GOLD COIN AND BANK NOTE BILL.

HC Deb 15 July 1811 vol 20 cc914-80

The order of the day having been read for the second reading of this Bill,

Mr. Eden

said, that after the many able and eloquent speeches which had been made on this subject, he should not trouble the House at any considerable length; but he felt it impossible to refrain from expressing his repugnance to the tendency and principles of the measure under consideration. If the Bill possessed any merit, it was in being totally inadequate to the object which the supporters of it had in view, namely, to sustain a paper currency which was not exchangeable into any thing of intrinsic value. If parliament consented to this first proposition, they must proceed to measures of a still more injurious nature. They must be compelled ultimately to adopt the maximum, and to make Bank of England notes run the full career of French assignats. The effect of that clause which prevented the provisions of the Bill from extending to Ireland, would be to give to every guinea in Great Britain a free and unincumbered passage to that country. He warmly defended the conduct of the noble lord oh whose requisition to his tenantry the present measure affected to be founded. It had been asked, whether that noble lord fulfilled his own contracts on the same terms as those which he exacted from others? He had the means of knowing that he did. The noble lord had that very year paid 1,200l. in Banknotes, as the equivalent for an annuity of 1,000l. secured on his estates. It had been intimated that obstacles might be thrown in the way of those who sought in courts of law to recover that which was their fair right: he could not believe this. It was the business of the judges to administer the law; and although some delays might be occasioned, yet judgment must be given, and the lawful money of the realm must be ultimately paid in the fulfilment of all contracts to that effect. This could be done only in two ways, either by the tenant's buying bullion and sending it to the mint to be coined into guineas, or by his selling his corn for guineas only. In either case, two prices, a gold price and a paper price, would be produced, and thus lord King's object would be gained. (Hear, hear!) He was not pretending to enter into lord King's motives, he was only showing the inadequacy of the Bill, to effect the objects for which it was framed. He repeated the eloquent passage in Burke's reflections on the French Revolution, "that our paper was all powerful on the Royal Exchange, because it was impotent in Westminster-hall;" and earnestly entreated the House to consider the expediency of endeavouring to bring the circulation of the country back to a state in which such an observation could be made with truth. The obvious remedy, he thought, was to restrain the issues of the Bank of England, to prevent the too frequent recurrence of mutual accommodations between the Bank and the government, and to adopt a resolution evincing the sense which parliament entertained of the existing evils, and their determination to compel the Bank as speedily as possible to resume cash payments. He extolled the conduct of an hon. and learned friend of his, then absent (Mr. Horner) and those who acted with him, for the manner in which they had originally brought the subject under the consideration of the public. They had shown the evil and had pointed out the cure. The hon. gent, concluded by declaring his determination, when the Bill should be in the Committee, to propose a clause by which the Bank should be restricted from issuing a larger number of notes than that at present in circulation.

Mr. Herbert

commented with some warmth upon the extraordinary auspices under which the present Bill had been introduced to the House, and the equally as extraordinary manner in which it had been at first resisted, and finally supported by his Majesty's ministers: a compulsory law to support public credit, was one which was enough in itself to excite very general alarm; the fickle conduct of his Majesty's government in first opposing, and then suddenly giving all their aid in forwarding this measure, was enough almost to excuse the suspicions which had by some persons been so unwarrantably indulged in respecting all public men. The right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer had told them, that if that Bill failed in doing what he expected it would do, that it would then be necessary to make Bank notes a legal tender. Those, therefore, who did not expect any thing from this measure, were to argue it with a reference to that Bill, which they were told would follow after it. It was certainly but just, that if we compel the public creditor to take that paper, we ought to protect him from the loss arising out of its depreciation; but it was necessary to shew that this Bill could so protect the public creditor, before they could prove that it was necessary. He did not think that it would have any such effect; but of this he was certain, that if they were sincere in their wish to protect the public creditor from the injustice complained of, they might remove the measure that created that injustice. In alluding to the conduct of a noble lord (King), the right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said that certain gentlemen, who had originally opposed the Restriction act, had done so, because they apprehended that it would create a double price, and yet these same persons approved of the conduct of lord King, though so much more likely, if generally instituted, to produce that effect. To this, he would answer that lord King's conduct could have no such possible tendency, and that with respect to the apprehensions of a double price being the ultimate result of the Restriction act, they had been proved by the event to hare been but too well founded. The result of that act had verified all the predictions which had been made by those who opposed it. There was, in fact, a double price, though it could not be proved conclusively from the habits of the small retailers who bought to sell again. So that it was not trying the question fairly to I put the case they had so often heard of, that one man would get as much in a shop for a pound note and a shilling, as another would for his guinea. He who was immediately affected by the depreciation of paper, was the man who lived on an income arising out of a fixed capital—and in this point of view, considering how necessary it was to call the attention of the public to the true state of the question, he thought the conduct of lord King highly patriotic and laudable, in bringing home the question in such a way that it must be met, that it could not any longer be evaded. But what effects could be expected from even the bold measure of making paper a legal tender. There was, he contended, no injustice in the demand of lord King, if made on his tenantry. But what would this do, but transfer the injustice supposed to be suffered by the tenant, in that case, really to the landlord. But how could such a law be made effectual? Suppose such a law in force, could it prevent a landholder front saying—there is my land, give me 300l. in gold coin, and it is yours; or if you will pay me in paper, I will not take less than 360l. in fact, they might as well expect, by the mere sound of their voice, to stop the descent of a stone falling to the ground by its own gravity, if, however, it could not do what it was intended to do, it would still, he feared, do more than enough—it would have the effect of defrauding all those who had old leases—old mortgages and annuitants, of a great portion of their just rights; they might defraud them, but still they could not stop depreciation—they could not prevent a tradesman from saying, you may have this article for a guinea, but if I am to book it, I will enter it at a higher price. There had been a great displeasure evinced by some, at instituting any comparison between Bank paper and assignats; but for his party, as far as related to the principle of the question before them, he saw not the slightest difference.

Mr. Calcraft

reprobated the comparison of Bank of England paper with French assignats. At one period there were no less than 130 millions sterling of assignats in circulation in France. The whole of the Bank of England notes at present in circulation in this country did not exceed twenty-three millions. What just comparison could therefore be made between the two descriptions of paper? This language shewed to what a length the heat of controversy would carry the best informed and best intentioned individuals. Honourable gentlemen ought to recollect, how-ever, that representations of the nature to which he had alluded were immediately spread through the country, and must necessarily produce impressions of the most unfavourable nature, both with respect to the present time, and to futurity. He spoke on this subject with great pain, because he differed upon it so materially from those hon. friends with whom he had usually the satisfaction of acting. He had differed from them in a similar manner on the Bullion question. But he confessed that he did not think he should do his duty unless he explained the reasons which would induce him to give the decided vote, which it was his intention to give in support of the present Bill. When this measure was first agitated, it appeared to him to be uncalled for, but he afterwards became persuaded of its absolute necessity. He really was not aware of the strength of the objections against it. What did the Bill propose to do? With respect to the tenantry of the country, only that which no individual but lord King had abstained from doing, or had questioned the propriety of doing since the measure of 1797. It was said to be unnecessary, because it was probable that no one would follow the noble lord's example. This might be. But he for one would rather incur the charge of superabundant caution on such a subject; be would rather pass a law which should never require to be put in force, than leave the country exposed to all the confusion and oppression which must ensue, if such a mistaken and mischievous example were by possibility to be followed. Again, he would ask, what was the Bill to do? It was to declare that a guinea should not be taken for more than 21, and a pound note for less than 20 shillings. Was not that the case at present? In any shop were not a guinea, and a pound note, with a shilling, equivalent? It his hon. friends would forget their theoretical opinions, they would be aware that this was the case. He had always found it so. He had sometimes to buy, and sometimes to sell; in the former instance, he always procured its full value for a Bank of England note; and in the latter instance, he was always glad to receive a pound note for twenty shillings. Some hon. gentlemen stated the depreciation of Bank paper to be 15 per cent.; others 18; others 20. This very uncertainly shewed the non-existence of the thing itself. He had closely attended to their arguments, and he had never found that they assumed a tangible shape; it was true that the price of meat, and other articles, had increased; but when it was considered that there was an annual revenue of eighty millions raised in the country, that increase of price could not fairly be attributed to any depreciation of currency. The prevalence of luxury, the increase of population, and the enhanced price of labour, co-operated with the enormous revenue in producing this effect; and therefore, although money, in any shape, would not procure so much of a commodity as it might have done some years ago, yet that was no proof whatever of the depreciation of paper. The depreciation, as it was termed, was by sortie attributed to the over-issue of paper by the Bank of England. This was a most extraordinary supposition. The amount of Bank notes at present in circulation was 23 millions. When the circulation of the country was composed of gold and paper, that circulation consisted of 25 millions of the former, and 10 millions of the latter, making in the whole a circulation of 35 millions. How, therefore, could it be justly contended that a circulation so diminished in comparison as the existing circulation was an over issue? And with respect to the comparison of Bank of England notes with the French assignats of former days, did hon. gentlemen recollect, that if a Frenchman held too many of those assignats, he did not know what to do with them, while, on the other hand, the whole of the paper issued by the Bank of England reverted to the Exchequer four times in the year? The French assignats were a forced circulation—they were issued to supply the deficiency in the revenue. Was that the case with the paper issued by the Bank of England? The Bank directors did not force, they only fed the circulation. They never issued paper but in exchange for good bills, or government security. In his opinion, the Bank had acted most correctly and judiciously; but even when in any instance the issues had been at all excessive, the evil corrected itself. A proof of this occurred during the commercial failures of last year, to relieve which the Bank increased their issues to 25 millions; but in the course of two or three months, namely, from December to February, the relief being afforded it returned to its regular limit. The issues of the Bank were paid for by those who received them. The Bank did not throw their paper at peoples heads, or stuff it down their pockets. Every one who received it on security paid five per cent. for the accommodation: and no man would pay five per cent. for that which was not a desirable acquisition. For his part, he should be as happy as any one to see the country again in possession of a mixed circulation of gold and paper. But, when he recollected that in 1797, the legislature thought fit to enact the Bank Restriction Bill—when he found that for 12 years after that enactment, the exchanges with foreign countries were in favour of Great Britain, and that if any inconveniences were fell from the supposed depreciation of paper, they were at least not complained of—when he observed that it was only during the two last years, in consequence of the injury which our trade suffered, that the balance of payments with foreign countries, and ultimately the exchanges became against us—and then, when he heard gentlemen declaring that bank paper was depreciated in consequence of the restriction on cash payments at the Bank, and advising that that restriction should be immediately abolished, he confessed himself wholly at a loss to conceive the grounds on which such a declaration and such advice were founded. As to returning at the present moment to a mixed circulation of gold and paper, it was impossible. It would be impossible for the Bank either from the stock of gold which they might already have in their coffers, or from that which it would be in their power to procure from the continent, to maintain such a circulation It was said, that there was plenty of gold in Europe—but as this country had no free commercial intercourse with the continent of Europe, how was that gold to be procured? What could be given for it? We could not buy gold with gold—that would be useless. We could not buy gold with notes, for notes were for domestic circulation alone. The principal articles of trade in which this country dealt were cloth, coffee, and sugar. But whither could we send these articles? To what port on the continent could they be; assigned? Every body knew the difficulties under which our trade laboured, and the impossibility of consigning to the continent such a quantity of goods of British manufacture, or of articles of British produce, as would procure in return a large quantity of gold. Had not an hon. friend of his (Mr. A. Baring) who was well versed in these matters, said that, if he were required to procure from the continent ten thousand pounds worth of gold, he should not know how to set about it? What was to be done? Why, the country must continue to be content with that species of circulation with which it had already been content for 14 years, and by the aid of which its internal prosperity, at least, had been promoted in an unexampled degree. It was on this principle, and with this feeling that the bullion discussion terminated. But a new question had arisen. A noble lord (of whom he by no means intended to speak disrespectfully) had declared that he must have gold from his tenants in payment of their rents; and this he had declared at a period when there was no gold in the country, and when for fourteen years all the internal transactions of the country had been satisfactorily carried on by a paper currency! The, noble lord's leases had been granted since the passing of the Bank restriction bill. He would ask any man who heard him, and who had granted a lease since the enactment of that measure, whether he had ever expected the rent under such a lease to be paid in any thing but paper? Certainly not. But what was to be done? Why, the tenantry of the country must be protected. They must be defended from the liability of having their goods taken out of their houses because they did not pay that which they could not get to pay with. And were landlords to be allowed to distrain for rent if their tenants did not pay in gold, what would they procure by such distraining but paper? In this state of things, it was the duty of parliament to protect those who demanded, and who deserved their protection. He was persuaded, that he never should regret the vote which it was his intention to give on the present occasion. He was never more satisfied with any vote which he had given in his life, than with that which he had felt it his duly to give on the bullion question, although in that, as in the present instance, his sentiments were in direct opposition to those of many of his hon. friends. He begged those hon. friends to consider what might be the effect of leaving the whole tenantry of Great Britain in the state of uncertainty in which they at present stood. Even suppose a landlord could extract guineas from his tenant, what would he do with them? be must either melt them or export them. He must send them either to the crucible or to the coast. The House had heard, indeed, that the Irish market would be open. That might be. But even in that case he did not think that an English gentleman would be well employed in extracting gold from his tenants at a loss to them of 20 or 25 per cent. in order to send it over to Ireland, from whence it might return to serve as a fresh; means of oppression to fresh landlords. With respect to the noble lord, in whose intimation to his tenantry this measure originated, he could not but consider that the intimation must have proceeded from the pride of authorship. The noble lord had formerly written a great deal on the probable depreciation of paper. After five or six years, finding that things went on as smoothly as ever, he had probably exclaimed, "How unfortunate that I cannot get practical illustration of the depreciation of these abominable Bank notes? I will even risk an example myself; not (or the sake of what I may gain by it, but to establish my credit as a writer." He had no doubt of the many excellent qualities which lord King possessed; but he was persuaded, that in the present instance he had forgotten the noble lord in the author.

