,285,000

1828(Small note act begun) 57,485,000

1829

55,824,000

1826

1830 (Beer tax taken off) 54,840,000

1831 (Reform)

46,420,000

Thus it appears that the revenue has declined fully eleven millions since 1821. Much of this decline is no doubt to be ascribed to the progressive reduction of taxes during that period; but much is also to be attributed to the change of prices which has taken place, and the universal fall in the value of every species of industrious property since the demolition of the bank paper in 1828, by the operation of the small-note act passed in 1826.

The question, it is always to be recollected, is, not whether the country banks in England were on a good footing prior to the catastrophe of December 1825, or whether some great change would have been ex

pedient in the constitution of these establishments. This may all be, and to all appearance is, perfectly true. The real question is, whe

ther it was either expedient or necessary, instead of putting the banks on a solid foundation, to annihilate the small notes altogether, and reduce the national paper circulation from 12.60,000,000 to 1.29,000,000? When we consider the enormous amount of that reduction, and the simultaneous contraction of the supply of the precious metals, from the distracted state of the South American colonies, and the great amount of indirect taxes which have at the same time been remitted, the only thing that appears astonishing is, that the revenue down to 1830 maintained its amount so well as it did. The immense reduction in the last year, is clearly owing to a totally different cause, and is to be ascribed to the Reform agitation drying up the springs of industry in the country. Ti It need hardly be observed that no argument can be drawn from this consideration in favour of that most disastrous and infernal of all the projects of the Radical Reformers, an equitable adjustment, as it is called, in other words, a direct robbery, of the national debt. The contract with the fundholder contemplated no change on the recurrence to cash payments; the bond of the nation contains no clause dispensing with full payment in the current coin of the realm. The fundholders have been better situated than the industrious classes for the last ten years; but have they forgot how matters stood during the war? Have they forgot the twenty long years during which the price of commodities was constantly rising, and the prosperous state they were in during that period, while the fundholders and the annuitants were languishing in want and privation? A similar change would take place to a great degree on the recurrence of any considerable war; and is the nation, on the recurrence of a long peace, to break faith with those who supported them during a period of difficulty and danger? The first moment that any invasion of the funded property takes place, is the last not only of the faith and honour, but the prosperity and the independence of England.

It would appear that Ministers are unable, even on the plainest subject connected with finance, to avoid the ruinous tendency of their political speculations. They proposed to take off the Tobacco Tax last session, which burdened no one and injured no one; and now they resist the reduction of one-fifth on the sugar duties. They cannot afford, they say, to lose L.900,000 a-year to save colonies on the brink of ruin from destruction; but they did not hesitate last year to propose to relinquish double that sum to secure the applause of the tobacco-chewers of England. The refusal of relief to the West Indies is monstrous. If a new tax were necessary in Britain to supply the deficiency, it should be imposed rather than run the risk of losing colonies which take off more

than a third of the whole British exports. Their case is the more crying, because they are suffering entirely under the consequence of British government; weighed down with a load of taxation of 100 per cent. on all their produce, and burning from the conHagration lighted by the flame of Reform in this country. Two months ago we predicted that the delusion of Reform and fanaticism in the cen

tre of the Empire would speedily set the West Indies on fire, as the fumes of democracy consumed St Domingo in 1792. How soon, alas! our p our predictions have been verified! Jamaica has been sacrificed to the demon of political innovation; the anguish of her slaves, the flames of her plantations, the starvation of her people, have all been owing to the headlong march of religious and political fanaticism. The Ministry of England, the Reformers of England, were in an especial manner bound to have done something to heal the wounds of that great and once flourishing, but now smoking and ruined colony, because it was the victim of their own political madness; and yet they refuse! But that is what we have all along maintained; the colonies are not represented in these democratic days; the mobs in the centre of political influence prevail over the greatest interest at its extremities, because they are the depositaries of power, and the dismemberment of the Empire must be the consequence. This puts the enormous folly of our present rulers in their finance measures in the clearest light. Seeing, as they did, as they ought to have done, that the national income had been declining at the rate of above a million a-year, since the small-note act came into operation in 1828, they should clearly have made some provision for that deficiency; and seeing that their Reform measure was evidently calculated to shake the resources of the country to their foundation, they should have provided a surplus to meet that contingency also. Instead of this, they actually proposed a reduction of taxation in the face of that state of the finances, to the amount of L.4,000,000 a-year, and were only prevented by their opponents from carrying that great reduction into effect; and they has fallen off four millions during their

619099

are now astonished that the revenue

administration! And it is after this experience of their enormous error in the first effect of their own reform measures, that they still persist in the project of giving a new constitution to the empire; and peril the fate of England upon the ultimate effect of measures which have already produced consequences diametrically the reverse of those they anticipated from their adoption.