Our banking system is bad in the extreme; it has been everything by turns, but what it ought to be, and nothing long. It is not only bad itself, but it communicates evil to everything around it. It is an epidemic that arrests and affects all classes; a plague that corrupts and kills high and low, poor and affluent, without distinction—a thousand incidents have taken place in this city within a year [London in 1842] which exhibit our monetary affairs in a most deplorable condition . . . . I have seen, last spring, a bill broker go from house to house, of an afternoon, with the bills of a country bank, accepted by first rate firms in Lombard street, and cash could not be got for them at five per cent. interest and one and a half per cent. commission. I have known, about the same time, a man with £10,000 Exchequer bills, unable to raise £4,000 upon them at his banker's, and that bank one of the best in Lombard street. I have known a city banker, at the beginning of last year, confess, in a mixed company, that he would be glad to allow ten per cent. for money for six months to come. At the same time, I have known another banker in Lombard street pay eight per cent. for an advance of money on Exchequer bills; and ten per cent. to be charged on the discount of a bill of Exchange, the acceptor of which was then, and still is, a Bank Director. These are facts that tell the true story of our banking system—these are realities that prove our distress . . . . While they last, credit is prostrate, labor fails of its market, and property almost ceases to be wealth . . . . Our currency has resembled the shifting sands that impede the navigation of some of our most capacious harbors, and shifting sands that impede the navigation of some of our most capacious harbors, and defy the skill of the most experienced mariners. We have been dealing with a series of experiments, and each succeeding writer has distinguished himself by showing where and how it was that the last experiment had proved a particular failure. . . . The Bank of England had the complete control and absolute management of the finances of the whole country, and the losses which the country has now, for fifty years or so, sustained by repeated abuses of that currency in the hands of the Bank, have been incalculable; so wild and extravagant have been the alternate expansions and contractions; so suddenly and capriciously have the value of money and prices been jerked up and tossed down, that it is not unreasonable to compare the Bank Directors to a set of awkward showmen at a fair, with the trading interests of the nation in a great ill-contrived swing-swong, which at one moment they fling up high in the sky, and at another bring down so low as to drag the ground and rake the gutters with it. . . . The habit of tampering with the currency was contracted by these gentlemen at an early period. We can trace it distinctly as far back as 1782, and find it persevered in up to 1839, invariably with the same pernicious results. . . . A heavy panic, fraught with great commercial distress, ran through the years 1783 and 1784, which has been brought home to the Bank by more than one conclusive witness. . . . . . In 1814, the Dutch ports were opened, the harvest was deficient; and that most searching of the calamities, to which our artificial condition is exposed, no sooner visited the land, than the importation of foreign corn occasioned a great decline in the price of this principal article of agricultural produce, which gradually extended to the price of commodities generally. Unprecedented suffering now took place; the storm swept the country through, and raged with increasing violence until 1819, by which time the agricultural and banking interests generally were reduced to the lowest pitch of distress. Farmers were insolvent everywhere; mercantile firms became bankrupt by thousands and levelled their connexions indiscriminately in the dust; whilst as to the bankers, between those who either partially suspended business or wholly broke, in the years 1815 or 1816, there was a diminution of no less than 240 firms. . . . In noticing the moving causes of the calamities of 1816, we should bear in mind that the cessation of hostilities on the continent was an established condition of the long promised resumption of cash payments. Much of the panic then existing is referable to a proposal for carrying that measure into effect, in 1818.

The Bank made some preparations for the change by a partial contraction of its issues. But the depression of all the leading interests of the country was too intense, and the notion was quickly abandoned.

In the midst of this fall of prices, what operation in business could proceed without loss or ruin? There has been no firm in which the capital of the merchant, none in which the capital of the manufacturer, could be invested without the half of it being sacrificed during this calamitous period. We have been thrown back upon a condition of events in which all industry and enterprize have been rendered pernicious or ruinous, and where no property has been safe, unless hoarded in the shape of money, or lent to others on double security.

The reward of labor being destroyed, the laborers, who can each produce four times as much of the comforts of life as they and their families could possibly consume, are starving while superabundance reigns around them. They find no employment, because the organ of industry, which is money, does not exist in sufficient quantities to give productive classes a reward for their exertions. The peasant idly wanders about, and looks over the hedge of the uncultivated farm, where the land is suffering for want of his labor, but at the same time the farmer has neither the profit nor the labor to bring the land into cultivation.

Of the bankruptcies that then took place, and of the extreme depression of our manufactures and commerce, it would be impossible to give any exact account. Prices fell forty per cent. In the manufacturing districts there was no employment for the workmen; merchants stopped payment in numbers, not because they were insolvent and had no property, but because no market was to be had for their goods, no discount for their bills, no advance upon their stocks. It was a rare and melancholy sight to behold English merchants going through the Gazette in numbers, while their warehouses were full of commodities, and their characters unimpeached for knowledge of business, integrity and exemplary conduct; yet such were the incidents that characterized the panic of 1836.