Mr. Brougham

, adverting to the recommendation by his hon. friend who had just spoken, to other hon. gentlemen to forget their theories, and to consider the subject singly and practically, lamented that his hon. friend had not followed up his own principle, and had not applied his excellent understanding solely to the Bill before the House. Instead of that, his hon. friend had indulged in details on the general subject; a subject out of which the present measure arose, as the presumed necessity for it was unquestionably occasioned by the rejection of the Resolution" of the Bullion Committee, but which, in any other point of view, was not only unconnected with the consideration of the present Bill, but in some degree foreign to it. His hon. friend had furnished answers to his own arguments. For instance, he had told the House (and the whole of his speech was erected on that foundation) that Bank notes were not depreciated; for that guineas and notes had equal power in the procuring of the various commodities of life; and he then urged the necessity of parliament's doing that by the present Bill, which, if his premises were true, was already done to their hands —In what he should do himself the honour of submitting to the House, it was his intention to restrain himself to the specific measure before them, and to confine his observations to that novel and portentous attempt at legislation, by which it was endeavoured to introduce ideas (for he could not call them principles) that had never before been thought of in parliament, ideas more wild and chimirical than any with which the maddest visionaries of France, amidst all their extravagant and impracticable speculations, had tormented that unhappy country. The present was a Bill to legalise injustice; to enable one of the parties in a contract to escape the obligation into which he had entered, and to defraud the other party. He availed himself of the earliest opportunity of entering his feeble protest against such a measure. He opposed its principle, a principle so radically bad, that it was impossible for any change which might take place in the Committee (unless, indeed, that change were to go to the omission of the whole Bill, for the purpose of substituting something of a nature directly opposite), to render the Bill in any degree tolerable. With respect to the origin of the measure, he had nothing to do with that. He did not believe it to have been such as the House had heard that it was. He believed it was a mere pretence to say that this Bill was occasioned by lord King's intimation to his tenantry. Let the House recollect the history of the Bill. Let them recollect that, although introduced on the affected ground to which he had alluded, it originally possessed no provision applicable to the case which it professed to meet, but was distinctly directed against that deficiency in the law (a deficiency which he trusted would long exist), that occasioned the acquittal of De Yonge and Wright; it was calculated to force the circulation of paper, and to make that law which the Judges of England in the cases that he had just mentioned, had declared was not law already. Subsequently and incidentally came that clause, the provision against the distraining for rent, by which it was attempted to defeat the just object of lord King and of those who might be induced to imitate him. His first objection to the Bill was, that it would be ineffectual in securing the object which the supporters of it pretended to have in view. It would be strong only in mischief. It would interfere with private contracts; and it would enable a fraudu- lent debtor to be unjust to his creditor. As had already been said by an hon. friend of his, any person who wished to make a profit by the sale of guineas might do so, with as much facility if the Bill passed as he could at present; for all he would have to do would be to export these guineas to Ireland, then to sell them for bills, for which he would afterwards receive their specified value. And even if the clause were omitted by which the extension of the provisions of the Bill to Ireland was prevented, still the Bill would be inefficient. For what would it do, but take from lord King, or any other landlord who might be disposed to follow his example, merely one of the means which he bad in his power to secure himself from fraud? As to the noble lord in 'question, his character had nothing to do with the question; but he would not abstain from expressing, not in that noble lord's presence, but in the face of those by whom he was censured, his high admiration of his lordship's talents and qualities. But this feeling had not any thing to do with the discussion of the subject, and laying it wholly aside, therefore, he should proceed to the discussion without any partiality of that nature. He repeated what would the clause of the Bill before the House do but simply prevent a landlord from distraining for rent, should his tenant refuse to pay him, according to his contract, "in the good and lawful money of the realm? Every other mode of proceeding was left to the landlord. He might still, on the non-payment of his rent for half a year, in conformity to the terms of his lease, eject his tenant; he must subsequently obtain judgment; he would then recover the lease which he had granted; and would not that be a sufficient power in his hands? Would not that make it compulsory on the tenant to pay in the fair and just manner which his landlord might prescribe? And what would be the case with other debtors? They would be in the same situation as tenants, and yet the Bill did not propose to relieve them. It did not propose to relieve the trader who had borrowed the funds by which his commercial speculations were sustained. It did not propose to relieve the annuitant, the widow, the orphan: in fact, it could not relieve any of these. When a creditor, proceeding at law, in the event of his debtor refusing to pay in the lawful money of the realm, obtained judgment, which he must eventually do, he had it in his power, and would have it in his power, to arrest that debtor, unless he paid either in gold or in notes estimated at a rate which would render them equivalent to gold. It was true that vague insinuations, insinuations which he trusted were wholly without foundation—had been uttered that there were certain persons holding high situations in the country, who hinted at the practicability of delaying legal proceedings, who spoke of the possibility of malpractices in our courts of justice, and who even went so far as to say, that when all the chicanery and quirks of the courts of common law were exhausted, a court of equity might step in and interpose its authority to the due execution of justice. Such a libel on the high individuals to whom he alluded, so flagrant a supposition, or one so hurtful to the feelings of any man who felt pride in calling himself an Englishman, could in vain be searched for but in the most corrupt time of the British history. If a debtor was to be thus relieved, if such an infraction of private faith was to be carried into effect, in God's name let it be done at once by an act of the legislature. Badly as he thought of the Bill before the House, much as he should deplore the enactment of a law by which injustice would be legalized, he should still more deplore, if it were possible that such a circumstance could occur, any attempt made by a Judge to violate the law, and to assist in cementing that unnatural union which had so long existed between the Treasury and Thread needle-street. The idea made him shudder; and he fervently hoped that no set of men in this country would ever have such a "consolation," as it had been termed. He was convinced that the exalted characters to whom he alluded had been shamefully traduced in the very supposition that it was possible they could so comfort themselves. If they had been so disposed to truckle to the base association that he had described, the country would not be now exulting in that decision, which had pronounced De Yonge and Wright innocent. Let not the framers or supporters of the bill trust to Westminster Hall for extrication from their difficulties. Let them not trust to courts of law, or to courts of equity. The former would not, the latter dare not assist them. They must have recourse to some other mode of proceeding; and what proceeding remained to them, but to make Bank notes a legal tender, he knew not. By having recourse to this expedient, they would enable every man who had entered into a contract to get off by doing something very different from that which he had engaged to do, namely, by paying in paper the sum which he had engaged to pay in gold, all debtors would so get off. Among others, the public creditor, who receiving from the Treasury a certain sum in paper as the payment of his loan to government, would no longer be liable to pay his creditor in gold, but would be enabled to visit on his creditor the injustice which he had experienced in his own person. If he possessed 6,000l. in the 5 per cents (the case supposed by his hon. friend) and rented a house at 300l. a year, he might certainly receive 300l. from government with one hand, and pay to his landlord with the other. But suppose his lease were expired, or suppose he had any fresh bargain to conclude, did his hon. friend suppose that this public creditor would be placed in a better situation by bank notes having been made a legal tender? The I morning after they bad been so made a legal tender, would not the butcher and the baker raise their prices upon him? Would not his landlord, if his lease were expired, raise his rent? Would not all these people reply to his remonstrances, "No, no, you are protected by act of parliament; you may pay us in Banknotes at a depreciated value, and it is compulsory on us to receive them; you must' give us an higher price than when we had an option on the subject?" Would not this be the language held to the unfortunate public creditor? How, therefore, would he be protected? Individuals who were employed in industrious occupations might thus relieve themselves from the evil of the measure, which would press with accumulated weight on those who had not the means of exertion—on the small annuitant—on the aged—on the widow—on the orphan. These having received their pittances in a depreciated currency, must be compelled to purchase articles raised in price in proportion to that depreciation. The present Bill as it stood could by possibility only affect past contracts. A clause should therefore be introduced to render it applicable to future contracts. There were great precedents for such a proceeding. There was the law of usury, and there was the example of France. Nevertheless it would be useless, for what would be the consequence? No contracts would be entered into. No leases would be granted. Parliament must then go one step further. It would be the last step; but it would be so like the former steps, that they would probably feel no difficulty in taking it. They must enact the law of the maximum. By that alone could they effect the object which they had in view. Whether any minister would be found bold enough to assert or any man blind enough to believe, that by a maximum Great Britain, more than any other nation that had adopted such a measure, could escape famine and confusion; famine which no bounty of Providence could relieve, and confusion which no accumulation of armies could subdue.—Whether, he repeated, any man would be bold and blind enough to recommend a proceeding which must necessarily be followed by such direful consequences, he should be better able to say with certainty, when he should hear some one of the defenders of the Bill argue in its support. If any such attempt were really to be made, he trusted that the immediate, and the signal ruin of the author of it, would prevent the not less certain and utter, though perhaps the less immediate ruin of the landlord. Twenty-two years from that very day had commenced those events in a neighbouring country, which in their consequences had proved so fatal to liberty. Those events had commenced with an insidious and pretended solicitude for the tenantry of that unhappy country. War had been declared against the palace, and peace promised to the cottage. The palace had indeed been razed, but into the cottage had been introduced, not peace, but the scourge of military conscription. If any thing could awaken, on the anniversary of such an event, the feelings of horror and detestation which the lapse of time had nearly lulled to sleep, it would be the no less insidious, and the no less pretended solicitude for the lower orders, which was manifested on the present occasion. He besought the House to consider whether, in the history of that dreadful revolution to which he had alluded, there was one enormity in the black catalogue of crimes so revolting to English justice and English feeling, as the disregard of the rights of private property, the interference with the contracts of individuals, the establishment of a compulsory currency, and the denunciations of vengeance against those who refused to accept it? It was such proceedings as these that excited horror and detestation in all good minds; and yet it was such proceedings as these that a commercial country like Great Britain was called upon to imitate! He said a commercial country, not because he thought that if Great Britain were not a commercial country, the example of France would be less inapplicable to her; but because if, even in France, the evils of interference with private property were so sensibly felt, how infinitely more intolerable would they be, and how much more ought we to dread the introduction of any semblance of that interference in this great manufacturing and mercantile country, the resources of which depended so vitally upon the preservation of good faith between man and man? "But," said the right hon. gentleman opposite, in a triumphant tone, "what then is the remedy which you propose for the existing evils?" In the first place, he must protest against such a question. If a public measure were proposed for his adoption, and in the due exercise of his judgment he should be persuaded that it would be fatal to the public, would it be necessary that he should hold his peace, and abstain from expressing his opinion of such a measure until he had something to propose as a substitute? If he saw poison offered to an invalid under the name of a cure, was he not to interfere and proclaim the deleterious quality of the affected remedy, because he happened to have no beneficial drugs of his own to administer? He did not feel himself called upon to declare what in his opinion would be the best course to pursue; at the same time he had no objection to do so. He had no hesitation in describing the substitute which he would recommend for the proposed measure. This substitute was neither more nor less than to place the country precisely in the state which it was the object of the Bill to prevent. He meant to induce the establishment of two prices for commodities; a money price and a paper price; the relation of which should not be fixed by law (God forbid that it should be so!) but should vary, in conformity to circumstances; rising, or falling, in proportion to the comparative scarcity of the one article, and abundance of the other. Than this proportion nothing could be more simple, nothing more effectual. It would render all pecuniary transactions so clear and intelligible, that any one who could count two and two, would be eabled to comprehend them; and to estimate the fair proportion between the two descriptions of payment. It would be in vain for him to run over all the advantages which the adoption of such a proceeding would afford. But, in the first place it would be said, that this double price was the very evil which the measure of 1797 was calculated and intended to avert. True, and he was ready to admit that before the currency of the country was diseased to its present state, such an occurrence might fairly have been termed a disease. But under the present circumstances, and now that the Bank restriction had passed, it would be the only effectual remedy, however the necessity of applying a remedy so powerful might be lamented. In the first place, were such a state of things established there would be no difficulty in procuring gold. He did not mean to disturb the repose of any of the Resolutions to which the House had been persuaded to come on the Report of the Bullion Committee; that subject had been "set at rest," as the right hon. gentleman opposite called it. It a guinea could be exchanged for its real value in paper, namely, 26 or 27s. the consequence would be, that as often as guineas were wanted they would be bad. It would not be necessary that a man should go about with notes in one pocket and guineas in another. For many purposes notes would have the preference to guineas; but what he intended to say was, that were two prices established, if it were at any time necessary to have guineas, they might be obtained as easily as they had been obtained by De Yonge or Wright or others, who had recently been trafficking, as it was generally supposed illegally, but as it turned out, without any violation of the law. We might procure gold by the same means by which we at present procured wine—aye, the wines of France, where the restrictions on commerce with this; country were most rigidly enforced. The right hon. gentleman opposite seemed to smile at this, but nothing was more evident. Certainly gold could not be obtained for nothing, nor could it be obtained for bank notes. But he repeated (for he would not abandon his illustration, notwithstanding the amusing merriment of the right hon. gentleman,) it might be obtained in the way in which French wines were at present obtained. How was that? By sending over commodities, and bills of exchange arising out of commercial transactions. The same means would procure gold as well as wine: with this advantage, that the one article could more easily be concealed from the vigilance of the custom-house officer than the other. When to this was added the consideration of the Spanish colonies, to say that gold could not be procured in considerable quantities, if required, was to treat like a child the person to whom the assertion was made. Another advantage which must result from the establishment of two prices would be, that it would prove a constant and unerring test of the depreciation of paper. In this point of view it would be advantageous to all parties. It would be advantageous to the bank directors. It would be advantageous to government. It would be the very pulse by which the true state of the circulation would be estimated. Suppose the pound notes were found to exchange for sixteen shillings, then for fifteen shillings and ten-pence, then for fifteen shillings and eight-pence, and thus to be gradually depreciating, the evil would not be permitted to go very far; the bank would diminish their issues, and the paper would get up again. When the pound notes rose to nineteen shillings, parliament having certain access to the knowledge of this fact, might repeal the 37th of the king, and enable the bank to pay in specie. He confessed that he should like to see that great corporation in such a situation. They affected to have it believed that the restriction on their payments in cash was compulsory on them, and that they should have enjoyed doing so very much, if the legislature would have permitted them? They would have it believed that the restraint upon the satisfying the just demands of their creditors was a violence to their gentle natures! If the pound note were at nineteen shillings, and the bank restriction bill were repealed, be should be curious to see whether or not the bank would manifest any anxiety to satisfy these just demands. Certainly, if paper was to be at par with cash, then even the bank would feel no difficulty on the subject, and the circulation of the country would be restored to the health which it enjoyed before that ill-advised, and he feared illfated measure, the restriction. The project he wished to submit to them was this: That the overplus of the profits of the, bank company, above that which was necessary to pay their dividends at present, should be put by, and not allowed to in- crease their dividends, and raise the price of bank stock from 230l. to 270l. to 280l, to 290l. or to 300l. He would have the overplus of their profits put by to form a separate fund, to be placed under the care of persons appointed by parliament. This fund he would have shut up from the company, but as soon as they were willing to resume payments in specie, it should be thrown open to them, and then he should be glad to see the price of bank stock rise from 230l. to 500l. or 1,000l. if it were possible, after settling their debts and paying their notes in cash.—Having said thus much of the remedy which he felt it to be his duty to recommend, he would now advert to that remedy which he feared would one, and no very distant day, be proposed to the House with a much better chance of success by the right hon. gent, opposite. It flowed so directly from the principles avowed by that right hon. gent., that he marvelled it had not been already brought before them, and laid his account in its speedy annunciation. They had been told that the bank note was not depreciated, that the guinea for circulation bore no premium, and that the price of provisions were increasing but in a natural way. That which some persons viewed as a depreciation of bank paper, they had been told was neither more nor less than that state of things naturally growing out of the public expenditure under existing circumstances. He would not stop to inquire into the fact of the depreciation, but leave it altogether to those who contended there were no grounds for such an assertion. Giving up this, however, it followed, if the arguments made use of by the friends to the present system were good, that there was a way to relieve the country with ease and with speed from its present embarrassments. Let them take 2 or 300 millions from the national debt. Let them fearlessly apply the sponge at once. Twelve or fifteen millions a year, would thus be taken off the taxes. Such a measure, it was true, would affect the property of the public creditor; but if the public creditor no longer did take a full hundred pound for his dividend—say, such a change were made, that instead of 100l. he received but 50l. still, if the reasoning they had heard was correct, he would not be injured by the new arrangement. If there were any truth in the arguments advanced, to account for the present high prices, it followed that those prices must fall when such an alteration were made, and the public creditor could not be injured, if he could command as much with the 50l. he received as he formerly could with the 100l. he was in the habit of taking as his dividend. If it would press thus lightly on the public creditor how would such a proceeding affect the rest of the community? They must experience a very great benefit from such a measure. They would not only be bettered so much as they were relieved by the reductions of the taxes, (which alone must be great, as their incomes would not be affected like the income of the public creditor) but they would also be benefited by the fall of the prices of all commodities, which must follow the measure, if there were one iota of truth in that which had been advanced by those who contended there was no depreciation of the Bank of England paper. It remained for the gentlemen opposite to say why they did not accept this challenge, and adopt such a measure as that which he had described. It was for them to give their reasons for declining it, but he (Mr. Brougham) had a right to call upon them to go into the question, and to relieve the country from the embarrassment of its currency, by acting on their own principles. If they did not do this, he had a right to say they did not believe that which they themselves had advanced, or that they were a set of theorists, who were afraid of acting in conformity with their own doctrine. He did not think it would be expedient, this session, nor did he think the Chancellor of the Exchequer, bold as he had been said to be, and great as was his fortitude in calmly regarding the distresses of others—he did not think that he would soon rise to propose a measure, which even the arrogant mind of his predecessor shrank from—a measure for opposing the legitimate claims of the public creditor. They had not only the example of France before them, but also that of other countries, which bore a still greater resemblance to that situation in which this country would be placed if the Bill before the House were passed into a law. They had the history of the coinage of other countries. That of the states of Germany would be found not inapplicable to us, and more especially the history of what had taken place in Prussia would come home to our case. The king of that country being engaged in an expensive war, and not wishing or caring to square his expenditure by his means, notwithstanding all he gained by seizing on Po- land, (an action which, for atrocity, was not second even to our Danish expedition), had been placed in a situation of pecuniary embarrassment. Thus circumstanced, having no bank to fly to, Frederick was under the necessity of having recourse to a measure somewhat similar to that at present contemplated by the English government. There were two ways of making money pass for more than it was actually worth; the one by raising its denomination, the other by debasing its standard. The latter was the expedient to which Frederick resorted. He debased the standard, and, by doing this, he presently extricated himself from many of his embarrassments, and was enabled to discharge many of his debts. So far all was very well. Things did not, however, continue long in this state of prosperity. By degrees, that which passed for a shilling, instead of appearing white, began to disclose some shades of grey. From grey it made a transition to brown, and last of ail the copper itself made its appearance. It was then found necessary to issue a proclamation to over-rule the opposition of the people, and make this base money a legal tender. The consequence was, in all future contracts, as the law of maximum was not introduced, the prices of all commodities were enhanced in proportion as the money was debased. Such would be the situation in which this country would probably stand after the adoption of the measure then under discussion. The plan of Frederick liad an advantage over this project. It was not discovered till about a year and a half after it was resorted to, and it was of some efficacy for two or three years. The measure to be adopted here would have no such advantage, as it was seen through at once. His differed from ours very materially. The one was a case of open fraud, the other resembled privately stealing. Such a system of policy had ever been considered as the most fraudulent that could be adopted; and was this the sentiment now to be inculcated in tills country, where such profligacy of principle had never been tolerated before? On this occasion he felt not only for the public and the parliament, but for the character of the law itself, which he considered as in danger from such an erroneous policy. He trusted the warning which had been given to ministers would have its proper effect, and that they would not go farther than the brink on which they then stood; but if no warning could deter them from rashly proceeding—if no representation of the danger could check, and no admonition restrain them in their course—with deep melancholy, he should augur ill to this country, and see much to fear from so ominous a commencement of a new reign.

