be substituted for a paper standard, it surely did not at all follow, that the standard of the metallic pound sterling should be fixed at a higher value than the paper standard for which it was adopted as a substitute. Because gold was selected as the metal by which the pound sterling should, for the future, be measured, it was a monstrous absurdity to infer, therefore, that this pound sterling should contain 120 grains, or be of the same weight with a standard which, to all practical purposes, had been abolished more than twenty years before.

Let us suppose that the current coin of this country, previously to 1797, had been pounds of iron, containing, each pound, 16 ounces; and that, for the sake of saving the trouble of transferring specie, the Bank of England issued pound notes, or a paper engagement to pay the holder 16 ounces of iron, when he should present this note for payment at the Bank: while the Bank was prepared and compelled to give iron for its notes, when presented for payment, a pound note and a pound of iron would have been equivalent, and in all cases and at all times would have exchanged for precisely the quantity of any other commodity. I shall further suppose that in 1797, for some imaginary purposes of finance, the Minister proposed, and the Legislature sanctioned, a measure restraining the Bank, in future, from giving metal in payment for its notes let it be assumed that, as the effect of the suspension of the promissory engagements of the Bank, its notes became gradually depreciated; till at length a note by which the Bank had promised to give the holder 16 ounces of iron, would purchase in the mar ket only 12 ounces of the same metal :-Assume that in 1819 it was determined to put an end to this uncertain currency, and to return to a metallic standard, and that a committee was appointed to investigate the subject-the attention of this committee would, I conceive, have been called only to the three following points :It would have been required, first, to consider the expediency and necessity of returning to a metallic standard of value; in the second place, it would have been called upon to select and fix upon the most convenient metal of which this standard of value should be composed; in the third place, its inquiries would have been directed to ascertain, as accurately as possible, what weight of the metal which they had selected, would be really equivalent to the paper which it was to supersede. While prosecuting this inquiry, the members of this committee would have confined themselves principally to the attempt of ascertaining how many ounces of iron the pound Bank note represented from 1797 to 1819 -the period during which all commercial engagements and pecuniary contracts, with exceptions not worth naming, had been entered into and they would have given themselves no trouble

about ascertaining the number of ounces which it had represented at any antecedent period.

If, in the above statement, the word "gold," be substituted for " iron," the same observations will apply to our present metallic standard, and to the principles on which the researches of the committee appointed in 1819, to investigate the state of our currency, should have been conducted. For reasons which I cannot pretend even to conjecture, the members of this committee seem to have considered it their principal, if not sole object, to ascertain how much gold the pound sterling contained before the suspension of cash payments by the Bank. But this was, undoubtedly, a misconception of the purposes for which that committee was appointed: it was not appointed with the view of ascertaining the value of the pound sterling previously to 1797; its researches, on the contrary, should have been confined to the object of ascertaining the value of the standard in which all contracts had been made, subsequently to that period; and, having ascertained the weight of gold which the paper pound sterling represented during the suspension of cash payments, it should have recommended that weight as the portion of this metal which, for the future, should constitute the standard of the pound sterling. Instead, however, of pursuing this inquiry, with the determination of making its result their guide in settling the weight of our metallic standard, the members of this committee turned aside to hunt after a guinea; a coin which, since the suspension of cash payments in 1797, had ceased to be the standard of our currency; and having, after a laborious and painful research, for which they consider themselves, no doubt, entitled to the thanks of the country, made the amazing discovery, that a guinea contained 126 grains of gold; they decided that the pound sterling should therefore contain 120 grains of gold, the old standard of value. The pound sterling, previously to the suspension of cash payments in 1797, contained of a guinea, or 120 grains of gold; and the Bullion Committee, in 1811, proved beyond dispute that this suspension had produced a depreciation in its value, and this depreciation continued till the regulation of the currency in 1819. The committee appointed in 1819, to consider the expediency and practicability of restoring a metallic standard of value, should have recommended the adoption of a standard which contained the same quantity of gold, which the paper pound sterling might have been found, on inquiry, to have practically represented during the period intervening between the suspension and resumption of cash payments.

For more than twenty years, previously to the regulation of the currency in 1819, all bargains and contracts of a pecuniary nature had been entered into-farms had been rented, taxes had been

assessed, lands had been mortgaged, private individuals, as well as Government, had borrowed money on this depreciated standard. For more than twenty years-a period during which almost a new race of men has sprung up, and anterior to which very few pecuniary stipulations extend-the whole currency of this country has been regulated on a paper standard of a pound sterling equivalent to about 96 grains of gold: and, when it was decided that a metallic should be substituted for a paper standard, this is the amount at which, in justice as well as policy, this standard should have been finally and permanently fixed. Is there any magical or cabalistical virtue in the number 120, that the standard of the pound sterling from 1797 to 1819, should have been disturbed; and that this should have been fixed upon as the sacred number of grains of gold, which ought to constitute a pound sterling? The more any man reflects on the subject, the more completely must he be lost in wonder and amazement, that men, with an inflexible and invariable standard of value in their mouths, should have acted practically in a manner so repugnant, not only to common sense, but inconsistent with their own theory: that those, who are loudest in reprobating a variation in the standard of our currency, should have been the very individuals who recommended a measure which has made a greater alteration in that standard, than ever was attempted in the darkest and most unsettled period of our domestic history.

