It is true, that after the resumption of cash payments, the amount of small Bank-notes in circulation would probably be diminished, but there seems no reason for concluding that the temptation to forgery, which must depend on considerations of risks and profit, would be diminished in proportion to the decrease of those notes, provided they were not altogether excluded. The force of this objection will also be lessened proportionately to the degree of success which may attend the attempts that are at present making to devise means of rendering the imitation of Bank-notes more difficult. Your Committee have been informed, that the plan recommended by the com. missioners appointed for inquiring into the mode of preventing the forgery of Bank-notes may be expected to be in full operation in about three months; and they have received from two scientific members of that commission (Sir Joseph Bankes and Dr Wollaston) the satisfactory assurance, that their confidence in the increased security which the new form of note will afford, as well by creating fresh obstacles to a successful imitation, as by giving a more obvious facility to the public in detecting any attempt to give currency to forged notes, has been confirmed by the progress of their inquiry and experiment since the date of their report communicated to Parliament. With respect to the second objection to bullion payments, your Committee remark, that the object of the plan which they recommend is, by securing a control over the quantity of the circulating medium, to regulate the value of the whole, and to maintain paper on a par with gold. While this object is effected, the holder of notes, to whatever amount, has a security for their value, which without this plan he would not pos sess, during the interval which must precede the resumption of cash payments. Should the House determine to act upon the recommendation of the Committee, it will be expedient to continue the act which passed in the present session, restricting the farther issue of gold coin from the Bank. They propose no interference with the laws which regulate the Mint, conceiving it desirable to retain, as a check upon any undue contraction of the issues of the Bank, the power which individuals at present possess of receiving coin from the Mint in exchange for bullion, without loss or deduction, at the rate of L. 3: 17: 10 per ounce. They recommend, not as an appendage to the plan which they have suggested, but as a politic measure under any system of currency, the total repeal of the laws which prohibit the melting or exportation of the coin of the realm. Your Committee conceive it to have been clearly demonstrated by long experience, that they are wholly ineffectual for the object for which they were designed; that they offer temptations to perjury and fraud, and give those who violate the law an unfair advantage over those who respect it. Your Committee have received an intimation from the Directors of the Bank of Ireland, that they shall be prepared to resume cash payments six months after their resumption by the Bank of England. In making this communication, the Directors contemplated a return to payments in specie; but the Committee have the satisfaction of stating to the House, on the authority of the Governor of the Bank of Ireland, whom they have had an opportunity of per sonally examining, that there is reason to believe, that no difficulty would exist, on the part of the Bank of Ireland, in carrying into effect any regulations of the same nature with those which may be adopted with respect to the Bank of England. Your Committee would here close their Report, if they did not think it necessary shortly to advert to the circulation of Country Banks. The notes of all those establishments are exchangeable for the notes of the Bank of England. As a part of the currency, therefore, they must be affected by any fluctuation in value to which Bank of England notes are now liable; and consequently, they will be alike secured from such fluctuation, by any arrangement which will effectually place and maintain the latter upon a par with a metallic standard of value. Although, from this view of the subject, your Committee are led to the conclusion, that there can be nothing in the nature of the circulation of Country Banks which can form an obstacle to the gradual resumption of cash payments upon the plan which your Committee have suggested, they have made it their endeavour to ascertain the probable amount of that circulation at different periods; though they have to regret that they have not been able to obtain as precise and full information as might be desired. There are not sufficient data from which to ascertain the exact amount of Country Bank notes at any one time in circulation. Your Committee called for accounts from the Stamp office, of the number of promissorynotes stamped in each successive quarter, from the year 1810; and as these accounts show the number of notes stamped in each of the classes into which they are divided, according to their several denominations, if the nominal value of each is assumed, for the sake of calculation, to be the highest which such note could bear according to the stamp affixed, the total amount stamped in each year would be as follows: 1814..... 1815 1816 1817 1818 L. 10.255,841 ......................................... 8,204,968 7,839,924 9,075,958 .................................. 12,316,988 If these notes on an average circulate for three years, the highest aggregate amount to which they can have reached is L. 29,232,870. Your Committee are led to conclude, from the information of Mr Lloyd, that the whole amount of notes stamped, which still remain in such a state as to be circulated, can never have been at once in circulation. He says, "A banker may have L. 50,000 notes lying by him; his having paid the duty, and having the notes ready, by no means prove that they are in circulation. Sometimes there may be a very large amount locked up by him; at other times they may be almost all in circulation. In time of alarm he takes care to have them as much at home as possible; in time of prosperity and general confidence he bas no hesitation in issuing them on satisfactory security." Mr Lloyd expressed an opinion, that the issue of paper by the country Banks might be from forty to fifty millions; but your Committee are rather led to infer, from the general tenor of the information before them, that the amount of this branch of the paper circulation throughout Great Britain has never exceeded from twenty to twenty-five millions. Whatever may have been the amount, it appears undoubtedly to have been liable to great fluctuations, as may indeed be inferred from the account of the stamps before alluded to, but with more certainty from ac. counts furnished by the three char ..1,265 ........ of Mr John Smith, a member of the house, Mr Samuel Gurney, and Mr Gilchrist. British Linen Company..............1,400.................................910......... Bank of Scotland.............. ...8,773.. Royal Bank.......... ............................................. ......................................732...................2 ..267. As a very large part of the currency of Scotland is furnished by those Banks, it must be inferred from the preceding scales, that whatever was the amount at the close of 1813, not less than one-third had been with drawn from circulation in 1816, since which period an equal amount has been re-issued. A fluctuation, corresponding with this in point of time, and at least equal in degree, appears to have taken place in the paper issued by the Country Banks in England. The number of these establishments licensed in 1814 was 940, in 1817 was 752. Mr Lloyd stated, that the circulation of the Country Banks was at its highest in 1813 and 1814, but was considerably reduced in 1816, and the beginning of 1817; and being asked as to the amount outstanding at the latter period, when compared with the former, he answered, "I can hardly say; I should think it was reduced nearly one-half." Your Committee were furnished by Mr Stuckey with the following scale of the circulation of a considerable Country Bank, for the last four years : March............1816................................10 .............1817.............12 ............. 1818.............16 ............ 1819.............17. and further information on the same subject will be found in the evidence Whatever may have been the diminution in the amount of the circulation of Country Banks in 1816 and 1817, it was not in any degree caused by a diminution of the issues of the Bank of England. The circulation of country paper is liable to be affected by want of confidence, generally brought on by extensive failures in some of those establishments; and the result of which is, that other Country Banks, however solvent, participate more or less in the general discredit, and are obliged to restrict their issues from a regard to their own security. In the opinion of Mr Tooke, "a like effect is sometimes produced, and in a much greater degree, from the discredit of their cus tomers, to whom they are in the habit of advancing money; most of their customers being holders of articles which are liable to be affected by a general depression of price." Although there may be reason to infer from the opinion of the witnes ses most conversant with the management of Country Banks, and to whose evidence your Committee beg leave to refer, that a reduction in the amount of the notes issued by the Bank of England would speedily and necessarily be followed by a proportionate reduction of the Country Bank paper; still it must be obvious, that, independently of that cause, the latter is liable to a sudden and high ly inconvenient contraction, under such circumstances of distrust and difficulty as occurred in 1816. The effects of this contraction, unless obviated by a corresponding increase in the issues of the Bank of England, the credit of which is fortunately unassailable by the influence of similar circumstances, must have a tendency, by diminishing the amount of the paper currency, to raise the value of the whole. This, in the opinion of your Committee, was one of the effects produ. ced by the rapid contraction of our currency in 1816 and 1817; and to it may be ascribed, in part, the fall in the price of gold, and the favourable state of the foreign exchanges during that interval. Such contraction is an evil to which the system of Country Banks, resting upon individual credit, may be occasionally liable; but your Committee are inclined to hope that it will not be likely either to prevail to the same extent, or to endure for so long a period, when the fluctuations to which an inconvertible paper currency is exposed shall be checked by the operation of the plan which they recommend for the gradual resumption of cash payments. 6th May 1819. Whether it may be practicable further to provide against inconvenience to the public and the loss to individuals, which arise from the occasional insolvency of Country Banks, and to make such provision, without an interference with the rights of property, and the transactions of the community founded on commercial credit, are questions of great difficulty, respecting which your Committee could not, without further evidence and considerable delay, have enabled themselves to submit an opinion to the House. Your Committee have forborne from entering into any reasoning upon the effect produced upon the value of our currency, by variations in the numerical amount of the notes issued by the Bank of England. So many circumstances contribute to affect that value, such, for instance, as the vary. ing state of commercial credit and confidence-the fluctuations in the amount of Country Bank paper-the different degrees of rapidity with which the same amount of currency circulates at different periods-that your Committee are of opinion, that no satisfactory conclusions can be drawn from a mere reference to the numerical amount of the issues of the Bank of England outstanding at any given time. REPORT ON THE CRIMINAL LAWS. The Select Committee appointed to consider of so much of the Criminal Laws as relates to Capital Punishment in felonies, and to report their observations and opinion of the same, from time to time, to the House; and to whom the several petitions on the subject were referred; have, pursuant to the orders of the House, considered the matters to them referred, and have agreed upon the following Report : Your Committee, in execution of the trust delegated to them by the House, have endeavoured strictly to confine themselves within the limits prescribed to them by the terms of their appointment. In some cases they have laid down restrictions for themselves, which the letter of the resolution of the House did not impose. They have abstained from all consideration of those capital felonies which may be said to be of a political nature, being directed against the authority of Government and the general peace of society. To the nature and efficacy of the se condary punishments of transportation and imprisonment, they have directed no part of their inquiries; because another committee had been appointed to investigate them, and because no part of the facts or arguments to be stated in this report will be found to depend, either on the present state of these secondary punishments, or on the degree of improvement of which they may be found capable. With many extensive and important parts of the criminal law such, for example, as that which regulates the trial of offenders-they are entirely satisfied; and they should not have suggested any changes in these departments, even if they had been within the appointed province of this Committee. On other parts of the subject-as, for example, in the definition and ar rangement of crimes-they have recommended a consolidation of the laws respecting only one class of offences, and have presumed only to express a general opinion of the utility of the like consolidation in some other cases. They wish expressly to disclaim all doubt of the right of the Legislature to inflict the punishment of death, wherever that punishment, and that alone, seems capable of protecting the community from enormous and atrocious crimes. The object of the Committee has been to ascertain, as far as the nature of the case admitted by evidence, whether, in the present state of the sentiments of the people of England, capital punishment, in most cases of offences unattended with violence, be a necessary or even the most effectual security a gainst the prevalence of crimes. I. In the first place, they endea voured to collect official accounts of the state of crimes and the administration of criminal law throughout the kingdom, from the earliest period to which authentic information reaches. The annual returns of commitments, convictions, and exe cutions, first procured by addresses from this House, and since required by statute, go no farther back than |