Mr. Milne

observed, that the hon. gent, had gone into so much general matter, and filled his speech with so many reproaches against ministers, with so many alledged charges against judges, together with a plan for winding up the national debt at one stroke, that it would be wandering from the question to pretend to follow him. Before the decision of the judges in the cases of De Yonge and Wright, it had been imagined that the traffic in guineas was illegal, in the manner it had been carried on by those persons. But as the judges had decided that such a traffic was not illegal, he presumed the object of the present Bill was to supply the defect. He approved of it, as it shewed that the government was resolved to try all milder measures, before they resorted to the compulsory one of making Bank notes a legal tender. While they received these notes in payment of taxes, they were resolved not to allow any individuals to take them at a depreciated rate. And, as to the high price of bullion, that was the consequence, not of depreciation, but of the embarrassed state of the country. If they did not at once resort to the legal tender, it was only because they imagined the evil would stop here. If the example of the noble lord who had demanded his rents in gold were followed, the legal tender must be adopted. When suspicion was abroad—when the tenantry and yeomanry were to be imprisoned—in that convulsed state of things, this measure must be resorted to. The Bill he thought highly useful, even in its present shape, but still it might, in some respects, be altered and modified with advantage. There were two cases upon which it was intended to operate; first, upon bargains and sales, which were completed at once; and next upon standing contracts. He understood that a case had happened, where a man bought some laud from another for 400l. and paid down 100l. of the price. When the purchaser had built upon the premises, and otherwise improved them, the vendor demanded the other 300l. in cash. This was most unjust, and such frauds ought to be prevented. He should propose, therefore, that there should be a provision in the Bill, requiring that those who intended to demand guineas in payment, in any bargain should give public notice beforehand of their intention. As to the case of a subsisting; lease, there might be more difficulty ill finding a remedy against undue demands: but he had two remarks to make on that pan of the subject—first, that whatever rule the noble lord adopted, with regard to others, he ought not to object to its being applied to himself; and secondly, that the state was as entire and perfect as the persons of whom it was composed. It followed that the payments of the noble lord to the state ought to be made in the same way as he himself exacted payments from others. Upon the noble lord's own scheme, he, in nine taxes out of ten, did not contribute fairly to the public. He was aware that the Bank notes had been made a legal lender to the tax gatherer, but it had never been in the contemplation of Mr. Pitt or of the legislature, that the revenue should be deteriorated. A the Property tax was imposed ad valorem, the contribution there would be fair enough; but in Assessed taxes, in Excise and Customs, the noble lord upon his own plan did not contribute fairly. How did he pay for his servants, his horses and carriages? How did he pay the duties upon the chief articles of consumption, his salt, his coals and candies? How did he pay his wine and malt duties? In a depreciated currency. And upon what ground could he claim an advantage which he refused to others? None of these taxes were paid according to a fair proportion upon the noble lord's own scheme. Where, then, would be the injustice with regard to the noble lord, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer were to calculate the depreciation of the taxes, and compel his lordship to contribute according to the real value? He should like, therefore, to see an enactment compelling every landlord who demanded his rent in guineas, to pay his taxes in guineas. Taxes amounting at present to 40 millions might by this means be raised to 50 millions; and he would ask those who were loudest in praise of the noble lord's conduct, whether, if this expedient were adopted, there would not speedily be an end to the cry of depreciation? He should be glad then, that every landlord demanding guineas should be obliged to pay to the state in guineas. The noble lord himself could not object to this plan, and it would be as easy in practice as just in principle. It would be safe and satisfactory, however, at first to try it upon a small scale. Suppose it were enacted in the first place, that the assessed taxes should be paid in gold. He really wished to have some enactment of this kind, for every thing was to be tried before the Bank notes were made a legal tender; and this plan was highly equitable, and easy of execution. This, he apprehended, would prevent persons joining, in any great numbers, in this act of suicide. Why was it that the wealth of the noble lord gave him more consideration in society, than equal wealth would do in Poland, and many other countries? The greater security of property in this country. The landed property here was not only free from spoliation, to which it was subjected in other countries, but had been peculiarly favoured in comparison with other kinds of property, even in this country. The landholder had a great advantage over the annuitant—the West India proprietor—the merchant and manufacturer, upon whose exertions the value of land itself in a considerable degree depended. He was grateful for the advantage he bad enjoyed, and thought that a land-owner ought to be the last to sit down and make a cold calculation about depreciation. He did not mean to insinuate that the noble lord had been actuated by any improper motive; he understood that his heart was as excellent as his attainments were high; but he had been the means of stirring up a most mischievous question; and from his high character it was to be feared that his example would have the greater effect. Did the noble lord think that he was acting for his own interest? If he did, he was mistaken; for the interests of every description of persons of properly in this country were so intimately connected, that no one could injure one species of property to any great extent without injuring the rest. The noble lord was like the flying philosopher in Johnson's Rasselas, who, after spending his whole life in studying the laws of motion, and the wings of birds, at length made wings for himself, and, attempting to fly, was in one instant precipitated to the bottom. The observation of an older philosopher, one of the wise men of Greece, that ah injury to one of the lowest members of the community was an injury to the state, deserved the attention of the noble lord and others. Injustice to the tenantry of the country would be an injury to the public interests; and the House could not in equity and sound policy refuse to protect them. The Bill had his complete approbation.

Sir T. Turton

stated that he had objected to the resolutions of the Bullion Committee; first, because be was averse to the specification of any particular time for the resumption of cash payments by the Bank, and next, because he did not believe that Bank notes were depreciated. Upon the same ground he opposed this Bill, for if it passed, the public would immediately think that there was no doubt but that the notes were actually depreciated. He was convinced the motives of the noble lord who had been the cause of this measure, were good; but the effect of his example, if imitated, would be dangerous. The notice was the most extraordinary he had ever seen; it assumed the fact that a depreciation had taken place. But the noble lord had no right to take that for granted. What was depreciation r Depreciation, he apprehended, existed wherever the real value of the circulating medium was less in common estimation than its nominal value. If in the common transactions of life, a Bank note was reckoned less valuable than 20s. he should allow that there was a depreciation. But as to the high price of bullion, he thought that no proof whatever. Gold, like other commodities, would be high or low in price according as it was in greater or less abundance. Suppose wheat were at 80s. a quarter, and barley at 40s. two quarters of barley would at this rate purchase one of wheat. But suppose that from a scarcity of wheat the article rose in price, two quarters of barley would no longer purchase one of wheat; not because the barley had depreciated, but because the wheat had risen in price. The idea of ministers at first was, that this project of the noble lord would not be imitated; but when they found his conduct was defended by other persons of the highest consideration, they thought it necessary to pass this Bill. But had any of those persons actually imitated the example.? In his opinion the ministers should have done nothing. The noble lord would distrain; but what would he get from the sheriff? Why, Bank notes, for gold was not to be had. Some said there was no difficulty in procuring bullion, which might easily be converted to guineas. This would be rather a difficult operation for farmers living the distance of 150 miles from London; but then it was said they might refuse to sell their commodities for any thing else than gold; then they could not sell them at all. When they saw 14 millions in specie going out of the country for corn and for our army in Portugal, could there be a doubt of the scarcity of gold? Gold, it was said, might be had from France as easily as claret; but how was the claret paid for? With guineas. And how must the gold be paid for? With guineas. He saw no great advantage in an operation of that kind. He knew too well the liberality of mind which belonged to the noble lord, to think that he would proceed to extremities; but if he did, his example would not be so seductive as to be generally followed. The tenant would be protected by public opinion—and there the matter ought to have been left; but if the ministers did any thing at all, they ought to make the Bank notes a legal tender at once, for the present Bill did not afford them protection. The effect of the present measure would be, to make people see danger where they were not conscious that any danger formerly existed; and also to establish two prices. With the view he had of the measure, he should have been of the same opinion, had he been in the House in the year 1797. Till an inconvenience arose, he saw no occasion to provide a remedy for it. The present measure, to his conception of it, would produce consequences as injurious as could well be imagined. He was sorry ministers had not allowed matters to take their course, and suffered the noble lord to have tried the plan he proposed, a plan which he was persuaded he would not have persevered in, but which, if he had attempted to go oil with it, would have been found impracticable. The Bank of England, in his opinion, was perfectly solvent; and the only effect of the present measure would be to bring them into jeopardy, if not to involve them in ruin. If Bank notes were once made a legal tender, then they would be like the French assignats, and might be increased to 100 millions, or more.