. . . . . There was another panic in 1839 which may be said to have extended itself by a series of fits and convulsions all though the years 1840 and 1841, at which date our commercial system was reduced to the lowest ebb of distress. The number of banks which stopped or disappeared during this interval was unusually great, the difficulty of getting money as rigid as ever, find the stagnation of our commerce, the scarcity of good merchant paper, extreme. . . . Late in 1840 began the storm which, continuing to rage all through 1841, and not even as yet (in 1842) blown over, has swept away, during its protracted and ruinous courage; an unusual number of banking establishments. A history of these misfortunes, in their various details, is here out of the question; to trace the separate cases to their source, and detail at length their consequences, would fill a volume, and then, in all probability, leave the subject unexhausted. I had prepared a summary of the losses occasioned by the different failures amongst the private and joint stock banks during the last two years, but the amount appears so formidably large on the one side and so small on the other, that it would be invidious to publish it. . . .

Against the actual exhaustion of its treasure by a drain through the foreign exchanges, the bank, under almost any circumstances, has the power of protecting herself; but to do this she must produce upon the money market a pressure ruinous from its suddenness and severity; she must save herself by the destruction of all around her.

We, the undersigned, iron masters and coal masters of the Staffordshire iron and coal districts, think it our duty respectfully to represent to His Majesty's Government the following facts:

1. That for the last five years, ever since what is called the panic of 1825, we have found, with very slight intermissions, a continually increasing depression in the prices of the products of industry, and more particularly in those of pig and bar iron, which have fallen respectively, from upward of 81. per ton to under 31. per ton, and from £15 per ton to under £5 per ton.

2. Against this alarming and long continued depression, we have used every possible effort in our power to make bread. We have practiced all manner of economy, and have had recourse to every possible improvement in the working of our mines and manufactories. Our workmen's wages have in many instances been reduced, and such reduction has been attended with, and effected by, very great distress; but the royalties, rents, contracts, and other engagements, under which we hold our respective works and mines, have scarcely been reduced at all, nor can we get them effectually reduced, because the law enforces the payment in full.

3. The prices of the products of our industry having thus fallen within the range of the fixed charges and expenses which the law compels us to discharge, the just and necessary profits of our respective trades have ceased to exist, and in many cases a positive loss attends them.

4. Under these circumstances, we have long hesitated in determining what line of conduct our interest and our duties require us to adopt. If we should abandon our respective trades, our large and expensive outlays in machinery and erections must be sacrificed at an enormous loss to ourselves, and our honest and meritorious workmen must be thrown, in thousands, upon parishes already too much impoverished by their present burthens to support them; and, if we should continue our present trades, we see nothing but the prospect of increasing distress and certain ruin to all around us.

5. In our humble opinion, the great cause which has been mainly instrumental in producing this depression and distress in our respective trades, and among the productive classes of the country generally, is the attempt to render the rents, taxes, royalties, and other various engagements and obligations of the country, convertible, by law, into gold, at £3 17s. 10 1/2d. per oz. This low and antiquated price of the metallic standard of value is no longer capable of effecting a just and equitable distribution of our products between the producer and the consumer; it renders incompatible the permanent existence of remunerating prices, without such a reduction of taxation as we cannot hope to see effected in time to afford us any relief—and it thus tends, ultimately and surely, to destroy the industry, and the peace and happiness of the country.

6. That until the establishment of a circulating medium of a character better suited to the various and complicated demands of society, and to the increased transactions and population of the country, and more competent to effect an interchange, and preserve a remunerating level of prices in the products of industry generally, we can see no prospect of any permanent restoration of the prosperity of our trades, or of the country being able to escape the most frightful sufferings and convulsions.

We, therefore, most respectfully, but very earnestly, request the early attention of His Majesty's Government to these great facts and considerations, and we insist that they will recommend to Parliament the speedy establishment of some just, adequate and efficient currency, which may properly support the trade and commerce of the country, and preserve such a remunerating level of prices as may ensure to the employers of labor the fair and reasonable profits of their capital and industry, as well as the means of paying the just and necessary wages to their workmen.

Our country gentlemen must learn to penetrate the arcana of the Exchanges, and fathom the depths of the banking system, if they mean to preserve their broad acres from the grasp of the mortgagee, and their title deeds and mansions from the blaze of revolutionary fires. Difficult and obscure, indeed!! Yes, the subject is difficult, just as difficult to the public comprehension as is a juggler's trick, by which, with a “heigh, presto!!” he conjures the half crown we thought we had safe in our pocket into his own. How the money vanished it is not so easy to say; but it is nevertheless certain that we had it, and ought still to have it, but he has got it. So it was exactly with the currency juggle. Few of the sufferers can explain or understand how it happened, but the fact is very plain to them that they have somehow lost a great deal of money, and other persons have got hold of it. A little consideration, however, may, we think, render the nature of the trick intelligible to the simplest. It is very clear that those who are in business pay nearly the same sum in taxes, at present, as when the goods they deal in sold for double their present prices; so that they really pay two hundred weight of wool, or of cheese, or of sugar, or two pieces of cloth, linen, or calico, or two tons of iron or hardware, to the tax gatherer, for one that they formerly paid; and the taxes, reckoned in goods, which is the only sure way of knowing their cost to the producers of goods, by whom they are paid, are clearly twice as high at the end of sixteen years of peace, as they were at the close of a long war!! Is it wonderful then that the productive classes are laboring under severe distress? That peace, which usually brings plenty, has thrown away her emblematic horn, and selected hunger for her motto!! And can there be any doubt that the fall in prices, which has wrought this fearful evil, is the necessary result, foretold by ourselves and many others at the time, of the legislation of 1819 and 1826, which, by crippling the banking system of England and attempting a currency of dear metal for one of cheap paper, has caused a continually increasing scarcity of money and contraction of credit!!