It

It may, perhaps, be urged, by the advocates of the present standard, that the Legislature had pledged itself to the resumption of cash payments at the termination of the war; and that, to redeem this pledge, as well as to put an end to the fluctuation and insecurity of a paper currency, it was absolutely indispensable, that a metallic and certain standard of value should be fixed upon. But the pledge given by Parliament was simply a pledge to return to a metallic standard which should be certain and invariable. was pledged to enact that, for the future, gold or silver should be adopted instead of Bank paper, as the standard by which the value of the pound sterling should be measured; but it had given no pledge, that the present standard should be identically the same in weight as well as metal with the old standard, which in effect had been abolished in 1797: it had engaged, that at the close of the war which terminated in 1815, gold should be adopted as the metal by which the value of the pound sterling should be regulated. When Parliament, therefore, set about redeeming this pledge, it was unquestionably bound to establish a metallic standard of value; but no principle of justice or policy required that the weight of gold constituting this standard should be 120 grains, or the same weight which was contained in the old standard, abolished by the cash payments suspension Act in 1797. To redeem this pledge, and to

satisfy every claim, either of justice or policy, Parliament was merely called upon to ascertain, as nearly as possible, what weight of gold the paper pound sterling, subsequent to that suspension, represented; and to fix upon that weight as the future metallic standard. It is perfectly clear, that with exceptions which are not worth considering when an important legislative measure is to be adopted, all pecuniary stipulations have been entered into, for the last twenty-four years, with a reference exclusively to this latter standard. Parliament, therefore, when settling the standard weight of the pound sterling, should have considered itself as a Jury sitting between a debtor and his creditor, for the purpose of deciding what quantity of gold the former had really promised to pay the latter, when he had engaged to pay him a pound note; and, having ascertained the weight of gold which the paper pound note, lent by the creditor, was worth, every principle of equity demanded that the same weight of gold should have been fixed upon as the quantity which he could claim from his debtor in repayment. As to any practical measure, to be suggested by the inquiry, the committee had no more to do with the weight of gold which constituted the standard pound sterling, before the suspension of cash payments had taken place, than with the weight of gold which the Spanish doubloon contains at present. The old standard of the pound sterling was virtually abolished in 1797; and, in 1819, it devolved upon the Legislature to fix and settle a new one: and, in discharging this duty, it should have endeavoured to discover what quantity of gold the paper pound note represented, or would have exchanged for, during the period in which the bulk of our pecuniary obligations were contracted; and, having ascertained this weight, it should have established this quantity as the portion of gold which, for the future, the standard pound sterling should contain.

Had these principles guided the researches of the committee, in 1819, we should have escaped most of the confusion which the substitution of a metallic for a paper standard of value might have been expected to produce; and we should have experienced none of the frightful difficulties in which an alteration-not in the material of which it is composed, but in the value of the standard has involved the community. The alteration in the value of the standard, recommended by this committee, was as glaringly and palpably unjust in principle, as it has been found irretrievably ruinous in the consequences which have already resulted from it. Had any man proposed to the members of this committee, that they should, in plain and unveiled terms, have recommended an addition of twenty-five per cent. to all pecuniary contracts, subsist ing between debtor and creditor, such a proposition would have appeared, to them as well as to all the world, much too monstrous

and unjust to be countenanced for a single moment. But the measure which they recommendedor, I should rather say, the manner of carrying it into effect which the Legislature has unwarily been prevailed upon to sanction, has produced indirectly this palpable and ruinous injustice; for the injustice done the debtor is exactly the same, whether he be compelled to pay 1257. for each 1007, which he had promised, or be compelled to pay 100%. in a standard to the weight of which one fourth has been added—the whole weight of gold, which he is forced to purchase in order to make this payment, is the same either way, and will require the disposal of the same quantity of the commodity which he must give in exchange for this gold.

But shall we, it may perhaps be asked, deprive the public creditor of the advantages which he expected, and by compact was entitled to receive, from the restoration of a metallic currency? and shall we commit a breach of that faith which was pledged to him? By no manner of means: on the contrary, let this faith be observed in the strictest and most honorable manner, and let him derive, to their fullest extent, all the benefits and advantages to which he was justly entitled to look forward, from the restoration of a metallic standard of value. Let it, however, be inquired what is meant by the faith pledged to the public creditor, and what is the real amount of the advantages which he was entitled to expect from the resumption of cash payments: and every person, who enters upon this inquiry without prejudice, must be convinced that a reduction of the present standard, to what may on investigation be found to have been the real metallic value of the pound notes which he lent Government, would neither involve a breach of the faith pledged to him, nor deprive him of any advantages to which he has a fair and equitable claim. The faith pledged to the public creditor was nothing more than a simple engagement to repay him, at the end of war, the same weight of gold which was represented, or could have been purchased, by the paper pound note which he lent. When he was assured that his paper advances to the State should be repaid in a metallic currency, this assurance did not, surely, imply that he should be entitled to a greater weight of the metal in which he was to be repaid, than the quantity of this metal which his pound note, at the time he lent it, would have exchanged for in the market. When the public creditor lent Government a pound note which, at the moment in which it was thus advanced, would have exchanged for 96 grains of gold, the faith pledged to him gave him an assurance that he should receive the same weight in repayment, when a metallic standard was restored; this faith gave him a pledge that he should not be forced to receive 80 or 90 grains of gold for the 96 grains which he virtu`ally lent Government when he lent it a pound note. This faith,