Mr. Rose

understood the hon. baronet to oppose the Bill, from an idea that it was unnecessary, as he conceived it to be very unlikely that the example of the noble lord would be followed to any extent. Now, after what they had heard in defence of the principle and of the practice of that which the noble lord was about to do, he thought it was rather too much to suppose it certain that his lordship's example would in no case have been followed. He had the greatest respect for lord King, and he thought every one must admire his talents After reading his late publications. The example, however, which his lordship had set, he conceived to be of a most dangerous tendency; and the Bill before the House, far from having any thing in it that could cause those inconveniences to arise which some gentlemen anticipated, was in his opinion, likely to prove highly beneficial to the country. Its first fruits, he conceived, would be seen in its relieving the tenant from the harsh treatment of his landlord. He did not wish to impute harsh conduct to lord King, but it was not improbable that his example had been followed by persons who were actuated by less honourable motives, who, encouraged by the applause with which that conduct had been greeted, might have taken that opportunity to oppress those in their power, expecting to meet with the same countenance. The hon. and learned gentleman, in speaking of tenants, had expressed himself in a very extraordinary manner, calling them fraudulent debtors, and contending that it was but just that they should be called upon to pay their landlords in cash, as they were supposed to have regulated the prices of the produce of their land, by a reference to the alleged depreciation of Bank paper. In his opinion, the man who granted a lease at 100l. per annum, and then a few years after called upon a tenant to pay 120l. on such ground, was guilty of oppression. With such oppressions he by no means meant to charge the noble lord. The hon. and learned gentleman had said, the remedy was quite easy, and had taken occasion to make some observations on the courage displayed by ministers. He hoped ministers would always have sufficient courage firmly to oppose the designs of our implacable enemy. His efforts to ruin this country had thus far proved abortive. We bad foiled him in arms; and now, finding us as resistless on land, as he had proved us on the ocean, ail his energies were directed against our finances. He had for this purpose had recourse to measures which had never been resorted to in any former war. Not only had he exerted his utmost influence to shut us out of all the ports of the continent, but he had burnt and confiscated our merchandise wherever he could find it, and to injure our credit, prevented the payment of bills on this country, when the parties concerned were desirous of paying them, and returned them to the drawers. With respect to what the hon. and learned gentleman had said, as to the possibility of getting a supply of gold in the same way as we got a supply of wine, he contended that it by no means followed, because a cask of wine could be procured, that a cask of gold was to be had with equal ease. The tyrannic system adopted by Buonaparté would not even suffer the commercial debts of merchants to be paid. But the hon. and learned gentleman said there was plenty of gold to be got in America, and the mines of Spain and Portugal were open to us. How was it to be got? Would they give it to us? If not, how did the hon. and learned gentleman think we could obtain it, when he had been told that the markets of Spanish America were so completely supplied with British produce, that they would not take a single bale of goods from us, and could not be expected to afford a mart for our merchandise for some time. How could the hon. and learned gentleman think we could get gold from that quarter, under such circumstances? Did he suppose they would give it to us, or did he wish us to commit an act of piracy, and seize it by force? If, however, it could be gained, what advantage would be derived to this country? He would suppose for a moment that it could be gained; if 5,000 ton of gold were now imported into England, coined, and put into circulation, while gold continued at its present high price, we should still be in our present condition, as not a guinea would remain in circulation. The guineas would vanish as fast as they were issued from the Mint, be melted down, and again exported as bullion. What benefit, then, could result from thus procuring gold, even if it were practicable? The hon. and learned gentleman, while censuring the present circulating medium, had not said what he would wish substituted for cash in the absence of bullion. Would he have no circulating medium? Notwithstanding the increase of our commerce, there was a smaller quantity in Circulation now, than there was twelve years ago. In 1798, it amounted to 50,000,000l.; 40,000,000l. in gold, and 10,000,000l. in notes. It was not easy to say what was the exact amount of the gold in circulation now, but he thought he must be a sanguine man indeed who could suppose it to exceed 5,000,000l; and reckoning; the amount of our paper circulation at thirty millions, still it would be seen there was a considerable diminution. Under the present circumstances, for the Bank to resume cash payments was utterly impossible. They could not do it. They could not get the gold to pay, and if they could, it would be useless, as there would be no more left in circulation than there was amongst us at present till the price of gold was lower, that it might be brought into this country in large quantities, which could only be caused by a change in the circumstances of the continent, it was proper to continue the Bank Restriction Act in force. With respect to what had been said as to the increase of prices, he had it from gentlemen on whose information he could depend, that the prices in France and Italy kept pace with those of England, and that the depreciation of money in France was greater than in England. The prices all over Europe did not materially differ in their advance from the prices in England, and this he took as an argument to prove that farmers and ethers did not charge for their produce as was supposed with a reference to the alledged depreciation of Bank paper. With respect to what had been said of the property of the public creditors, he knew of nothing which could be more revolting to the feelings of parliament than to interfere with that. The Bank notes and assignats he asserted to be as totally different from each other, as any two things in nature possibly could. As to the learned gentleman's plan for forming a new fund with the profits of the Bank Company, if he could be sure that this could be properly done, he should have no objection to it. He wished to see payments in cash resumed, but under existing circumstances, unless gold could be brought into the country (as some seemed to think it could) by a sort of witchcraft, it was impossible for the present.

Mr. Brougham

explained, that he referred to the striking off two thirds of the debt due to the public creditor, not as a proposition of his own, but as the grossest, most fatal, and most unjust of all expedients, but yet as one likely to result from the measures, the perseverance in which was recommended on the other side.

Lord Folkestone

said he was at a loss how to judge of the present measure, as among the variety of persons who approv- ed of it, there were not two who did so on the same grounds; on the contrary, every second person who supported it, did so on grounds exactly opposite to the person who preceded him. All of them agreed, however, in the abuse of lord King. It became the duty, therefore, of those who differed from them on this head, though it was by no means a fit subject of debate, to stand up and vindicate the noble lord. Gentlemen had talked of Jews and pedlars; of oppressed tenants; and even of dishonest landlords. Before gentlemen talked in this stile, however, they should first have made themselves masters of the subject. The noble lord did not require gold, but such an amount of paper as would be sufficient to purchase that which he had stipulated to receive. In his leases, the noble lord stipulated that his rents should be paid in good and lawful money of the realm, which Bank paper could not be in the eye of the law, till the right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer should come forward with the second measure which he had given the House reason to expect—namely, till he should make Bank notes a legal tender. Was it not known that every person made any thing he had to sell dearer and dearer, in proportion to the depreciation of paper. Neither in law nor in justice, therefore, was the noble lord entitled to be loaded with this abuse. In one part of the country there had been a practice of taking payment of rents in gold, and he saw nothing unbecoming in the noble lord's here demanding it in gold, at least, in something which should not be depreciated. An hon. gentleman opposite (Mr. Milnes), however, would represent that the noble lord had not only acted in an unbecoming manner to his tenant, but that he had even cheated government. It was proper, however, that that hon. gentleman should know, that by the very Bank Restriction act. Bank notes were made a good tender for taxes.—The noble lord said he should not proceed to examine the budget of the hon. gentleman farther than this, that it was inapplicable in point of law; With respect to the law itself, it seemed totally ineffectual. It was intended to remedy any idea of harsh treatment by a landlord towards his tenants: but was it calculated to attain the object? It only took from the landlord one remedy; namely, the proceeding by distress, a clause to which he did not object; but still She landlord might proceed to judgment, and make the tenant ultimately pay in good and lawful money of Great Britain. Lord Alvanley had been decidedly of this opinion: and having heard it doubted, he hoped the House would hear some of the gentlemen of the long robe on this point. The present measure was objectionable, in as far as it was an extension of the act of Edward 6, which, after grievous vexation practised on a poor Jew, who was supposed to have violated the enactments of the act, had been decided by an unanimous opinion of the twelve judges not to be binding, and to be inapplicable to the case.—The noble lord proceeded to take a view of the state of things at the time of the passing of the act of Edward 6, and now. Then, the gold and silver coin of the country was greatly deteriorated, so much so, that persons would not bring their commodities to market. Proclamations were accordingly issued, fixing the rates and prices of every commodity, and also prohibiting the exchanges of gold and silver for more or less than the rate at which they were made current. This he stated from the late lord Liverpool's Letter on Coins; and he warned the House to pause before they did any thing which might render it necessary for them to fix a maximum of prices. He begged them to consider that they were laying the foundation stone of a system which might involve the country in ruin. He entreated them to open their eyes in time to the mischiefs of this proposition, and not to entail on the country calamities similar to those which ensued in the time of Edward 6. It had been roundly asserted by gentlemen on the other side, that there was no depreciation of Bank paper. The high rate of exchange against this country; the high price of bullion; and even the fact of lord King's having demanded his rents in good and lawful money, were circumstances that proved depreciation. But if paper was not depreciated, and if this was only a device of the noble lord's to prove that his ideas on the subject of political economy were correct, why fear that his example should be followed? Or why pass this law? First, the Bill now nursed and fostered by ministers, was objected to, and the letter of that noble lord was represented as foolish, and even odious; the noble lord's notion was conceived as merely theoretical, and it was declared that nobody would follow his example. If ministers were still of this mind, why pass the present Bill? If, on the other hand, they now admitted that others were likely to follow the example of lord King, then did they equally admit that Bank paper was depreciated.—The noble lord proceeded to shew that there were two kinds of depreciation of paper currency; the one arising from excessive issue; the other from want of confidence; which, if suffered to go on, would run a race against each other, till the country would be brought to ruin, unless the system was changed. The best remedy which could be used was the fixing of two prices, a paper price and a money price. By this the public creditor would be in part a sufferer; but he confessed he did not regard the public creditor so much as some gentlemen did. The public creditor took the larger premium, and, of course, was entitled to the lesser security. The interests of the landlord were those most connected with the interests of the country, and therefore the most to be regarded. On the existence of two prices there was no doubt but gold would make its appearance. In every country there always was as much currency as was necessary. He objected to the present measure, too, because it was not a complete measure, but only a part of the system which the proposer of the measure had in view. He recollected a period when the noble earl was as anxious about guineas as he was now about notes. He had then discovered a nostrum to prevent guineas from being clipped, melted, and what not, and having prevailed on the late Mr. Pitt to allow him to have a guinea prepared at the Mint agreeably to his own plan, when the guinea was rounded off" and finished, the officer of the Mint desired his lordship to look at the guinea, and see if it was exactly as be wished it. His lordship, on examining it, declared, yes! that was every thing that could be desired, and there was a guinea which he defied any one to melt or sweat, or in any measure to deteriorate. The officer, who understood the nature of the composition, so contrived it, at the moment, that this all-perfect guinea should drop upon a stone, when, lo! it broke in two! In the like manner, he had no doubt but the secure mode which the noble earl had in contemplation for making Bank notes a legal tender would be found equally perfect and equally valuable. The measure now proposed, was an ex post facto law, and like all such laws was unjust and injurious. It should, therefore, have his decided opposition.

Lord Castlereagh

rose and said:

Sir; not having been present when this Bill was discussed on the first reading, and as I may not have it in my power to attend its future stages, I am desirous of taking this opportunity of delivering my sentiments upon a measure, the principle of which may again, at no distant period, occupy the attention of parliament, not only as applying to Great Britain, but to Ireland.

In arguing this question, I shall endeavour to conform to the suggestion of an honourable and learned member (Mr. Brougham), by confining myself to the immediate subject of the bill itself, abstaining as much as possible from a renewal of those general discussions on the state of our currency, which have so recently taken place. The view I take of this measure must necessarily be founded on the principles I then endeavoured to maintain, and, in founding myself upon those principles, I cannot expect that I shall work conviction on the minds of those, to whom I have been hitherto opposed; but as my object is rather to consider, with the House at large what, course it is fitting parliament should now take, and as I shall have occasion to assume but little in argument, which does not rest upon the collective judgment of the House already expressed, either legislatively, or by its resolutions, I think I shall best consult the convenience of the House by pursuing this course.

I shall begin by drawing the attention of the House to the state of the law as it now stands between debtor and creditor, including the case as between landlord and tenant, for which the present bill goes to make a special provision. It is quite clear, the standard coin of the realm being the only legal tender, that, whether for rent, or for any other legal demand, the creditor is not bound to accept bank-notes, in satisfaction of his debt; and that, unless the debtor can procure coin, with the single exception of the protection against arrest by mesne process, afforded by the act of 1797, the creditor remains in full possession of all his legal remedies against the goods and property of his debtor, and ultimately against his person.

Under these powers it is competent for a landlord to distrain for rent, and to cause the goods of his tenant to be sold. It is also competent for him; in case of non-payment of rent due, to bring an ejectment for the recovery of the possession. In the case of a simple debtor, although the person of the debtor has obtained a qualified protection against a summary arrest, the process against the property may be proceeded in to execution, and the whole be consigned to the sheriff for sale, if the plaintiff shall not prefer imprisoning the person of the defendant, till the debt is discharged. But here a new difficulty occurs: when the sale takes place, is the sheriff to make sale of the property for coin only, or is he to take bank-notes, as has been hitherto practised? In the former case, it is obvious, a sale, for any thing like value, in the present scarcity of guineas, is impracticable. To proceed to sell by auction under such circumstances, would be, in truth, to give the property almost for nothing, to the person who accidentally had, at the moment, the means of collecting coin to bid for the goods; in the latter case, the sheriff would be no more capable, after the sale was effected, of satisfying the creditor with the proceeds, thus taken in Bank notes, than the debtor, the owner of the goods, originally was.

The sheriff, under these circumstances, acting at his peril, and liable to action if he errs, must consider what directions the court would give on the trial of such an action. A court of common law, I apprehend, as the law now stands, could neither take upon itself to defeat the remedy of the creditor, to compel payment of his debt in the lawful coin of the realm, by holding a payment in Bank-notes, for goods sold by a sheriff, to be a legal payment: nor could it prevent a sheriff, who should think fit to refuse any other medium of payment than coin, however ruinous to the property of the debtor. Neither could the owner of goods distrained, as I conceive, bring an action for excessive distress taken, if the property sold, whatever might be its value, did not produce more in coin, upon the sale, than the amount of rent actually due; and in the latter case, the sale rests, in the first instance at least, with the person distraining, or his bailiff. What relief a court of equity could give, under all the circumstances, it is not for me to venture to pronounce; but I am sure relief, in such a case, the subject is entitled to receive, and further, that his just claim is to receive relief, not circuitously, and by an expensive or dubious process in chancery, but that his protection should be clear decisive, and direct.

In any ordinary case of public difficulty, in its nature constituting a clear impediment to the sale of properly for any thing approaching to its true value, to enforce a sale would be inconsistent with justice. In cases of foreclosure of mortgage in time of war, this principle has been already recognized: but the present case does not depend simply upon general grounds of equity; it arises out of an express provision of law, prohibiting the Bank from fulfilling its engagement with the holders of Bank notes; and the question is, whether the arm of the law shall be directed against the debtor, to compel him to perform that, which an act of the legislature, enacted for the wisest purposes, and for the general good, has rendered it impracticable for him to perform.

If such is the law of the case, and that the debtor holds his property, under the impossibility of turning his notes into gold, and even his personal liberty at the mercy of his creditor, I may venture to appeal to those who now countenance lord King's demand to be paid in coin, whether they believe, that such a system was contemplated when the Suspension Act passed in 1797, as one which could be acquiesced in, if attempted to be enforced. Upon what ground was it that Mr. Pitt resisted the late sir Francis Bering's suggestion of at once making Bank notes a legal tender? Upon what grounds did he resist the precise proposition which the present Bill contains, when moved by a Worthy alderman (Combe) and supported by Mr. Fox, but on the ground of both being, as things then stood, unnecessary? That Mr. Pitt's judgment was not very erroneous in so deciding, the uninterrupted experience of fourteen years sufficiently proves; during which extended period, not a single instance has occurred, in Great Britain, not withstanding the price of gold has been at times much beyond the Mint price (in 1801 as high as 4l. 6s.), of any creditor, landlord or other, refusing to accept notes of the Bank of England, at par, in payment of a debt.