If we succeed in showing that the unjust restrictions, kept up by the present laws, on the circulating medium of exchange, have had the effect, within a few years past, of silently but forcibly transferring a vast amount of property from the possession of one class to that of another, who had no just right or title to it—of covertly despoiling, in short, one portion of the community, namely: the persons engaged in industry, for the benefit of another portion, the owners of fixed money obligations, payable out of the labor and capital of the former—it will be acknowledged that, until the laws which have perpetuated and continue to sanction this wholesale swindling are repealed, there is no safety for property; nor can there be any reliance on the stability of those institutions, of which a confidence in the security of property is the indispensable foundation.

The sufferers here most correctly attribute their losses to the late increase in the value of money, but they seem to look for relief in a deterioration of the standard. In this view we do not concur with them, only because we think so desperate a remedy is not necessary, for that other and unexceptionable plans may be resorted to for the relief of industry . . . . Next to a direct increase of the supply of the precious metals, the most obvious resource seems to be to augment the efficiency of that which we possess, by a degradation of the standard—in other words, by diminishing the intrinsic value of the coinage; cutting, for instance, our sovereigns, shillings and other pieces of money, into two or more parts, which should each, by law, retain the nominal value of the whole. This is, in substance, the proposal which seems to find most favor with the persons who have spoken or written on the subject of the currency for some years past. It is this, as we have seen, that is advocated by the iron trade, and by their powerful champions, the Messrs. Atwood. It is this to which Mr. Westen, and a large body of agriculturalists have been long pointing as the only practicable mode of permitting them to come to an equitable adjustment with their creditors, public and private. . . . . . . We acknowledge, indeed, the force of the retorts levelled by the advocates of this alteration against their opponents, when the necessity of preserving the national faith inviolate is thrown in their teeth. They ask, with bitterness, and with justice, too:

“Is faith to be kept only with the monied interests? Was no good faith to be kept with the landholder, the merchant, the manufacturer, the vast laboring population who bore the weight of the national struggle, who cheerfully made great and numerous sacrifices during the war, and who continue the real strength and greatness of the Kingdom? No faith whatever was kept with them. They, through their representatives, engaged themselves to a debt of so many pound notes—but not to the same number of sovereigns—to a debt consisting of money, at its then value, but they protest being held responsible for the same annual sum now that its value has been artificially doubled. Does not good faith require that the scale should be held fairly between debtor and creditor? Was it consistent with the national faith, upon the plea of arresting the progress of depreciation in 1819, to turn the tables wholly the other way, and, by reviving an obsolete standard, to give to monied obligations a value that is a command over the produce and property of others, which the persons originally forming those contracts could never have contemplated, and which consigned at once to overwhelming and unmerited ruin, the commerce, the manufactures and agriculture of the empire?”

We freely admit the weight of these remonstrances. We acknowledge that, through an overstrained anxiety for observing the letter of the national faith, the spirit of the obligation was disregarded and a gross injustice committed on the great body of producers throughout the Kingdom, as well as on all debtors. It is true—

“Nothing could be more honorable than the feeling which induced our statesmen to return to the ancient standard; but, to our sorrow, their estimate of its effects was much below the mark. They did not see what a revolution of property would ensue. They consulted our honor, our reputed solvency, but not our real means. Mr. Ricardo told them the change would be five per cent. Events have proved it fifty. . . . There remains another course for consideration; one which we have urged for some time past upon the public, as the true mode of relief from our monetary difficulties. . . . We mean the removal of the mischievous restrictions which now fetter the circulation of credit through this country, and the concession of the free right of commerce to provide itself with whatever instruments it may require for effecting its exchanges uninterfered with by those officious legislative intermeddlings which experience has sufficiently proved to be fatal to almost everything they touch, but to nothing so much so as to the currency. It is physically impossible to carry on the commerce of the civilized world by the aid of a purely metallic currency—no, not though our gold and silver coins were every tenth year debased to a tenth!! Why, in London alone, five millions sterling ($25,000,000) are daily exchanged at the Clearing House in the course of a few hours. We should like to see the attempt made to bring this infinity of transactions to a settlement in coined money. Credit money, in some shape or other, always has, and must have, performed the part of a circulating medium to a very considerable extent. And by one of those wonderful compensatory processes which so frequently claim the admiration of every investigation of civil as well as of physical economy there is in the nature of credit an elasticity which causes it, when left unshackled by law, to adapt itself to the necessities of commerce and the legitimate demands of the market. . . . The only measures which appear to us to be needed upon the expiration of the Bank Charter, are: 1st. That all banks be required to deposit security in Government stock to the full amount of the notes they issue. 2d. That the law be repealed which forbids the issue of notes under five pounds. 3d. We would make the notes of metropolitan banks only convertible into bars of bullion, on the plan of Mr. Ricardo, and allow the notes of country banks to be paid in those of the metropolitan banks.”

So early as December, 1794, the Court of Directors (of the Bank) represented to Government their uneasiness on account of the debt due by the Government to the Bank, and anxiously requested a repayment of at least a considerable part of what had been advanced. In January, 1795, they resolved to limit their advances upon Treasury bills to £500,000; and, at the same time, they informed Mr. Pitt that it was their wish that he would adjust his measures for the year, in such a manner, as not to depend on any assistance from them. On the 11th of February, 1796, they resolved, “that it is the opinion of this Court, founded upon the experience of the late Imperial loan, that if any further loan or advance of money to the Emperor, or to any of the foreign States, should, in the present state of affairs, take place, it will, in all probability, prove fatal to the Bank of England.”

