HC Deb 19 April 1872 vol 210 cc1573-85
MR. DELAHUNTY

, in rising to move the following Resolution:— That, in the opinion of this House, it is expedient, that as far as practicable, equal laws should prevail throughout Great Britain and Ireland, and that Her Majesty's Government should forthwith bring in a Bill to regulate and reform the Currency Laws of the United Kingdom, so as that the same system should prevail and be applicable in every part of the realm, said, that in consequence of the present system of legislation, Ireland was not progressing equally with England, and that the arrangement which was called the Union was no union at all, but merely a sort of connection carried out on the assumption that the interests of England and the interests of Ireland were different; and the result had been that during the last 70 years Ireland had been legislated for, not by the Imperial Parliament, but by the officials of Dublin Castle, who framed Bills for Ireland which, at the instance of a Chief Secretary, were ratified by Parliament. If Ireland had had the advantage of the same laws as England, she would now have thriving manufactures, and her population would be three times greater than at present. More than that, the people of Ireland being dissatisfied with the present state of that country, it did not surprise him that they wished to see an end put to the Union, and he believed the only way of altering their view on that subject was by making Ireland really an integral portion of the Empire. He did not, however, impute to the owners and occupiers of land that they did not desire to see other classes prosper; but steam and railways having secured them a market for their produce in England, they were not obliged to concern themselves with the welfare and promotion of other industries of their country. The area of England as compared with that of Ireland was as 20 was to 12; and in 1801, 1811, and 1821, the population of the two countries bore about the same proportion—namely, 20 to 11½. In the next five decennial periods the proportion was—in 1831, as 20 to 11; in 1841, 20 to 10; in 1851, 20 to 7¼; in 1861, 20 to 57/10; and in 1871, 20 to 47/10—that is, the population of Ireland, in some 45 years, diminished, as compared with England, from 57 to 24 per cent. If there had been the same progress in both countries, as there would have been if equal laws had prevailed, the population of Ireland would be now some 15,000,000 of people, instead of 5,000,000, and which population would be maintained in affluence and comfort by the wealth created through manufactures, commerce, and trade. Up to a certain period also, Ireland had cotton, woollen, and silk manufactures, the prosperity of which kept pace with those of England; but between 1821 and 1831, and again between 1841 and 1851, they suddenly declined. The Irish legislation of those two periods must, therefore, have differed from the legislation for England. On referring to official Re-turns, he found that in 1816, 16,695 ships, with a tonnage of 2,098,159, entered the ports of Great Britain, while 11,656 ships, of 1,062,185 tons, entered Irish ports. In 1869, however, the number of ships was 169,000 in the case of Great Britain, and 26,000 in that of Ireland. There was still a greater discrepancy as regarded clearances. The increase in Irish shipping was in vessels laden with foreign corn to feed the cattle and swine intended for the English market. These went out in ballast, so that their number and tonnage did not appear in the clearances. While, therefore, the clearances from Great Britain in 1869 exceeded the ships which entered, those from Ireland were only 13,000, and the vessels in question being of large size, the tonnage cleared was only a quarter of that entered. Hence the Irish tonnage cleared, instead of being, as in 1816, as 1 to 2 compared with that of Great Britain, was in 1869 only as 1 to 31. The same stagnation might be shown in other respects. In 1821 the number of persons employed in agriculture was 1,108,000, and those employed in other work were 1,698,764; but in 1831 the former had increased only by 88,000, and the latter had sunk to 640,000. The exports and imports, too, had not increased in an equal ratio with those of England: another evidence that bad laws had deprived Ireland of the benefits of manufacturing industry. According to the Government valuation the income of the landowners of Ireland amounted to only £9,000,000, and, by the test settled by Parliament for the levy of income tax, that of the occupiers to only £3,000,000. It was obvious that no country could import largely unless it also exported, and that England sent out not agricultural but manufacturing products. The value of the imports into this country for the past three months was £86,000,000 sterling, while for the corresponding three months in 1870 it was only £57,000,000 sterling, showing an increase in two years, through English manufacturing industry, of £29,000,000 sterling, or more than twice the annual amount of the whole agricultural income of Ireland—of owners and occupiers. He did not mean to trouble the House now, because he should trouble it very often later in the Session; but he should never rest satisfied unless some change were made in the present mode of legislating for Ireland. Let what O'Connell called the "shave-beggar" legislation of the Castle be got rid of. As the barbers put the beggars under the hands of their apprentices to be shaved, in order to learn them their trade, so the Government placed Irish legislation under the control of political novices. If Parliament would place Ireland, as far as legislation was concerned, on an equality with the rest of the Empire, she would have no desire for separation; but if the sort of government of Ireland that now existed were to be continued, no real friend of that country would wish to preserve her connection with England. So that the choice was whether they would have things as they were, or whether they would have things as they ought to be. He could give many instances of how Ireland and Irishmen deserved a better fate than to be obliged to fly from their native land to other countries to seek the platforms of industry which they could not find at home. The man who thought that Ireland could be redeemed by a land law committed, in his opinion, a grievous sin, because the amount of land was limited, and they could get no more than they