It was the policy of Parliament, at that time, to avoid, if possible, any enactment on this delicate point; they trusted that the universal conviction, which pervaded ail mankind, of the solidity of the security on which Bank notes were issued, as well as of the importance, for the interest of all, that their credit should be upheld, would insure their being invariably re- ceived at par. It was one of those occasions, on which a conventional acquiescence that they were to be received as cash, seemed to leave nothing for Parliament to do, at least in the first instance. They wisely preferred, on such an occasion, the protective influence of a moral principle to a premature attempt, by enactment of law, to provide for difficulties, which it was hoped never would occur; under the security of such a principle, the country has lived and prospered since the Bank Restriction Act passed. My lord King has been the first person to emancipate himself from its influence, and to introduce a practice, to say the least, perfectly novel in Great Britain.—It is not for me to impeach the motives of any individual, availing himself of rights, which the laws of his country furnish him with the means of asserting. I am bound to suppose, from the character and endowments of the noble lord, that he acts from an honest conviction, that he is claiming from his tenant, what he thinks not merely lawful, but strictly just. Denying however, as I do, the justice of the claim, and believing that Parliament never did, nor could intend to suffer the law so to stand, except under an expectation, that, during the continuance of the Suspension Act, it would not be put in force, I consider that, in consequence of this exercise of an extreme legal right on his lordship's part, the duty of rendering their former measure consistent in point of justice with itself, has devolved upon the legislature; a task, from the performance of which, however painful, and in some respects difficult in the execution, I trust Parliament will not shrink.

But it is said, will you interfere between my lord King and his tenant in matter of contract, and by an ex post facto law disturb and alter the rights of the parties? I cannot consider the proposed relief as an ex post facto law. I consider it rather as declaratory of the true intent and purpose of the act of 1797; and I deny, in any equitable view of the contract subsisting between lord King and his tenant, that it can be enforced in the manner proposed by his lordship.

I will take the two cases his lordship puts, of leases granted by him prior, and subsequent to the passing of the Bank Restriction Act in 1797; and I will suppose the usual covenant, binding the tenants to pay the rent reserved in the law- ful coin of the realm, to be found in both. I will, on the case thus stated, put it to any fair man to say, notwithstanding the letter of the bond, whether, when the bargain was made, the fair understanding between the parties was not, that payment would be accepted in Bank notes? It is true, in the former period. Bank notes were convertible into cash, but it is not the tenant's fault that they have not continued to be so convertible; but, in the latter period, it was distinctly foreseen when the lease was signed, that, so long as the restriction on the Bank continued, the notes of the Bank of England would not be convertible into cash upon demand. Upon this state of facts the parties treated, and the scale of rent was agreed on. Now I deny, that it was any part of the understanding, that the tenant, in the former case, was to pay, or could pay, such a rent in guineas, supposing a case so perfectly new and unforeseen as that which has really occurred, to happen; and still less in the latter case, where the rent was fixed, the prohibition on the Bank being then in existence, and no intimation given to the tenant of any intended departure from the established practice of accepting Bank notes in discharge of the rent at par.

If the grounds on which the landlord considers that his interests have been affected, had originated in any act for which his tenant could be deemed responsible, or if it had grown out of the ordinary course of events, which the parties to the contract might be bound to advert to, in making their bargain, I can understand the claim to compel the tenant to submit to a new mode of payment, so infinitely disadvantageous; but, when the tenant has done nothing, and parliament every thing (parliament having acted for the public good, upon which it is the province of parliament exclusively to decide), I do not see upon what principle of justice, one party can expect to receive his full share in the advantage resulting from a measure of general policy, throwing all the inconveniences of it upon the other party to the contract.

But let us see how far the sense of parliament has been already declared upon this principle, not merely in the speeches of individuals, but on the face of the Restriction act itself. That act expressly provides that the notes of the Bank of England shall be received as cash in all revenue payments, thereby constituting them a legal tender in all debts from the subject to the State. It may be said, that, for the state to lend this aid to the credit of Bank paper, might be a very wise expedient, that it operated as an indulgence, which, where the debt was due to the state, the state was competent to confer, and that no contract was violated, or individual right thereby injured; but what was the provision made by law with respect to the dividends payable to the public creditor? It is true no express enactment declared that Bank-notes should constitute a legal tender in such payments, but no exception was made in favour of the public creditor in the prohibition against cash payments, and, in point of fact, he has had no other option since that Bill passed, but to accept Bank-notes at par, or to remain unpaid. Here then was a matter of contract of the most sacred description, between the public and individuals, upon which the law declared, that payment in coin should not be demandable during the continuance of the Bank Restriction act. Can it be contended that the legislature meant in matters of contract, that one law should prevail between the public and the individual, and another between private persons r that the public was to receive an indulgence from their creditors in the nature of their payment, which the individual debtor had no claim to expect from his creditor? I am aware it has been argued, that, supposing an act of national bankruptcy to have already been committed towards the public creditor, that can form no motive or justification for authorising a similar violation of contract between man and man. I shall hereafter have to deny, that any such failure in the equitable discharge of its engagements can be imputed to the state. I am confident, that the framers of the law did not so interpret its Operations; and if, from the necessity of the case, the legislature felt itself compelled to take from the public creditor the means of receiving coin in satisfaction of his demand, is there any imaginable principle of equity, upon which it could mean to compel individuals to do that, which the state was unable to perform? or, to state the fact more truly, that having, for the general interest, prohibited the Bank from fulfilling the letter of its contract, in respect to cash payments, with the holders of its notes, it should mean to compel the holders of those notes to fulfil the letter of their engagements with respect to cash payments towards their creditors?

The declared ground on which the legislature passed the Restriction act was, to protect public and private credit against the calamity of the Bank being obliged to discontinue its functions; involving as the necessary and immediate consequence of such discontinuance, the ruin of all private banks, and the extinction of the entire circulating medium of the country, so far as it rested on banking credit. Parliament was morally justified in passing that law, first from a conviction, that, whatever the evils of such a temporary interruption to the legitimate money system of the country were, they wore upon the whole less than the evils to be apprehended if things were allowed to take their course: and secondly, from there being no reason to presume, that Bank-paper, so long as its issues continued to be regulated upon the principles which had hitherto governed the conduct of the Bank of England, would, as a medium of circulation, lose any part of its value, compared with the commodities generally of the country.

I do not mean to renew the argument on depreciation in detail, but I must here re-assert, as my deliberate judgment, trying the fact upon the only sound principles upon which it can be examined, that, at this day, the notes of the Bank of England are not depreciated, under any fair sense which can be affixed to that term. I admit they are not convertible as formerly at pleasure into coin, nor can they purchase, in the market, the same quantity of standard gold; but this, as I conceive, arises solely from causes affecting the value of gold, both in its coined and uncoined state. With the exception of the precious metals. Bank-notes have the same powers of purchasing all other commodities, which they would have had at this day, if no necessity for shutting up the guineas in the Bank, or for sending gold abroad in unusual quantities, had ever occurred.

Such, at least, is my belief. Such I wish to be understood by the noble lord (Folkestone), is the sense, in which I deny that Bank notes are now depreciated. Upon that conviction my conduct, as a member of parliament, must be guided, and under it, I do not consider that any injustice or act of bankruptcy has been committed towards the public creditor, by affording him no other option in payment of his dividends, than Rank notes at par: and I am further prepared to contend, that any person, who in the present state of things endeavours to avail himself of the letter of his contract, to force payment in cash, adopts a course of conduct altogether inconsistent with its spirit and equity, and assumes to himself not only an undue advantage over his creditor (both being in duty bound to bear their fair share of the inconveniences arising from the contest in which we are engaged), but that he is taking to himself, under the colour of law, an advantage beyond what could have accrued to him, had the currency of the country remained undisturbed.

That my lord King does not mean to submit to his fair share of the inconveniences of the limes is obvious, from the principle of his claim being, that his tenant should put him, at whatever expense to himself, precisely in the same situation in which he would have stood, as to the medium of payment, if no Restriction act had passed, and the tenant had nothing to do but to present his notes at the Bank to have them converted into coin. Now what are the tenant's means at present of procuring guineas to pay his rent? Can he procure them in exchange for the produce of his farm, without selling that produce at an enormous loss? Can he procure them in exchange for Bank notes, without giving a premium, and violating the law as it has always been understood to stand, till the late judgment in De Yonge's case, and as it will stand hereafter if the present Bill shall receive the sanction of the legislature? But supposing the purchase of gold at a premium not to be illegal, with so much coin shut up in the Bank, so much in the last ten years melted and exported, to what a price must not guineas rise if all tenants upon lease are compellable to pay in coin? If the local practice of paying rent in gold, a practice in late years confined to the north of Ireland, has had the effect, in the present scarcity of coin, to raise the premium upon guineas as high as 15 per cent. to what height must it not rise, if the competition for the limited supply of coin now in circulation, were to become general throughout the empire?

But it is said the noble lord does not insist upon an actual payment in guineas; such a demand, in the present absence of coin, it is admitted, would be oppressive: he gives his tenants the option of paying in foreign coin, or standard gold, the weight to be the same as if the payment was to be made in guineas; or the rent will be accepted in Bank notes, the tenant paying the additional sum requisite to purchase the amount of gold at the market price of the day which the guineas would weigh. The first observation which occurs upon this is, that the relief thus held out is wholly arbitrary in its principle, and, as I shall contend, most unjust in the nature of the criterion by which it is measured. It is arbitrary, inasmuch as it is discretionary, whether it shall or shall not be afforded; and I must be permitted to observe, that it is not a very pleasant situation for a tenant to stand in, nor a very seemly one for the law to permit him to be placed in, that it should depend upon the indulgence or forbearance of his landlord, whether he shall he confined in a gaol, or his property be dissipated, to procure guineas, the law having deprived him of his accustomed means of procuring them front the Bank. Lord. King, from liberality to his tenant, from a sense of the oppressive consequences of an unqualified demand of coin, may extend to him this, as I shall hereafter contend, most inequitable species of relief; but what security have we, watching over the interests of all the subjects of the realm, that the process, by which the noble lord is enabled to dictate such terms, as he thinks reasonable, to his tenant, may not, in the hands of a less liberal, perhaps of an oppressive, an avaricious or a vindictive landlord, be made the instrument of consigning many honest tenants to a prison, whilst others may have their property sacrificed by improvident sales, or be deprived, by ejectments, of subsisting interests in beneficial leases.

To leave the tenantry of the country under the lash of such a principle of law, if it is the purpose of any individual in the community to call it into activity, I venture to assert, would be wholly inconsistent with the protection which the subject is entitled to claim at our hands. I might doubt, when this Bill was first introduced into the other House of Parliament, whether the necessity for taking any legislative measure upon the subject, was sufficiently made out; but, when the noble lord candidly and honourably avowed and justified, in his place in parliament, his intended enforcement of the notice he had given; and when the probability of an example from a quarter so respectable being followed by others, justified as it had been in argument, was weighed, I own I could no longer doubt that it be- came parliament, before it separated, if not to supply a complete remedy against every possible misapplication of the law to compel payments of such a nature, to provide some measure, which might at least protect the tenant during the recess, and mark the disposition of parliament, if the protect the should hereafter be persevered in, to meet it with corresponding correctives: the equitable claim of the tenant and all other debtors being, in my judgment, distinctly this, that so long as the law shall continue to prevent the Bank of England from paying their notes in cash, so long ought the legislature, by special enactment, to interpose and stay process, either against the person or property of debtors, who shall tender Bank notes to their creditors in satisfaction of their demands.

But to return to the injustice of the arrangement itself: I will assume, for the sake of argument with lord King, that, in a lease granted before the year 1797, the landlord's interest has been disturbed by late events to his prejudice, and to the advantage of his tenant, and that he is equitably entitled to some indemnity (the reality of which case I beg I may not be understood however to admit), I still must contend, that the principle upon which my lord King has laid claim to measure the extent of the indemnity, is an unjust one. His lordship assumes its equity, as it is no more than requiring a specific performance of the covenant, with certain voluntary relaxations of it on his part, for the accommodation of the tenant; but I contend, that the equity of enforcing the specific performance of such a covenant ceased with the first enactment of the restriction act, and that the conditions on which it is now proposed to be relaxed, subject the tenant to an increase of rent, not to be regulated upon any fairly ascertained change of value in the Bank paper of the country, for which alone the farmer sells his produce, but which is to be governed, either by the price of guineas, which must rise in proportion to their scarcity, were even the purchase of them permitted by law; or by the price of gold, which has been raised 20 per cent. by the disturbed state of our intercourse with the Continent, and may be indefinitely raised. If such a criterion is to be admitted to regulate the additional payment to be made in notes, what tenant can foresee what rent he may not be called on to pay? All he knows is, that it is not a fixed and determinate amount of the prevailing currency of the country, but that it depends on the extent of our expenditure abroad, the balance of commercial payments, and the state of the exchanges, which must always govern the price of gold, whether the additional amount of rent, which he is subject to (if he is indulged with the permission to pay in banknotes at all.) shall be 20, 30, 50, or 100 per cent. beyond the rent specified in his lease; for who can say, in the present obstructed state of our intercourse with the Continent, when freedom of circulation is at an end, to what extent the price of that article may not rise, namely gold, which is the only commodity, which when it has evaded the vigilance of the enemy, and reached the Continent, can expect, as an article of property, effectually to secrete itself, and to escape being either confiscated or burnt.

Can it be contended for a moment, that it should depend on the caprice or power of the enemy, or upon the extent of military expenditure, which his own government may think fit to carry on abroad, whether a tenant, holding lands upon lease, shall pay more or less rent? yet such must be the result, if the principle contended for by lord King is admitted. I would put the issue of the whole argument upon this simple question, and allow the noble lord to answer it himself, whether if his tenant had been apprized, previously to his signing the lease, that such a stale of things would have arisen, within the period of the contract; that it might continue for an indefinite length of time; that in such case, bank-notes would not be accepted in discharge of the rent agreed upon; but that he must either find guineas, when the Bank was prohibited from issuing coin; or pay an increased rent in notes equivalent to whatever increased price gold might rise to, under the operation of the Berlin and Milan decrees, and the expense of the war in the Peninsula; whether, upon such a statement, the tenant would have signed the lease at the rent then agreed on, making his person and pro perty liable for the fulfilment of so indefinite, and perhaps so ruinous a bargain?