The bank failures that then occurred were the more distressing, as they chiefly affected the industrious classes, and frequently swallowed up in an instant the fruits of a long life of unremitting and laborious exertion. Thousands upon thousands, who had, in 1813, considered themselves as affluent, found they were destitute of all real property, and sunk, as if by enchantment and without any fault of their own, into the abyss of poverty!! The late Mr. Horner, the accuracy and extent of whose information on such subjects will not be disputed, stated in his place in the House of Commons, that the destruction of the country bank paper, in 1815 and 1816, had given rise to an universality of wretchedness and misery, which had never been equalled, except, perhaps, by the breaking up of the Mississippi scheme in France.

Every country has a certain number of exchanges to make; and whether these are effected by the employment of a given number of coins of a particular denomination, or by the employment of the same number of notes of the same denomination, is, in this respect, of no importance whatever. Notes which have been made a legal tender, and are not payable on demand, do not circulate because they are of the same real value as the commodities for which they are exchanged, but they circulate because having been selected to perform the functions of money, they are as such received by all individuals in payment of their debts. Notes of this description may be regarded as a sort of tickets or counters to be used in computing the value of property, and in transferring it from one individual to another. And as they are nowise affected by fluctuations of credit, their value, it is obvious, must depend entirely on the quantity of them in circulation as compared with the payments to be made through their instrumentality, or the business they have to perform. By reducing the supply of notes below the supply of coins that would circulate in their place were they withdrawn, their value is raised above the value of gold; while by increasing them to a greater extent it is proportionally lowered.

Hence, supposing it were possible to obtain any security other than convertibility into the precious metals, that notes declared to be legal tender would not be issued in excess, but that their number afloat would be so adjusted as to preserve their value as compared with gold nearly uniform, the obligation to pay them on demand might be done away. But it is needless to say that no such security can be obtained. Whenever the power to issue paper, not immediately convertible, has been conceded to any set of persons it has been abused, or, which the same thing, such paper has been uniformly over issued or its value depreciated by excess.

In 1793, 1814, 1815, 1816, and in 1825, a very large proportion of the country banks were destroyed, and produced by their fall an extent of ruin that has hardly been equalled in any other country. And when such disasters have already happened it is surely the bounden duty of Government to hinder by every means in its power their recurrence.

If, however, the privilege of issuing negociable notes was granted to banks only on terms which would remove all doubt from the public mind, as to the solvency of these establishments, a run never would practically take. The holders of these notes, knowing that they ran no possible risk of loss, would be no more disposed to rush with them into the different banks, to be converted into cash, than to run with a sovereign into the mint to have it exchanged for bullion. The cause of every run upon banking establishments is the fear which, from whatever unforeseen cause, seizes the public mind that they may not be solvent. Let the ground of this fear be effectually removed; assure the public mind that, as far, at least, as concerns the notes circulated by a banking establishment, it cannot prove insolvent, and these runs will never take place.

That a system of banking might be organized in this country, (England), which would practically remove every danger and inconvenience attendant upon the issue of one pound notes, is a fact capable of being demonstrated by the evidence of actual experience. It has already been put to the test in one part of His Majesty's dominions, and has been found to stand its ground, unaffected by the violent and sudden fluctuations which, at various periods, have taken place in the transactions of trade and commerce. We need not tell our readers that we allude to Scotland, where the circulating medium (with the exception of silver for change) consists wholly of paper, and where a sovereign, as a current coin, is rarely ever seen. But, although it be well known that paper money forms the whole circulating medium of Scotland, we are inclined to suspect that the principles of the banking system of our Northern neighbors are not generally understood, or, at least, generally appreciated in this part of the empire. Nothing but the want of adequate information, as to this subject, could have led to the attempt which was made, in 1826, to meddle with the banking system of Scotland, and deprive the inhabitants of that country of institutions, under the protection of which they had reached, and continued to enjoy, a high degree of public as well as private prosperity. Our wary neighbors, however, led on by the redoubted Malagrowther (Sir Walter Scott), successfully resisted the attempts of the Treasury to force upon them the use of a metallic circulating medium, and, by that means, secured themselves (in as far as the intimate connexion of the two countries could permit) against the difficulties and inconveniences which the change, effected at that period, in our monetary system, has entailed upon this part of the Island. An impression prevails very generally, on this side of the Tweed, that the superior stability of the Scottish Banking system rests upon the proverbial sagacity and wariness of the inhabitants of Scotland, and not upon any peculiarity inherent in the system itself. From this it is inferred that a circulating medium, which has been found safe among our Northern neighbors, would be attended with danger and insecurity, if adopted here. This, however, appears to us a mistake. The security of Scottish banking arises from the general principles on which the system has been organized, and not from anything which is peculiar either to the character or the habits of those by whom its operations are conducted. If adopted elsewhere, these principles would, we feel persuaded, be attended with similar results: hence it becomes important to point out their nature and trace their effects. * * * * * Even in times of commercial panic and confusion, the inhabitants of Scotland never, for a single moment, harbor the suspicion that their principal banks can, by possibility, fail. * * * * * The principles on which the banks are established place their solvency beyond all doubt. All the banks which issue notes are joint stock companies, consisting of a great number of partners, and, possessing a large capital, not merely subscribed, but actually paid up, and invested in mortgages or in Government securities. This fund is always ready to cover any losses which the bank may sustain in its transactions. * * * * * This is in truth the foundation of the unlimited credit enjoyed by the Scotch banks; it is the basis of that undoubting confidence which the public repose in their stability. The public confidence does not rest upon the credit, the discretion or the integrity of the directors; it has a much more stable foundation for its support; it is based upon actual capital which can neither be withdrawn nor diminished without the knowledge of the public.

