7. The advocates of a national bankruptcy had been in such a small minority in 1819, that they scarcely uttered a word in Parliament, much less attempted a division. When the distress caused by the fall in prices began to pinch some classes in the country, they began to gather strength again, and commenced an attack on the Currency Law on April 9, 1821. This attack proved a complete failure, being rejected by a majority of 141 to 27. As prices continued to fall during that year, the distress continued to increase, and early in 1822 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to report upon the subject. They presented their report on the 1st of April; but it did not contain a word imputing the low state of prices to anything connected with the currency. They attributed it to the unprecedented abundance of agricultural produce, and proposed plans for affording the farmers and others relief by temporary advances of Exchequer bills, until the glut in the market had diminished. They recommended that the limit of 80s. should be reduced to 70s., as 80s. represented a higher value at that time than in 1815. In the debate that followed, the first symptoms were manifested of the determination to make an onslaught on the Currency Act of 1819. But Lord Londonderry ridiculed the idea that the currency had anything to do with the question, and said Members had only wasted precious time in bringing it forward. But he declared that he entered his most solemn protest against the purpose of these Members to induce Parliament to commit the most flagrant deviation from sound policy and common honestya breach of faith towards the public creditor. Could a British House of Commons sanction such a measure, it would relieve no class of the community; but it would overwhelm all classes with ruin. Were it possible for them to be dishonest and base enough to listen to a project of national bankruptcy, the result must be most calamitous. If a Parliament could be found so degenerate, and a people so destitute of honour and common honesty, as not to start at the idea of such an abandonment of principle, the most sordid calculation would forbid the adoption of such a

measure

8. The £1 note issues of the country bankers in England had been suppressed by statute 1777, c. 30; but in 1797 they

were again permitted, and, by various Acts of Parliament, this permission was continued till two years after the resumption of cash payments by the Bank of England. By the operation of these several Acts, they must have been withdrawn in 1825. The distress, however, which was attributed by so numerous and powerful a party to the contraction of the currency, was employed to induce Ministers to relax this restriction, and country bankers were permitted to continue their £1 notes till the expiry of the Bank Charter in 1833. (Statute 1822, c. 70.) In order to improve the quality of the country bank notes, the Government attempted to enter into negotiations with the Bank of England to permit joint stock banks to be formed at a distance of 65 miles from London. The Government was satisfied that if joint stock banks on the Scotch system could be formed, it would add much to the stability of public credit. Lord Londonderry pronounced a warm eulogy upon the Scotch banks, and said that it was the wish of the Ministry that a similar system should be introduced into England. The bribe to the Bank of England to consent to this arrangement was an extension of their Charter for ten years. But the negotiation failed

9. The attacks upon the Act of 1819, thrown out in the discussion of the Agricultural Distress Report, were merely preparatory to a formal onslaught on the Act itself. On the 11th of June, 1822, Mr. Western moved for a Committee to inquire into the effect of the Act upon the general interests of the empire. The burden of his speech was that all the distress the country was then suffering was due to the Act of 1819, and to that only, which, he said, had made a violent contraction in our currency at once. This assertion, which was the main pillar of his argument, is demolished by the simple fact that the great contraction of the currency, and the restoration of the note to par, took place in 1816. He moreover assumed that the currency had been depreciated ever since the restriction Act in 1797. Mr. Huskisson immediately followed in a speech demolishing the whole of Mr. Western's sophistries, one by one, and drawing a close parallel between the state of the currency in 1696 and at that time; and he concluded by moving the same resolution that Mr. Montague had done in 1696-"That this

House will not alter the standard of gold or silver in fineness, weight, or denomination." After a debate of two nights, in which several members who supported the motion disavowed all intention of tampering with the standard, Mr. Western's motion was rejected by a majority of 194 to 30, and Mr. Huskisson's amendment agreed to