But I contend for it, if lord King's rent were paid in gold, as he proposes, or in notes with the additional sum calculated according to the market price of gold, that he would obtain an undue advantage, proportioned to the excessive price which gold now bears. He may say, that the rent agreed on was a rent in gold; nominally it was, but not in practice, as understood between the parties; but even as a rent in gold, it was a rent in coin not saleable nor exportable, instead of a rent in Portugal gold coin, or standard gold, as proposed by his lordship's notice, both of which are exportable, and sell in the market at four shillings an ounce higher than the gold, which cannot be sworn off for exportation; so that, even in this light, the demand is unreasonable; the augmentation of rent thus imposed may not be beyond the power of the tenant to pay, his bargain having become a profitable one, from the lapse of his term: but this progressive benefit the landlord can have no pretence to share; we must presume it was purchased in the original terms agreed on. The tenant's bargain cannot be proved to be a better one now, regard being had to the prices obtained for produce, than it was in the year 1808; yet then there was nothing in the state of the exchanges nor price of gold, which enabled my lord King to assume, that bank-notes were depreciated, or to demand, upon the principle of his notice, an increased rent if paid in notes. Is it then reasonable, if no peculiar profit has accrued to the tenant in the last two years, that he should be liable, holding under a lease, to an increase of 20 per cent. on his rent, with a chance of being still further raised, merely because an adverse exchange, arising from commerce obstructed and an immense foreign expenditure on the part of government, has thrown up the price of gold in the market of Great Britain to an unusual height, from which the farmer, having none to dispose of, receives not the smallest advantage?

But it is represented, in justification of the arrangement prescribed in lord King's notice, taking the average of wheat between 1780 and 1797, that it then required 18 quarters of wheat to pay a rent equal in value to a pound weight of gold, which, at the price of the day, viz. the Mint price, amounted to 44½ guineas; that on a similar average, between 1782 and 1806, 14½ quarters would pay the same rent, at the then medium price of gold, viz. 4l. 2s. per ounce; but that, during the last five years, according to the average puce of wheat taken at 85s., and gold at 4l. 7s. per ounce, the same rent might have been paid by something less than 14 quarters.

The first observation which occurs upon this statement is, that lord King's bargain with his tenant was for a money, and not a corn rent; a distinction highly material to be taken, as the former throws all the effects of increased expence of cultivation upon the landlord, the latter upon the tenant; a given sum of money, receivable annually in rent, will purchase less of other articles, in proportion as their price is raised by additional taxes, and other expences affecting their reproduction; whereas a given quantity of corn ought to sell for what will cover all the new expences attending its growth in rent, tithe, taxes, &c. in addition to its former price. Now if the additional charge under which wheat is grown in Great Britain, since the commencement of the period referred to, viz. from 1786, including the improved mode of living adopted by our farmers, an incident which must influence price, is considered, it will pretty sufficiently account for the increased value of wheat, without imputing it to a depreciation in Bank notes. Indeed, the case disproves itself; for all the facts upon which the reasoning is founded, existed in full force in the year 1809, when gold was only 4l. per ounce, and when, according to the new theory, Bank paper was not depreciated, being at par, or nearly so, with gold, as measured by the Mint price. Besides, it may deserve notice, that during the period of comparison, not only the scale at which foreign corn is importable, has twice been raised, but the grain imported in the two later periods of comparison, viz. from 1802 to the present time, has been imported, under all the accumulated charges of war freights, and consequently has not had the same influence in keeping down the prices of grain in Great, Britain, as the foreign corn imported between 1786 and 1797 had, when we were either at peace generally, or in amity with those Slates, from whence our supply of grain is usually drawn.

There is only one other view of this subject I am desirous of taking, before I dismiss this branch of the argument. Lord King seems to think his own case a hard one, and he charges his misfortunes against the Restriction Act; but let us see in what situation his lordship and his tenant would have stood reciprocally, if that act had never passed, and matters had been allowed to take their course, it must be in some measure matter of opinion, what would have happened had the legislature not interposed in 1797. Lord King may see it in a different light, but my conviction is, that public and private credit would have been, for the time at least, destroyed, by the Bank of England, and consequently all private banks, being obliged to discontinue their functions. I do not therefore infer, that we should have been left without a circulating medium; I have no doubt we should have had one, and that our currency would have been composed of the precious metals almost exclusively; but we should have been reduced very much to the predicament in which France now is, possessing, it is true, a metallic currency, but destitute of those means of active circulation, growing out of individual and public confidence, which can alone sustain with effect the industry and exertions of a great, commercial, manufacturing, and warlike nation.

In such a state of things what would hare happened to my lord King, and his tenant? Supposing the rent agreed upon previous to the events which led to the passing of the restriction law to have been a rack rent, a rent upon full value, which upon a tenure of such an extent, in justice to the landlord it ought to have been, is it possible to suppose, that such a bargain could have stood, if the banking system of the country had been broken down? The immediate consequences of such a convulsion, had it been suffered to realize itself, must have been, that lord King, for his own sake, would have lowered his rent, perhaps one half; what then would have been the situation of his tenant? he would have found himself cultivating at a reduced rent; and although, in common with every other member of the community, he must have suffered from the general distress, he would at least have found no difficulty in preserving his lease, by paying his rent in the standard coin of the realm, as coin would then have been the medium in circulation, and consequently the currency receivable at market in payment for produce. Obliged to accept a reduced rent, I cannot persuade myself that lord King would have stood in a better situation at this day, than he now does, whatever his tenant might, should he be obliged to submit to this new mode of payment; by which the noble lord appears to claim the advantage of both systems, of the one which would have destroyed, and of the other which has preserved the Bank; whilst he expects his tenant to abide by the inconveniences of both; that is, to pay an amount of rent, with reference to the latter state of things, in a description of currency, only to be found in general circulation in the former.

I have been induced thus to dwell upon the principle of lord King's notice, bet cause in truth the Bill originates in that document. It is impossible to argue the question, as affecting the public, without bringing forward the noble lord's name, and discussing the demand made as his measure. I have done so, I trust, without personal disrespect. My object has been, without reflecting on the noble lord's intentions, to argue fairly, whilst I protest strongly, against the course his lordship has pursued in the instance before us.

With respect to the enactments of the Bill, they are principally open to objection, as an imperfect remedy to the case to be provided for; they protect the tenant against summary distress, but they leave him exposed to all the other legal remedies, with which the law arms a creditor against the person and property of his debtor; but I look upon the Bill as a legislative declaration on the principle of the question, the import of which cannot be mistaken, and it has my approbation as such. I trust it may be unnecessary to go further; but if it should, parliament, I hope, will not hesitate in performing the duty, which may in that case be cast upon it.

With respect to the other provisions of the Bill, namely, those which render it a misdemeanor to receive more for a guinea, or less for a Bank-note, than their standard and accustomed value, I consider them as of very subordinate importance to the clause we have been hitherto considering. So far as the clause prohibiting Bank-notes from being received at less than the sum for which they were issued, may render it illegal to claim, or accept them in discharge of a debt to a greater amount, that is, at a value inferior to their nominal value, it meets precisely the case to be provided for, and it puts the creditor in the situation I wish to see him placed in, that is, that he shall be obliged to accept the notes of the Bank of England at par, or not at all, whilst the Bank restriction act lasts. The other prohibition against purchasing the coin of the realm at more than its legal value, is of less consequence, but may be of some use, as tending to discourage a traffic in guineas, a practice novel at least in this part of the empire, not requisite if creditors are protected from the species of demand, against which I have been contending, and which is principally carried on by persons, who make a trade of melting, and exporting our standard coin, a practice which law cannot prevent, but which it may be expedient, as far as possible, by penalty, to check and counteract.

The object of the Bill is not by law to attempt to give to a guinea, or a Bank note, a compulsory value; no law could have this effect; and it would be unjust, if it were possible that it should. In all prospective bargains, where the parties know what is to be the medium of payment, whether guineas or Bank-notes, no law can, or ought to restrain them from framing the price of the commodity sold, with reference to their opinion of the real value of the currency to be received, whether it be a value depending upon credit, or the intrinsic value of the medium itself. The intention is to deprive creditors, during the interval of cash payments being suspended at the Bank, of the power legally to compel debtors to pay them Banknotes, at less than they are actually worth IF the process of the law, which was framed to compel payments in standard coin, when coin could be procured, is now to be used, as an instrument to impose arbitrary conditions of payment, when coin cannot be procured, Bank notes may become depreciated in public estimation. If they pass, as in justice they ought to do, in the eye of the law, at par between man and man, they are not likely to stand depreciated in the daily transactions of life. Every man in the community ought to have a common interest in upholding their credit, which will not be the case, if creditors are allowed to dictate the rate at which they alone will consent to receive them. With these views, I am disposed to support these clauses, as regulations salutary in themselves, in aid of the main object, which, I must again repeat, is, that the paper of the Bank of England shall not be exacted, under colour of law, as a depreciated medium in payment of debts; being myself convinced, that it is of a value which entitles it, both in equity and in justice, to be accepted at par.

I shall not detain the House by combating the assertions brought forward, that the present system must lead to a maximum, and that the fact of depreciation is confirmed by the existence already of two prices, a gold and a paper price. It is enough to remark, that the measure of a maximum can never be a rational relief even in the most undisguised and extravagant state of depreciation to which paper-currencies (wholly dissimilar, be it remembered, to ours) have ever been reduced. No human tyranny could render a law of maximum other than an expedient to starve a community, and to aggravate both public and private distress. It would be a waste of lime to contend against the applicability of such a system to a currency such as we possess, the solidity of which no man doubts, and which preserves its value, at this moment, compared with all other commodities except bullion, as steadily as it did in the year 1809, when the present excessive price of gold took its rise; and as to the question of two prices, if the fact of such a practice prevailing was proved, still I should deny, that this necessarily established the fact of depreciation: on the contrary, I should contend, that this must happen, whenever a difference of value takes place for any length of time between bullion and Bank paper, as the price of bullion will sooner or later, through fraudulent operations on the coin, affect, to a degree, the value of guineas; but, as I maintain, that this disparity of value may as well arise from the value of guineas being raised, either from the cause I have now referred to, or from their scarcity, as from the value of Bank paper being depressed; and as every test at this moment conspires to prove, that gold has greatly risen, and none, when fairly examined, except the comparison with gold itself, suggests that Bank-notes have fallen; were even two prices as universal here, as they have been in the North of Ireland for years, I should still say, that the depreciation of Bank-notes, in the practical or ordinary sense of that expression, was by no means the necessary consequence; and that depreciation could not be truly imputed to the paper of the Bank of England at the present moment.

Having argued against the mode of payment insisted on by ray lord King, and, as I trust, established its injustice, it may be asked how it comes that a system, which is unjust in Great Britain, should be tolerated in Ireland, and why, when parliament is legislating upon this subject, Ireland should be specially excepted out of the Bill? The question is a fair one, and I shall endeavour to assign satisfactory reasons, for not at present extending the measure to Ireland, more especially at this late period of the session, and in the absence of the members from that part of the United kingdom.

When it is stated, that the practice, which it is intended by this Bill to prohibit in Great Britain, has long prevailed in Ireland, it is material to distinguish between the practice of Ireland generally, and of a few of the Northern counties, perhaps not more than four or five in number. In all other parts of Ireland, the rents have been invariably paid in Bank-notes, and I have never heard an instance of any landlord refusing to receive them at par. The practice in the Northern counties, where the rents are paid in coin, is very distinguishable from lord King's case. In those counties, no other medium than coin has ever been taken for rent. Guineas have been uniformly the medium of payment between landlord and tenant, both before and since the Bank Restriction Act; and guineas have, at all times, borne a premium in the North of Ireland. The only new feature in the Irish case is the increased amount of the premium requisite to procure guineas. In November last, when I left Ireland, it did not exceed from 2 to 3 per cent. It has since risen as high as 15 per cent., but has latterly fallen considerably; whereas, in Great Britain, the uniform practice has been, to pay rents not in coin, but in Bank paper; and no instance has occurred, till the present, of its being refused to be accepted at par.

The Irish landlords appear then to have a much stronger claim in equity, to adhere to a practice long established between them and their tenantry, and which has been therefore no surprise upon the Litter, than my lord King has to introduce at this moment, a novel mode of payment under a dormant stipulation in a lease; and it is not a little remarkable, that the same set of circumstances which have determined lord King to adopt, for the first time, the Irish practice, should have induced the landlords in Ireland, if not to abandon, at least materially to relax theirs; for they not only have very generally, far the accommodation of their tenantry, consented to accept their rents in Bank-notes; but they have accepted them on terms much more favourable to their tenantry, than a rate calculated on the premium of the day for guineas. A premium, it is true, has generally been required, seldom however higher than from 2½ to 5 per cent.; but nothing approaching to the scale of lord King's demand has been adopted as a general practice in any part of Ireland.

Whilst I contend that the practice at this moment in the north of Ireland, between landlord and tenant, is one of much greater indulgence to the tenantry, than the rule lord King is inclined to lay down; and whilst I consider that the state of things in that portion of the United Kingdom, growing out of a long established usage, which has of late been accommodating itself to the convenience of the parties, rather than taking any novel shape of disadvantage to the tenants, do not constitute a case of such pressing inconvenience, as should induce parliament in the absence of the Irish members, to enter upon the consideration of a question of so local a nature; I am at the same time free to confess, that, if the practice in the north of Ireland should not take some more settled shape, before the next session of parliament; and if the difficulty of procuring coin should continue to be as great as it has latterly been, it may become necessary to apply a legislative corrective to the evil; for an evil it must be admitted to be of the greatest magnitude, that between the landlords and tenantry of a country, no fixed rate of payment should prevail; but that it should be at the discretion of each particular landlord to decide, whether his tenant is to pay him, as an inducement to accept bank-notes, the full premium at which guineas are bought and sold, which has been as high as 15 per cent. and may be still higher; or whether he is to pay at an inferior rate, and what; for however cash payments, in those particular counties, may rest upon ancient and uninterrupted usage, yet it must be admitted, that it has become a very new question in practice between the parties; and it is impossible not to foresee, that great public inconvenience and discontent is likely to be produced, by the unequal measure of indulgence different landlords may think fit to deal out to their tenantry under such circumstances.