In that country, as we have said, a sovereign is seldom seen, except in the card case of an old maid, or the cabinet of some recluse virtuoso. One of the witnesses says:

There is a prejudice against gold in Scotland. This prejudice is simply on account of the trouble attending it: it is weighed; when it is found light, the people refuse it; the country people are afraid to touch it. There is not a district in Scotland but where, if you were endeavoring to pass a sovereign, they would say, if you had a note of any bank in Scotland they would prefer it.

There is, no doubt, a small quantity of gold in the coffers of the different bankers, in order to meet the occasional whim of some capricious customer; but that a bank should be asked to five gold in exchange for notes is an event which happens so rarely, that a very trifling sum, indeed, is found fully adequate to meet all demands of this kind.

“Although,” says a witness, examined before the committee, “I have been for ten years in an office that, perhaps, does more business than any other individual office in Scotland, or out of London, I can state, as my experience, that I have never refused gold to any person that wished it. They only ask it when they have occasion to go to Ireland or to England, or to emigrate to America. I could state it as a fact that ten thousand sovereigns would have supplied all the demands for the ten years I have been in Glasgow.” “The rottenness and insecurity of the English system of banking are known to aggravate very greatly the effects of the panics to which all bodies, trading upon credit, are unavoidably subject. The general distrust prevailing at such periods is particularly directed toward the English banks, which are sure to be the first to feel the raging of the storm. The weakest of these fail, and this adds fuel to the flame which had already burst forth. A partial want of confidence is thus speedily converted into a general panic, and all banks, whatever may be their opulence and character, suffer more or less from the consequences. Even banks, upon which no actual run takes place, sustain great losses during these seasons. Uncertain of the direction which the tempest may take, they are all compelled to make preparations to meet its violence, and the sacrifice of property required for this purpose has frequently been enormous. The faintest whisper or the most trifling accident, often proves sufficient to inflict incalculable losses on English Banks. * * * * * The bankers of Scotland do not, like those of England, derive their profits from the employment of floating balances left in their hands without interest by those who deal with them. On the contrary, they allow interest for every pound of capital deposited in their hand; this interest is always less by one per cent. than that which they charge upon the loans advanced to borrowers; and the difference between the interest paid and that charged upon the whole of the profits of Scotch banking accrue.”

“By this practice, allowing interest upon all deposits, these banks attract every shilling of unemployed capital which any inhabitant may happen to possess. The witnesses, who were examined by the committee of 1826, estimated the average of these deposits at about twenty millions sterling. Persons possessed of small capitals in Scotland never purchase into the public funds; having the most unbounded confidence in the solidity of their own banks, they universally deposit in these establishments all the capital which they can spare. * * * * * Their general rule is to allow interest upon every deposit, however small may be its amount. One of the witnesses examined by the committee, and thoroughly conversant with the subject, states that, in towns like Glasgow, a very large proportion of the deposits come from the laboring classes. In country places, like Perth or Aberdeen, it is from servants and fishermen, and just the class of the community who save from their earnings, in mere trifles, small sums, till they reach a sufficient amount to form a bank deposit. * * * * * A great part of the depositors are of this description.”

Another witness examined touching the same point, estimates the whole bank deposits at twenty millions sterling ($100,000,000), and the proportion of the small deposits as fully equal to one-half the whole. He then adds: “I have had many opportunities, both professionally and in various situations in which I have been placed, of observing the effects of those deposits; and I do think that the system of the Scotch banks, allowing the rates of interest which they have done, upon these small deposits, has influenced very considerably the moral character of the people. The deposit is seldom drawn out until the depositor has to build a cottage or to buy a house; or perhaps he himself begin business, or set out his eldest son in the world; or, it may be, furnish a house for his daughter at her marriage. A deposit is often laid up for old age; and, in many instances, I have no doubt, has likewise been the means of enabling men in the humble class of society to give their children what we in Scotland value above all the advantages of wealth—the benefit of an intellectual and religious education.”

“In truth, nothing can be conceived more admirably adapted to encourage industry and economy than the system of banking which has been so long in full operation in Scotland; and we have no doubt that the saving and persevering disposition, which forms a prominent feature in the character of our Northern neighbors, must be ascribed, in a considerable degree, to the habits instilled into them by these valuable institutions. The industrious laborer finds, at his own door, a safe and profitable receptacle for every shilling he can save. Without trouble, anxiety, or loss of time, he takes his pound to the bank, where it bears interest from the moment in which it is deposited. The banks thus constitute public depositories, in which every shilling that can be spared, throughout every district of Scotland, finds its place.” “Nor is the disposal of the aggregate capital thus collected less beneficial in its effects, upon the habits and enterprise of the people, than the economy by which it is saved. The bank reservoirs, thus kept constantly full, furnish every person of character and enterprise with a ready, certain and never failing supply of capital, wherewith to embark in any undertaking which holds out the reasonable probability of success. The managers of the different banks, having collected into one focus the whole capital of the country, offer every facility to those who wish to borrow this capital, and turn it to profitable account. Their profit is derived exclusively from this source. Upon all the capital which may be unemployed in the coffers of these banks a dead loss is sustained: hence they are eager to find out safe borrowers as saving depositors.”