10. It was strongly alleged by one party that they were compelled to pay in the restored currency the debts they had contracted in a depreciated one, and they called for what they were pleased to term an "equitable adjustment of contracts." But the argument was futile, as they knew at the time they made their contracts that Parliament was pledged to return to cash payments within a very short period after the termination of the war. Moreover, they totally left out of consideration that they had been able to discharge an immense amount of mortgages, burdens, &c., in a depreciated currency, which had been contracted in a good currency. All the mortgages and annuities on landed property which were contracted before the great depreciation of the currency were paid for some years in a currency 25 per cent. less valuable than at the time of the contract. But while these debtors clamoured so loudly for an "equitable adjustment" of contracts grievous to themselves, they never uttered a whisper indicative of their wish to have an "equitable adjustment of those contracts where the change was favourable to themselves. The only instance recorded of any person making an "equitable adjustment" against himself, and paying his creditors according to the true value of the Bank note, was Lord King, who incurred so much resentment for his letter in 1811. It is quite evident that such a one-sided " equitable adjustment" as was proposed by this party was nothing else but robbery. Under the double stimulus of famine prices and a depreciated currency, the rents of land had tripled since the beginning of the war, so that properties which were mortgaged before it, might have been comparatively unincumbered at its close. But the unfortunate mortgagees and annuitants were paid in a fixed amount of depreciated currency, so that, when prices rose to meet the depreciation, they were clearly mulcted. But they had no powerful party to advocate an "equitable adjust

ment" in their favour; and it is quite clear that no "equitable adjustment" could take place, unless all these payments were included in it

11. There was one perfectly satisfactory argument to shew that the low prices of that year had nothing to do with the act of 1819, namely, that the prices of all sorts of agricultural produce were equally depressed all over the continent of Europe from the same cause. The fluctuations, indeed, on the continent were much more violent than even in England. Wheat, in France, which had risen higher, fell lower. At Vienna wheat which was 114s. in March, 1817, fell in September, 1819, to 19s. 6d.; at Munich wheat fell from 151s. in September, 1817, to 248. 5d. in September, 1820. The same phenomena were observed in Italy. A similar fall, but not to so great an extent, took place at Lisbon. What could the Act of 1819 have to do with these places? The speech from the throne, in France, very properly attributed the low prices to the enormous abundance of production

12. But not only is it an absolutely certain historical fact, that the Act of 1811 had not the remotest connection with the low prices of 1822, but it is proved by the most overwhelming evidence that it caused no contraction of the currency at all. Mr. Turner, a director of the Bank, states-" With regard to the effect of Mr. Peel's bill on the Bank of England, I can state from having been in the direction during the last two years, that it has been altogether a dead letter. It has neither accelerated nor retarded the return to cash payments." And Mr. Tooke shews most conclusively that the amount of the currency, so far as it consisted of Bank of England notes and coin, was much larger in 1822 than it had been in 1819. That this Act caused any Contraction of the currency is, therefore, a statement most contrary to the truth. Its only effect was, what Parliament had over and over again solemnly pledged itself to do, to fix a time for the return to cash payments, and such a return to payments in cash would, by its own natural operation, prevent the extravagant issues which the Bank had made during the restriction, which depreciated the note 30 per cent., and robbed

every creditor of one-third part of his property. The Act of 1819 merely restored the Bank to its condition before 1797, and it became subject to the same unerring laws of nature as its directors had confessed it felt before the restriction

13. There is much invidiousness in endeavouring to fasten the responsibility of this Act upon Sir Robert Peel, as if he had had any either of the peculiar merit or blame of passing it through Parliament. The Legislature was solemnly pledged to return to cash payments as soon as the war was over, while he was yet a schoolboy in the junior forms of Harrow. There does not appear to have been any speaker fantastic enough to propose that the Bank should never return to cash payments. The Bank itself, of its own accord, attempted to resume payments in cash, in 1817, and would have succeeded in doing so, if it had not so perversely rejected the principles of the Bullion Report; and if it had not been owing to circumstances which disturbed its management in 1818, cash payments would have been resumed while Peel was still in that unconverted state in which he voted against Horner's resolutions in 1811. So far was he from converting Parliament, that he was himself one of the latest converts, and the Ministry conferred great honour upon him in allowing him, while yet so young, to take such a prominent part, and be the mouthpiece of the unanimous determination of the Legislature

14. By the beginning of 1823 the very inferior stock of 1821 had been chiefly consumed, and the crop of 1822, being of far superior quality, prices began slowly to rise, and the spring of 1823, proving very backward, prices rose rapidly, so that in June wheat stood at 62s. 5d. These prices, however, tempted the farmers to produce their long reserved stores, and an unusual quantity having thus been brought to market, wheat fell in October to 45s. 5d., but the crop turning out worse than was expected, prices rose a little at the end of the year, but they were still 37 per cent. below the "remunerative" 80s., which Parliament had held out to farmers as the point which should be insured to them. It is a favourite theory with many persons that the rise of prices in 1823 was owing to the extension