I have before observed that a premium on guineas has always prevailed in the north of Ireland, even before the Bank Restriction Act took place. There being at that time no private banks issuing notes in that part of the kingdom, whose business led them to hold cash at the requisition of their Holders of their paper, the usual mode by which dealers, who came from a distance to purchase linens, or other commodities with bank-notes, or credits upon Dublin, obtained any considerable supply of guineas, was by applying to the the agents of men of property, who supplied them with what they required at a premium, varying according to the supply and demand in different parts of the country. The same practice prevailed, under the authority of government, in the payment of the army. The paymasters of regiments procured gold, by similar means, to issue the subsistence to the troops; and were directed to charge the premium paid for guineas in their contingent accounts with government. So established was this practice, that I recollect when Mr. Pelham (now earl of Chichester) was chief secretary in Ireland, for the purpose of introducing greater economy into the charge of converting Bank-notes into the guineas requisite for the army, that district paymasters were appointed to superintend this branch of the public service.

it may be said, why then prohibit by law a practice in England, which has so long prevailed without inconvenience in Ireland? and the hon. and learned member (Mr. Brougham) has recommended, that coin, like all other commodities, should be suffered to find its own level, and he has argued, that this would operate advantageously in bringing back coin, and in keeping it in circulation. Perhaps no serious inconvenience would arise from such a practice prevailing, so far as ready money dealings are concerned! hut when the question is, what the law can injustice enforce in satisfaction of a debt, the practical objection to the hon. member's suggestion shows itself; it by no means follows, that a system which may have prevailed in a corner of the empire for a length of time, without any serious inconvenience, may not, if suddenly extended to the whole empire, be productive both of mischief and calamity: but it is not true, to suppose, that no inconvenience has been experienced with respect to a circulating medium regulated upon such principles, even in the limited portion of Ireland where it has prevailed. From the scarcity of guineas, and their consequent high price (coin being the only medium in which transactions were conducted), the inconvenience became so great, that, by general consent, bank-notes became the prevailing currency in ordinary dealings, and it is only in discharge of rents, that payment in guineas has been latterly required. Even on this reduced scale, of demand for guineas, considerable difficulty has occurred in procuring the necessary supply, and the premium has at times become excessively high; how great then must be the difficulty, and the premium, if the demand for coin as a medium indispensable to the payment of rent, should be extended over the whole empire; and what an unjust scale would such a competition for guineas afford for regulating an increased payment of rent in notes! nothing could be more accidental, fluctuating and oppressive, than such a standard; unless it was the price of gold itself, when the continental exchanges are under the controul of the enemy, and when all freedom of circulation is at an end.

I admit the principle contended for by the learned member, that such a premium has a tendency to preserve guineas in circulation, and to counteract the profit which leads to their being melted and exported; but, for the reasons already stated, it never can be recognised as a just measure to regulate the rate or value, at which another currency shall be received in liquidation of a debt. As a new regulation in this country, I am not aware of any benefit which could result from it, possessing, as we do, a currency adequate to all our internal wants, and, in my judgment, neither depreciated, nor liable to depreciation, so long as its issue is regulated upon those principles which have hitherto governed the conduct of the bank of England.

In Ireland I can conceive such a practice may have had salutary effects. It has tended to preserve, to a considerable degree, a metallic currency in circulation, in a country whose national bank did not possess the same proportionable capital as the Bank of England; and in which private capital does not yet much abound for the establishment of private banks. It was, under such circumstances, advantageous, that the transition to a circulation, in which Bank-notes were to preponderate, should be gradual; that the efforts of credit to supply the demand for currency should be made with circumspection, both on the side of the issuers and receivers of notes; and above all, it required time to reconcile and to accustom a population, habituated exclusively to coin, to the use of notes, to judge of their reality, of their preservation, and of the steps they were to take when the notes were worn out to have them renewed. That transition has been silently, taking place, and I am induced to believe, is so far matured, that no shock to credit or industry need now be apprehended in Ireland, from any regulations which parliament in its wisdom may deem necessary to adopt for the administration of justice between man and man.

The House will, I am sure, excuse my having detained them so long on the question as applied to Ireland. The exclusion of that country from the provisions of the act appeared to me to require to be examined; and I was the more desirous of offering some general remarks on the peculiar state of the currency in that part of the United kingdom, from the misconception which has prevailed with respect to it, more especially observable in the Report of the Committee in 1804 on the exchange between Great Britain and Ireland.

With respect to the extent of the Bank issues, and particularly whether some limit to their amount ought not to make a part of the present bill, as a security against depreciation arising from excessive issues, I certainly am one of those who admit that mischief might arise from a disposition in the Bank improvidently to extend their circulation of notes; at the same time, I must say, that the facility of committing such an abuse, as well as the temptation to do so, so far as the motive of personal interest can be supposed to influence the conduct of the bank directors, has been most unreasonably exaggerated in argument. I am also ready to admit, that, in proportion as the system founded on the bank restriction act is protracted in point of time, and fortified by provisions, such as the present bill contains, it becomes more strongly, not only the right, but the duty of parliament, to impose such restraints upon the Bank as may appear calculated to protect the community at large against any improper employment of the discretion, which is now exercised by the bank. It is not therefore under any doubt of what the right, as well as the duty of the House is, nor yet of the principle, that a due caution on the part of the bank is necessary to be observed, with respect to the amount of their notes in circulation, that induces me, more than to doubt the expediency of such a regulation. I am conscious much depends on a sound exercise of that discretion, but I know of no better security for its due exercise, than that it should remain under the superintending eye of parliament, in the hands which have hitherto administered it, with so much fidelity and advantage to the public. I see great objection in principle to any absolutely fixed limit. To name as the extreme amount a larger sum than that now in circulation, might seem to countenance an issue to that precise extent. To confine them within their present amount, incurs the risk, that, if the demand for circulating medium should increase with the growing prosperity of the country, the supply will be thrown into other and less safe channels; and if there is no precise limit which parliament can fix and adhere to, and that there can be none is obvious from the very nature of a circulating: medium, which ought to fluctuate in amount with the extent of transactions to which it is applied, of all courses let us not expose ourselves to be called on to sit in judgment, from time to time, upon the quantum of issue required, which must be the case if this limitation is to be relaxed, from time to time, upon a case to be made out before parliament, by the bank, of its necessity.

It is not surprising that a considerable degree of jealousy should prevail with respect to the exercise of such a power in any hands; I am inclined to believe, that much of the feeling excited on what is called the bullion question, has originated in a disinclination, not the most enlightened, which mankind have in general to observe a corporate body, such as the bank of England, amassing unusual gains, even though growing out of an exercise of their credit, which contributes to the accommodation of every individual in the community. But what I can least understand, is, that any man should condescend so far in controversy, as to attempt to draw a parallel between the assignats of France, and the notes of the Bank of England: between a paper issued by a bankrupt government, upon no other alleged security at the time than the national domains of France, which standing on a revolutionary title, Sold almost for nothing; between a paper forcibly issued to pay debts, and to carry on the current services of a stale, and one issued by a private corporation with a view to their own immediate profit, and on what they deem solid and indisputable security; between a paper forced upon its subjects by a government which has no other means of payment; and a paper never issued, except at the instance of per- sons, ready to deposit value, and consenting to pay 5 per cent. for the temporary use of it. To infer that a paper circulation, founded on such principles, must follow the course of French assignats, and the other forced currencies we have witnessed in modern times, does appear to roe such a substitution of clamour and assertion in the place of sober sense, as hardly to deserve notice.

At the same time I cannot wonder, that men of reflecting minds should hesitate, upon the practicability of a currency resting for any length of time with undiminished credit, upon any other than a metallic basis, which shall afford to every man the facility of possessing coin whenever he prefers it to bank paper. I admit the present is the first instance in the history of the world of such a system being realized; and I know of no other country in which it could have been attempted with any prospect of success; but happily the principles of private and public integrity are so deeply rooted in all our money transactions, and the discretion with which the Bank conducts its affairs, and its unparalleled wealth, are both so universally known and confided in, as to render inferences drawn from other countries inapplicable to this. I must therefore protest against an assumption of impracticability drawn from such premises. The experience of fourteen years is a tolerably decisive proof the other way; and I think it is quite impossible to point out, in our present situation, any thing which indicates that the credit of the country, administered upon this system, is not, at this day, as high at home and abroad, and as effective, to all the purposes of national industry, and of national exertion, as it was at any former period; and I would counsel those, who are disposed to set limits to the operations of credit, to reflect, that many of the principles upon which they argue against the existing system, might prove as fatal to a mixed circulation, as to the one which now, as a temporary expedient, prevails; both exist only by public confidence: and it is a question only of degree, how long either shall survive such doctrines of distrust, if unhappily they could be implanted in the public mind.

But it is denied that this system does answer the same end, even for purposes of internal circulation, as our mixed currency did; and it is said, look at the situation of annuitants and persons with fixed incomes of all descriptions, how reduced relatively in situation! What my lord King says is, put me back into the situation I stood in before the restriction act passed in 1797, and let me have a currency, which will produce to me, what that for which I bargained then did. Now let us separate this question into the two propositions of which it consists. I cannot undertake to relieve lord King, nor is it just be should be relieved from the mortgage on his property, which has taken place since 1797, the result of fourteen years of progressive taxation. The taxes have been nearly trebled in amount during that period. These taxes were intended to attach both directly and indirectly upon fixed incomes; and it is obvious, supposing even the currency had remained unchanged, that the power of purchasing with a certain amount of income must be very dissimilar at the present day. If then much of this alleged grievance arises from increased taxation, and other increased charges affecting the price of commodities, better proofs must he furnished to me, than any I have yet heard, before I can allow that any part of the evil can be fairly charged upon the particular species of currency in use at the present moment. That fixed incomes are deteriorated in value since the year 1797, is admitted; but what remains to be proved is, that a fixed income would have gone further at this day, if the necessity for the restriction act had never occurred, and if the Bank had continued uninterruptedly to pay their notes on demand in cash.

As throwing some light on this question, we know distinctly that internal prices have not been sensibly advanced since the beginning of I 809, when the present excessive rise upon gold, and fall of the foreign exchanges, took place; and antecedent to which appearances, it could not be alleged that Bank-notes were in any sense depreciated. We have then conclusive evidence, that fixed incomes suffered to the extent they are now impaired, when Bank-notes and bullion were at par with each other, and that they have not been further affected since Bank-notes have ceased to bear their accustomed relation with the precious metals. We further know, that in France, where coin alone circulates (with the exception of the small quantity of notes issued by the Bank at Paris), a corresponding rise in the price of commodities has taken place, very probably from the same cause, the pressure of taxation, which is very heavy in France at the present moment. The French government, in an official document, viz. the speech of Mr. Daru, "Intendant de I'Empereur," in January 1810, when proposing to the legislative body to annex certain national domains to the crown, stated, that the real value of money had fallen since the year 1791, in France, to such a degree, that the same income did not then represent more than two thirds of what it had been worth at the period referred to. This is further corroborated by a report of the Agricultural Society at Paris in 1805. Where then is the proof, that the deterioration of fixed incomes is a hardship peculiar to Great Britain, or to the particular nature of our currency? Annuitants and all possessors of fixed incomes may repine, when they compare their lot in society with the proprietors of land, and others deriving their subsistence from their industry, who can indemnify themselves by an advance of price upon their land or labour; but this is no grievance, it is in the nature of things it should be so; and when capital is invested, the original cost of the land or annuity is regulated accordingly. That the active member of the society should preserve his station better than the inactive, is no hardship. It is open to every man who possesses a fixed income, to be active if he thinks fit. The lot of women and children, dependent on small annuities, may be more severe, so far as it is their misfortune, and not their fault, that they are inactive. Such persons are much to be commiserated; but this is an evil incident to human society, and establishes nothing against the currency.

Upon the whole of this case, I am for the Bill. The only solid argument I hare heard against it is, that it does not go far enough: this is a defect which can be cured in another session, if it should be found necessary; it goes at least a certain length to counteract an existing danger, which, though circumscribed as yet in its operation, had, I think, assumed a shape and character which would have made it unsafe for parliament to separate without evincing a determination to provide against its extension.

Upon the question itself, however strongly my mind is impressed with the injustice of the principle upon which his demand rests, lord King no doubt is influenced by a conviction not less sincere, that the course he has pursued is perfectly defensible; and under that conviction, as an individual, his lordship is morally justified towards his tenant in what he has done; but giving his lordship full credit for the purity of his motives, I cannot applaud the discretion which, in the midst of war, when no man, whatever his view of the original policy of the Batik restriction act might be, can new see his way to the early resumption of cash payments, has induced his lordship, as a peer of parliament, and a considerable landed proprietor, to hazard a measure, which, if generally acted upon, must have inflicted so severe a wound upon the public credit of the country. As the question has arisen, parliament sitting, I feel no uneasiness on the subject. The discussion which has taken place will dissipate alarm; and as nothing in this empire can long survive, which will not bear the test of free, or even adverse inquiry, I have no doubt the credit of the paper of the Bank of England, so far from being impaired by any thing which has passed, in the late severe ordeal of controversy, to which it has been submitted, will, on the contrary, the more the principles upon which it is issued are developed, stand the higher in the public estimation; and the period I trust is not remote, when the transient apprehensions of patriotism at home will be quieted upon this point, and when the enemy will be made to feel, in the unabated energy of our exertions in carrying on the war, the mighty difference which exists between a currency, such as we possess, and those forced currencies with which he has ignorantly been led to compare it.

In the mean time, let us take care that the law shall not be made an instrument of personal injustice, which it would be, if, when the tenantry of the country, having sold the produce of their farms for Bank of England notes, and having contracts equally' binding with the Bank as with their landlords relative to cash payments, the law should interpose, and say to persons so circumstanced, the Bank shall not fulfil its contract with you, but you shall fulfil your contract with your landlord. The law cannot countenance so obvious an injustice; it must dispose of these kindred engagements upon one and the same principle, and refuse, during the continuance of the Bank restriction act, to compel person?, tendering Bank-notes, to make their payments in a currency which, under the authority of Jaw, and for the public good, has ceased for a time to be the prevailing currency of the realm.