I cannot but think that the grant to Spain will be more than repaid to Great Britain in commercial advantages, by the opening of a great continent to British industry—an object which would be entirely defeated if the slave trade was to be carried on by the Spanish nation. Our commercial connection with Africa will much more than repay us for any pecuniary sacrifices of this kind. I myself will live to see Great Britain deriving the greatest advantages from its intercourse with Africa.

The act of 1650, passed by the Republican Parliament, laid the foundation of the monopoly system, by confining the import and export trade of the Colonies exclusively to British or Colony built ships. But the famous Navigation Act of 1660 (12 Charles II., cap. 18) went much farther. It enacted that certain specified articles, the produce of the Colonies, and since well known in commerce as enumerated articles, should not be exported directly from the Colonies to any foreign country; but that they should first be sent to Britain, and there unladen (the words are, laid upon the shore), before they could be forwarded to their final destination. Sugar, molasses, ginger, fustic, tobacco, cotton and indigo were originally enumerated; and the list was subsequently enlarged by the addition of coffee, hides and skills, iron, corn, lumber, etc . . . . . But the insatiable rapacity of monopoly was not to be satisfied with compelling the colonists to sell their produce exclusively in the English markets. It was next thought advisable that they should be obliged to buy such foreign articles as they might stand in need of, exclusively from the merchants and manufacturers of England. For this purpose it was enacted, in 1663, that no commodity of the growth, production or manufacture of Europe, shall be imported into the plantations, but such as are laden and put on board in England, Wales, or Berwick-upon-Tweed, and in English built shipping, whereof the master and three fourths or the crew are English . . . . . It was also a leading principle in the system of Colonial policy, adopted as well by England as by the other European nations, to discourage all attempts to manufacture such articles in the Colonies as could be provided for them by the mother country. The history of our Colonial system is full of attempts of this sort; and so essential was the principle deemed to the idea of a Colony, that even Lord Chatham did not hesitate to declare in his place in Parliament, that the British Colonists in North America had no RIGHT to manufacture even a nail for a horse shoe!! And when such were the enactments made by the Legislature, and such the avowed sentiments of a great Parliamentary leader and a friend to the Colonies, we need not be surprised at a declaration of a late Lord Sheffield, who did no more, indeed, than express the decided opinion of almost all the merchants and politicians of his time, when he affirmed thus: THE ONLY use of American Colonies or West India Islands is THE MONOPOLY of their consumption and the carriage of their produce. . . . . Were it not for the perverse and most injurious regulations to which this system has given rise, we might supply ourselves with sugar from the East Indies or South America, for a great deal less than it now costs to buy it from the West India planters. This is a much more serious loss than is generally supposed. Sugar has become a necessary, equally indispensable to the poor and the rich. The quantity of West India sugar, annually consumed in Great Britain, may, we believe, be taken on an average at about 380,000,000 of pounds weight. And it has been repeatedly shown, that a reduction of the duties on sugar from the East Indies and South America to the same level with those laid on West India sugar, would enable us to obtain as good sugar for 4 1/2d. per lb, as now costs 6d.; but taking the difference at only 1d. per lb, it would make on the above-mentioned quantity a saving of no less than £1,583,000 ($7,915,000) a year. . . . . Not only, however, do we exclude the sugars of the Dutch colonies, Brazil and Louisiana, but we actually lay 10s. a cwt. of higher duties on the sugar imported from our own dominions in the East Indies, than on that which is imported from the West!! Not satisfied with giving the West India planters a monopoly of the home market against foreigners, we had given them a monopoly against our own subjects in the East. It is impossible to speak too strongly in condemnation of this arrangement—not that we mean to insinuate that the East Indians have any right whatever to be more favorably treated than the West Indians; but we contend that they have a clear and undoubted right to be as favorably treated. To attempt to enrich the latter, by preventing the former from bringing their produce to our market, or by loading it with higher duties, is not only to prefer the interests of one million, and those—we do not say it disparagingly of the planters—mostly slavers, to the interests of one hundred millions of subjects; but is totally inconsistent with, and subversive of, every principle of impartial justice and sound policy.

It is said, however, that slavery exists in Hindostan as well as in Jamaica, and that by reducing the duties on East India sugar and facilitating its cultivation, by allowing Europeans to purchase and farm lands, we should not get rid of the evils of slavery, but would be merely substituting the produce of one species of slave labor for another. Now, admitting for a moment that this statement is well founded, still it is certain from the cheapness of free labor in Hindostan, no slaves ever have been, or ever can be, imported into that country. And hence it is obvious that, by substituting the sugars of the East for those of the West, we should neither add to the number nor deteriorate the condition of the existing slave population in our dominions, while we should save above a million and a half in the purchase of one of the principal necessaries of life, at the same time that we subverted a system of monopoly and laid the foundations of a new and extensive intercourse with India—a market which may be enlarged to almost any conceivable extent.”

McCulloch, speaking of the revenue and expenditure of the East India Company, says: “The far greater part of the revenue of India is, at present, and has always been, derived from the soil. The land has been held by its immediate cultivators generally in small portions, with a perpetual and transferable title; but they have been under the obligation of making an annual payment to the Government of a certain portion of the produce of their farms, which might be increased or diminished at the pleasure of the sovereign, and which has, in almost all cases, been so large as seldom to leave the cultivators more than a bare subsistence. Under the Mahomidan Government, the gross produce of the soil was divided, into equal or nearly equal shares, between the ryots or cultivators, and the Government. We regret we are not able to say that the British Government has made any material deduction from this enormous assessment. Its oppressiveness, more than anything else, has prevented our ascendancy in India, and the comparative tranquility and good order we have introduced from having the beneficial effects that might have been anticipated. The cultivators throughout Hindostan are proverbially poor, and, until the amount of the assessment they are at present subject to be effectually reduced, they cannot be otherwise than wretched. They are commonly obliged to borrow money to buy their seed and carry on their operations, at a high interest, on a species of mortgage over the ensuing crop. Their only object is to get subsistence —to be able to exist in the same obscure poverty as their forefathers. If they succeed in this they are satisfied. Mr. Colebrook, whose authority on all that relates to India is so deservedly high, mentions that the quantity of land occupied by each ryot or cultivator, in Bengal, is commonly about six acres, and rarely amounts to twenty-four; and it is obvious that the abstraction of half the produce raised on such patches can leave the occupiers nothing more than the barest subsistence for themselves and their families. Indeed, Mr. Colebrook tell us that the condition of ryots, subject to this tax, is generally inferior to that of a hired laborer, who receives the miserable pittance of two annas, or about three pence a day wages. Besides the land revenue, a considerable revenue is derived in India from the monopolies of salt and opium, the sale of spirituous liquors, land and sea customs, post office, etc. Of these monopolies, the first is, in all respects, decidedly the most objectionable. Few things, indeed, would do more to promote the improvement of India than the total abolition of this monopoly. An open trade in salt, with moderate duties, would, there can be no doubt, be productive of the greatest advantages to the public and a large increase of revenue to the government. The opium monopoly, the less objectionable than the last, is, notwithstanding, very oppressive. It interferes with the industry of the inhabitants— those who are engaged in the cultivation of opium being obliged to sell their produce to the Government at prices arbitrarily fixed by the Company's agents.”

I am sure no man laments more than I do that commerce of manufactures should be at all depressed; but I believe if the Corn Laws were repealed to-morrow, not a yard of cloth or a pound of iron more would be sold in any part of Europe or of the world, over which this country does not exercise a control. My Lords, the greatest number of European nations, and of the nations of the globe, have adopted measures for the encouragement of home manufactures. These measures were not, as stated by some, taken in consequence of the English Corn Laws. They are attributable to the example of this country. They had their rise in the spectacle which this country exhibited during the late war, and in the great and noble exertions by which her power and strength were displayed on every occasion. Those who contemplated these exertions, as well as those who were relieved and assisted by them, thought they might as well follow the example of our power, of our industry, and our system of commerce. They have followed our example, and have established among themselves manufactures, and given a stimulus to their commerce.

I therefore look to more distant regions for future prosperity. We must look to the rising nation which inhabits the North American continent. There we are met by our Corn Laws, and until we alter these we will be crippled in our commercial intercourse. We must look also to South America. There again we are met by heavy duties on sugar, and until these are modified we cannot expect to carry on commerce with South America to the extent it is possible. We must look again to Africa, and we must look especially to India and to China.

We are on the eve of a novel combination of commercial necessities that will altogether change the relation in which we have hitherto stood with our colonies. We call them necessities; they will be forced on us not from our conviction of the wisdom of such change, but by the irresistible march of events. The new world is destined to become the arbiter of the commercial policy of the old. * * * * * It is to the industry, the economy and peaceful policy of America, and not to the growth of Russia, that our statesmen and politicians, of whatever creed, ought to direct their most anxious study; for it is by these and not by the efforts of barbarian force that the power and greatness of England are in danger of being superceded; yes, by the successful rivalry of America shall we in all probability be placed second in the rank of nation. * * * * *

Bearing in mind that the supply of the raw material of nearly one half of our exports is derived from a country that threatens to eclipse us by its rival greatness, we cannot, whilst viewing the relative position of England and the United States at this moment, refrain from recurring to the somewhat parallel cases of Holland and Great Britain before the latter became a manufacturing State. * * * * * The latter (England) now sees in America a competitor in every respect calculated to contend with advantage for the sceptre of naval and commercial supremacy.

In one morning a force of ten thousand men could be raised in Jamaica for the enfranchisement of their brethren in America. Such a force, supported by two battalions of Englishmen and 20,000 muskets, would establish themselves in Carolina, never to be removed. In three weeks from their appearance, the entire South would be in one conflagration. The chains of a million of men would be broken, and by what power could they ever again be rivetted? We say that this course is dictated alike by self-preservation and by philanthropy.

To open our markets to the sugars of Cuba and Brazil would detract from the high character this country (England) has acquired in its efforts and sacrifices to put down the slave trade. * * * * * What I say is, make the attempt—try to get concessions from those of whom we get our supply—those countries themselves are in a peculiar position. You may depend upon it that there is a growing conviction among the people of those countries that slavery is not unaccompanied with great dangers. In Cuba, Brazil, and in the United States, there is a ferment on the subject of slavery which is spreading and will spread. Some from humane and benevolent motives—some on account of interested fears, begin to look at the great example we have set, and begin to look at the consequences which may result from that example nearer home.