Mr. H. Thornton

said he agreed in one of the concluding observations of the noble lord, that any attempt to limit the issue of paper of the Bank of England, would not be right. He agreed also that it was not fair to compare the paper of this country with that of France. The hon. gentleman said he was of opinion the bill did not stand on the mere act of lord Sing; the discussions which it had undergone in parliament, and the opinions which had been there given, gave it a most important feature. In various cases persons had demanded cash for the debts due to them. In one instance a country bank had been prosecuted for a small sum, which' the proprietors refusal to pay in gold, and the judges cast them in the debt and costs, which they were compelled to pay. Every country banker was liable to the same form of proceeding for all the Bank notes he might issue under five pounds. The effect which might have been produced upon country banks but for this bill was incalculable, for when tenants applied to the banker for gold, he might be unable to pay, and so it would run on through all ranks and gradations, each person demanding of the other payment in gold, and perhaps all unable to comply with the demand. The sudden demand for gold would, of course, have the effect of rising the price, as in the demand for wool some years since; it was fair, then to anticipate the evils which would naturally follow from the trade in gold. He should support the bill on the ground of necessity, but he could not think it was desirable to carry it into a permanent system. The bill of 1797 was necessary, and as far as it went an admirable one for its purposes. It would not be proper, in the event merely of alarm or invasion, to allow the conversion of paper into gold, and, there fore, as in 1797, it was highly expedient to provide against that evil, not departing from the system of 1797, as a temporary measure. He should have given his consent with reluctance to the bill, had he not heard from the Bank directors, that the issues of paper were restricted, and consequently that the circulation of that species of medium did not amount to more than when the Bank Restriction act passed. Adverting to the issues from the Bank of Paris, he observed, that the restriction on that bank conduced to the restoration of the value of their notes. He must object to that part of the bill which provided for the non-exchange of gold, except that metal should at the time be at par. He thought the operation of the bill should in that case have a retrospective, and not a prospective view. In looking at the value of exchange, and the difference in them, he conceived if the exportation of our commodities were in a great measure restricted, and the importation of those of the Ruler of France forbid, we might by other means obtain such an article (or in fact, gold) in return for our exports, as should compensate. Much had been said on the subject of the depreciation of the paper of the Bank of England, but he wished that gentlemen, when they were so anxious to mark that supposed depreciation, would shew at what period it began.

Mr. Marryatt

conceived that the bill contained extraordinary provisions, and had been introduced under extraordinary circumstances, in order that ministers might thereby read a recantation of the doctrines they had introduced under the resolutions grafted on the report of the Bullion Committee. The bill went to falsify all those resolutions, namely, That Bank notes were equivalent in value to the current coin of the realm. So far from that being the case, he thought that the ground of bringing the bill in was, that tenants would, if the law was not declared otherwise, be compelled to purchase guineas at the rate of 27s. each, to pay their landlords. It was not a little curious to remark, that the supporters of the bill admitted that the depreciation of paper was so alarming that it was necessary to have recourse to legislative interference. Among the extraordinary novelties which this bill introduced, might be enumerated the clause excepting Ireland from its operation. He could not divine why it was necessary to legislate for an evil where it was not proved to exist, and to refuse to legislate for the same evil where it did actually exist. He, however, could not conceive on what principle the tenantry of Ireland were to be exposed to all the hardships and difficulties which would surround them, and yet the people of England were to be protected from those hardships. He denied, as had been asserted, that the commercial interests were more affected than the landed interest. But the most extraordinary of all the provisions (as might be gathered from the declaration of the right hon. gentleman) was the intention of making Bank notes a legal tender. That this bill was to be a sort of preliminary step to that object could not be doubted. The support of ministers would not hare been given to the measure if the fortunes of the empire were not to be staked upon its success.

Mr. J. Smith

condemned the plan of the noble lord (King,) as leading to the most fatal consequences. If every man of great landed property were to demand guineas for their rent, would the farmer be enabled to pay them in that coin? would he not rather say, if a depreciation of 18 or 20 per cent had taken place, and the landlord should demand 120l. for 100l. rent; "no, I paid you last year 100l. and I have no advantage this year which allows me to pay you 120l. therefore I cannot." Such conduct on the part of the noble lord, if followed, would lead to practical evils, especially among country bankers. If a country banker did not on demand pay his notes under 5l. in gold, he was liable to have a distress issued by the next magistrate within ten days after his refusal, the consequence of such proceeding would be the total destruction of all country banks; he thought ministers were entitled to the thanks of the country, for having brought the bill forward, or at least given it their support.

Mr. Bankes

was not disposed to return the right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer his thanks for the Bill; on the contrary he thought it most unfortunate. The conduct of lord King, which led to its introduction, he had heard panegyrised and extolled, but he believed, much as that conduct had been applauded by certain persons, there was not a respectable landlord in the country who would follow his example. Parliament, in his opinion, ought to have trusted to the confidence and honour of the country, and have rejected it altogether. The hon. gent, conceived that the House ought to be in possession of the best legal authorities in the land, as to the question whether the Sheriff's officer would be liable, in case of hurry and confusion, or what redress the tenant would obtain in a court of equity. In his opinion the only radical cure that could be resorted to, was, that of a limitation of the paper currency, which would be the means of extricating the country out of the embarassing situation into which it was plunged.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer

would not detain the House at that late hour of the night with any detailed discussion of the Bill before them, but would endeavour to confine himself to a few observations upon what had fallen from some of the hon. gentlemen opposite to him. However, in some points of view which his hon. friend (Mr. Bankes) who spoke last, seemed to differ from him in his consideration of the measure, yet respecting the principle of it, he did not differ in opinion from his hon. friend. What was most to be apprehended was an imitation of the conduct of the noble lord which had given occasion to the Bill: a conduct upon which such studied and profuse panegyric had been heaped, that it was no wonder it should invite and encourage imitation, though he by he means imagined that his hon. friend would be among those who could be tempted by the example, or who would recommend the imitation of it to others. There were those, however, who appeared so enamoured of the conduct of the noble lord, who extolled it with such loud cheerings, and such extravagance of praise, that it was evident that it was not only in theory, but in heart, they espoused the conduct and the example held out by that noble lord. When, however, the consequences with which the imitation of that conduct might be attended, were seriously considered, he would not hesitate to characterise that conduct in the effects to which it might give rise, as a conduct as improper, as dangerous, and as mischievous as any of which any individual could be capable towards his country and the community. He was at a loss to conceive that those persons by whom that conduct had been so highly praised, could be sincere in the panegyrics they bestowed upon it; or could even seriously think of advising or encouraging the imitation of any conduct which must prove so prejudicial to the country at large, and so oppressive in particular to the tenantry; for surely they should first have examined the propriety of such conduct, before they held it up as an object of praise and admiration, as a proof of patriotism so commendable in itself, and so worthy the imitation of those who could aspire to emulate so glorious an example. He had already observed, and he would now repeat it, that he did not at first consider the example of such a conduct as very dangerous, because he did not then apprehend that it would be acted upon to any extent: yet when he began to contemplate the danger which might arise while parliament was not sitting, from an example which had been so emphatically eulogised, as to make it solicit and tempt imitation then, and not till then, did he feel the expediency and propriety of adopting some counteracting measure, before the session of parliament finally closed. For what, among others, might be its consequences—the country bankers might first be applied to, und not being able to pay in specie, they would be obliged to shut up shop. What disorder, distress, and confusion this would produce all over the country, it was more easy to conceive than to devise a remedy against; but it might be among the first advantages and blessings that might result from this praiseworthy conduct, this patriotic experiment. The conduct of lord King was defended by an hon. and learned gentleman on the ground that it was meant only; as a practical experiment of two prices, as a proof at least that there actually existed two prices. It was not gold that the noble lord wanted; it was not his own individual interest and emolument he was anxious to promote; no—his sole object was to establish his theory of two prices. What a strange defence of the noble lord's conduct! Nor did the learned and hon. gentleman confine himself to the law and equity of lord King, or to how lord King would act himself in this respect; but be proceeded also to shew how others might act on the same rule. But the House would consider how the noble lord limited his law—how he intended to act agreeably to contract. At the period of some of these contracts was the current coin more or less than it was now? The contract was made according to the current coin of the day; and the current coin was then only equivalent to paper; why should not paper be equivalent to coin in respect to such contracts? Was not one as much justified in law as the other? This was a question to settle, and parliament, he thought, should not separate before something was done to settle it. The hon. and learned gent, had thought proper to represent him (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) as one of the most lucky men that had ever held the situation in which he bad now the honour to be placed. By mere good fortune every thing turned out just as he could wish. He had in contemplation the measure now before the House; but he was puzzled how to bring it forward. But as his good fortune would have it, lord King came forward, with his late notice, and relieved him from the perplexity. Such, no doubt, was his familiarity with lord King, and such his influence over that noble lord, that he consulted with him how he should act, and prevailed upon him to adopt such a line of conduct as would seem to call for and justify the present Bill! Nor did his good fortune stop here. He next consulted with lord Stanhope, and that noble lord, it would seem, also conspired with him, and came forward with the Bill in the other House. But at first, he and his colleagues did not consider the Bill as necessary, not imaging that the example of lord King in this respect would fee followed to any extent;—but his good fortune was conspicuous again; for lords Grenville and Grey so be-praised lord King for the line of conduct he had adopted, that he, (Mr. Perceval), now perceived all the danger of the example set by lord King, which decided him in adopting lord Stanhope's Bill! And here he must also have conspired with lords Grenville and Grey, and prompted them also to adopt a language which justified him in supporting a measure, which he had in contemplation and at heart, though he had opposed it in the first instance. These certainly were singular instances of good fortune; but the idea he must think was confined to the hon. and learned gent, and he would leave him to enjoy it without a rival. But as the gentlemen opposite him contended for the existence of the evil, which they called a depreciation of the notes of the bank, they accordingly felt called upon to propose some remedy. One proposed the remedy of two prices; another the purchase of gold, even from France; another the diminution of the national debt, and so forth. It was evident that the practical experiment of the two prices was held out in terrorem. As to the purchase of gold, how, and by what means was it to be purchased? Not by Bank notes. Was it then to be purchased by our colonial produce, or by our manufactures? But if these were to be offered to France, would she not propose to us to take her brandy and claret in exchange? Would she part with her gold in exchange for these commodities? Surely not. It had been confessed, even by those gentlemen who opposed the bill, that gold had sometimes, and under certain circumstances, an artificial, an unnatural price. If they admitted that, then they admitted the principle of those who supported the present measure; they differed from them only in the application of that principle. If the price of gold was artificial and unnatural, then it could not continue at that price. If trade became open, that artificial price would cease. But certain political circumstances might for a time put embarrassments and limits on trade: and therefore, as long as they lasted gold might rise more or less to that artificial and unnatural price. It had likewise been much insisted on that by limitting the issue of Bank paper you would lower the price of gold. This he had on a former occasion contended, and would now again contend, would not be the case; but even if to any degree it could not have that tendency, still it would be unwise to limit that issue, for by limiting it, you would risk ruining the country; for you would then cramp or suspend all those exertions on which rested the hopes of the country, and all the means by which its resources could be replenished and revived. It would diminish our trade, and dry up the chief sources of our strength. In the same manner as an artificial value might be given to gold, so also might an artificial depreciation be occasioned in paper. He would ever contend that the Bank of England paper had suffered no real depreciation. Such conduct, indeed, as that of lord King, and of those who would recommend the imitation of it, had a tendency to produce that sort of artificial depreciation of the Bank paper, and therefore such a conduct should be rejected, and a legislative measure, something of the nature of the present bill, resorted to, in order to counteract the mischievous effects of such an example.—As to the measure of making Bank notes a legal tender, he hoped it would not be necessary; he trusted that the seasonable adoption of the present bill would prevent it. The same argument was urged against the measure of 1797, and the making Bank notes a legal tender was then considered as the necessary consequences of that measure, yet fourteen years had since elapsed. The Bank notes had not yet been made a legal lender, though it was asserted that such must be the immediate consequence of a restriction on the cash payments of the Bank. Indeed, it was difficult to conceive how, with any colour of candour and consistency, the present bill could be opposed by those who advised and supported the measure of 1797.—As to the legal questions started in the course of the debate, he should not be very forward to give an opinion. It had been asked to what would recourse be had in case of distress for rent. He should only say, that the provisions of the present bill were in this respect nearly the same as in that of 1797; and in the whole course; of the time that had since elapsed, only one insignificant ease occurred for a decision of that question. Neither would he say how the courts of equity, would act and decide in such cases. The debt for rent might, he would suppose, be paid into court; and even were it so paid in gold, the court would pay the money into the Bank, and when the case was decided, and the money called for, the Bank would pay it in paper, and not in gold. Besides other processes than that of distress might be resorted to. There might be some delay in the sentences of the law; but it should be recollected that the present was only intended as a temporary measure; and therefore any inconvenience that might arise from it, must also be only temporary.

Mr. Tierney

said, that the right hon. gent, had been extremely comical upon one of the most serious subjects that ever came before the House. He had joked upon his conspiracy with lord King, and he had joked, also upon his secret intrigue with lord Stanhope, and he had, then joked upon his secret consultations with lords Grey and Grenville; but here the joke was against the right hon. gent; because it Could not be forgotten, that if lords Grey and Grenville bad been willing, the right hon. gent, would have been very glad to have entered into consultation with them.—In alluding to lord King, he paid him every tribute of praise; but had he been in lord King's place, he confessed he should not have taken the step that noble lord had done. (Hear!) He wished to be perfectly, understood, in saying this, as not meaning the most distant censure on lord King, whom he believed incapable of an unworthy act. He contended that this measure was, to all intents and purposes,; making Bank notes a legal tender. What said the bill? You shall not take a guinea for more than twenty one shillings, and you shall not take a Bank note for less. Guineas: you, cannot get, therefore you must take notes, and yet this was not making them a legal tender. The passing of this bill declared to the world that the Bank of England could not goon without support. After the passing of this Bill, Bank notes would not be the notes of the Bank of England but of parliament. The Bank had been spoken of as a body of independent merchants trading on their Own capital, but it was now well known and generally understood, that the Bank of England was, to a certain extent, a mere instrument in the hands of the Chan cellor of the Exchequer. He should trouble the House no further, but conclude with avowing it as his solemn opinion, that the present measure was pregnant with the most mischievous consequences to the) country.

Mr. Creevey

said he should postpone his Resolution to another stage of the Bill, as pressing it at that late hour might be productive of inconvenience. (Hear!)

The House then divided. For the second reading, 133.—Against it, 35.—Majority for the Bill, 98.

On the motion for committing the Bill tomorrow,

Lord Folkestone

, after some observations on the necessity which would be imposed on parliament before the prorogation, to adopt measures for the relief of the suffering manufacturers in various parts of the kingdom, particularly at Nottingham moved as an amendment, that the Bill be committed on that day se'nnight. The amendment was negatived without a division, and the original motion was put and carried.