I must say that I have my doubts if a colony in which slavery has been abolished by law can, at present, enter into competition with a district in which the system continues to exist.

The honorable member for Montrose announced his wish to maintain our colonial dependencies, but said that his object was to see each colony paying for itself. I apprehend that the proposal of the honorable and learned member from Bath to admit an unlimited competition with slaves possessing colonies is not the way to insure that object. The honorable member said that if the weavers of Lancashire were asked what benefit they derive from the duty on foreign sugar, they will assuredly say— “none.” But I put it to the honorable member whether that is the test by which any great question affecting this country is to be decided? If I ask a Lancashire weaver what benefit he derives from Jamaica and his reply is— “none,” ought that to induce me to abandon my measure? Is the honorable gentleman prepared to test the advantages derived from our connexion with India in the same manner? or should we abandon our colonial dependencies altogether, upon the assurance of a distressed weaver of Lancashire, that he is not aware that any benefit is conferred upon this country by our dependencies? If that is the principle of the honorable gentleman, it is quite clear that in order to conform to it, we must resolve ourselves into the narrow limits of our own resources and try what England can do against the world, after having abandoned all those dependencies which she has established to her glory.

This forced and expensive way of relieving the poor has put many gentlemen and parishes upon contriving all possible methods of lessening their number, particularly by discouraging, and sometimes hindering, poor persons from marrying, when they appear likely to become chargeable, and thereby preventing an increase of useful laborers, by discharging servants in their last quarter, and preventing them from getting a settlement, whereby they become vagrants—by pulling down cottages and suffering no places of inhabitation for paupers, whereby estates are flung into a few hands, and several parishes are, in a measure, depopulated. England complains of a want of useful hands for agriculture, manufactures, for the land and sea service; and, for remedying this, a bill for a general naturalization was lately introduced. * * * * * But no scheme, I believe, will ever succeed so long as parishes are so apprehensive of paupers, and take all manner of precaution to prevent a multiplication of inhabitants.

There is no parish but had much rather that its young laborers would continue single; in that state they are not in danger of becoming chargeable; but when married the case alters. All obstructions are, therefore, thrown in the way of their marrying; and none more immediately than that of rendering it as difficult as possible for the men, when married, to procure a house to live in; and this conduct is found so conducive to easing the rates, that it universally gives rise to an open war against cottages . . . . . The Act of 43d Elizabeth, by devolving the protection of the poor on the landlords and occupiers of land, compelled the latter to take all possible precautions to prevent the too rapid increase of the former. A premium was given to those who lived in a state of celibacy; early and improvident marriages were discourage by what could not fail to be considered very severe penalties.

The able-bodied tenant of a work house should be made to feel that his situation is decidedly less comfortable than that of the industrious laborer who supports himself, and that a life of unremitting toil, supported on course and scanty fare, is to be his portion so long as he continues in this degraded state.

Dr. Burn, who is one of the very highest authorities as to all that respects the poor, has given the following graphical de ineation of the peculiar business of a parish overseer: The office of an overseer of the poor seems to be understood to be this: To keep an extraordinary lookout, to prevent persons coming to inhabit without certificates, and to fly to the Justices to remove them; and if a man brings a certificate, then to caution the inhabitants not to let him a farm of£10 a year, and to take care to keep him out of all parish offices. To warn them, if they will hire servants, to hire them by the month, the week, or the day, rather than by any way that can give them a settlement; or, if they do hire them for a year, then to endeavor to pick a quarrel with them before the year's end, and so to get rid of them; to maintain their poor as cheaply as they possibly can, and not to lay out two pence in prospect of any future good, but only to serve the present necessity; to bargain with some sturdy person to take them by the lump, who is not yet intended to take them, but to hang over them in terrorem, if they shall complain to the justice for want of maintenance; to send them out into the country a begging; to bind out poor children apprentices, no matter to whom or to what trade, but to take special care that the master live in another parish; to move heaven and earth, if any dispute happens about a settlement; and, in that particular, to invert the general rule and stick at no expense; to pull down cottages; to drive out as many inhabitants, and admit as few, as they possibly can—that is, to depopulate the parish in order to lessen the poor rate; to be generous indeed sometimes in giving a portion with the mother of a bastard child to the reputed father, on condition that he will marry her: or with a poor widow, always provided that the husband be settled elsewhere; or, if a poor man, with a large family happen to be industrious, they will charitably assist him in taking a farm in some neighboring parish, and give him£10 to pay his first year's rent with, that they may thus for ever get rid of him and his progeny.

These restraints which persons of property, interested in pulling down poor rates, will infallibly impose, are much more likely efficacious than those he (the laborer) will impose on himself. Until lately, no pauper could marry, and no pauper ought to be allowed to marry. If there was no opening for a married man in his own parish, and if the attempt to marry in another led to his removal as a pauper, the laborer found himself governed by circumstances to which his inclinations were forced to yield.

1st. The able-bodied laborer must be discouraged from relying on parish aid. 2d. He must be enabled to maintain himself in independence. The first end is to be attained only by requiring from all parish laborers full work for a rate of pay barely sufficient to support the individuals. A mere subsistence, in return for their utmost exertions, is all that, in justice or policy, the parish can or ought to be compelled to afford them. Harshly as this may sound, it is absolutely necessary, to prevent our degenerating into a nation of paupers, that the parish should always have the character of the hardest task masters, and the worst pay-master a laborer can apply to.