had. There was scarcely a part of the New World that was not peopled by Irishmen, forced by this Castle legislation to leave their native land and seek other lands. There was no doubt that Ireland had progressed up to a certain point. Thus, in 1812, while wages in Glasgow were 17s. a-week, and 22s. 6d. in Manchester, they were 24s. at Waterford and 30s. in Dublin, and, at the same time, provisions were much cheaper in the two latter places. Splendid houses were built in Waterford 80 years ago, but none had been built there for the last 40 years. Without going further, he thought he had given reasons why, if we were to be an Empire, Ireland ought to be a part of it, and share equally with England in her laws and improvements, which she could never do so long as legislation was controlled by the Castle and was wrongly directed. One great remedy for the present state of things in Ireland, he thought, would be to adopt such a system of currency as would cause gold to flow freely in and out of that kingdom. With that view, he wished to see the English system adopted, for the reason that he believed the cur- rency of England to be based on a better principle than that of any other country in the world, because it allowed gold to flow in and out without impediment or restriction. At the present moment England was the only resting-place for gold in the world, and it was the only country in which gold was in circulation in the hands of the people. No country could enjoy the advantages of free trade without having a free flow of gold. France, previous to the late war, had a good and proper currency, which, increasing her productions, had made her rich and prosperous; but when the war took place, she had done what England did in 1797—adopted an inconvertible paper currency and small notes; and she had not the wisdom to do what England did subsequently, when the war was over, and had forgotten the corollary that no country could enjoy the advantages of free trade without having a free flow of gold, and she was now seen to be going back in industrial and commercial progress, and would have to return to protection, as free trade and small notes would not work together. He was prepared to accept any proposal that the Government might suggest, provided it were applicable equally to the whole Empire; and he would suggest a system of currency by which the objections of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the abolishing of small notes would be removed, and, at the same time, the obstructions to the flow of gold in Ireland would be removed. Let the right hon. Gentleman adopt this plan—let an issue of £1 notes by the Government take place,' upon the condition that for every £1 note issued one pound's worth of gold should be lodged at the Mint, or some Government office, and kept there in deposit until redeemed, and the note paid off. By this plan the right hon. Gentleman would be able to have the convenience of the note and save the wear and tear of gold, and such notes would be tantamount to sovereigns, and in effect a gold circulation; and the banks could issue, as was usual, the larger notes upon their credit, even to a greater extent than at present, as the increased trade of the country would require. Whatever system of circulation the Government adopted, he hoped it would be made applicable to all parts of the United Kingdom. When he brought this matter forward on a previous occasion, he quoted in support of his argument the opinion of many distinguished statesmen and writers on political economy. Upon that occasion the Chancellor of the Exchequer denied that they were authorities; if they were not, he would like to know who were? Among them was Adam Smith, a host in himself, who, in his Wealth of Nations, said it would be better not to issue bank notes in any part of the kingdom for a smaller sum than £5. Lord Grenville, when head of the Government in 1806, went still further, and recommended that after a certain specified period no notes below the value of £10 should be put in circulation. Similar opinions had been expressed by Mr. John Stuart Mill, and other eminent writers on political economy. All the great men sitting in the Parliament which abolished small notes in England, voted in favour of the measure, and stated their reasons for doing so. Among them were Lord Liverpool, Lord Lansdowne, the Duke of Wellington, Mr. Huskisson, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Goulbourn, and Mr. Canning, who stated that in the only letter he had ever received from Edmund Burke, that great man said—"If you consent to the issue of £1 notes, you will never see a guinea at all." Again, all the Governors of the Bank of England, including the hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. Weguelin), when examined before the Select Committee of 1857–8, were in favour of excluding small notes from circulation. England had made extraordinary progress in consequence of her system of currency, and surely Ireland ought to participate in the benefits arising from the present state of things in this country. He wished Ireland to be thoroughly amalgamated and identified with England; but, unless Parliament took steps in the direction he had indicated, everyone having the interests of Ireland at heart must turn their backs upon this country and seek to procure the establishment of a Parliament in Ireland. It was nonsense to talk of legislation for Ireland unless the Irish people were allowed to take part in it. It was all very well for a parcel of people at Dublin Castle to frame laws, and then, without consulting the Irish people, get them ratified through a Chief Secretary by a Parliament sitting in London, thoroughly indifferent and regardless of their nature. Let the countries be one or two. It would be better for them to be one; but if this was not arranged, Ireland would never be satisfied until she was altogether separated from England. He implored the Government to be wise in time, and not to continue in a course which worked disadvantageously to, and could only estrange Ireland still further from this country, for surely his countrymen had a right to demand that they should be placed on a level with their fellow-countrymen and subjects. The hon. Member concluded by moving the Resolution of which he had given Notice.

Amendment proposed, To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, it is expedient that, as far as practicable, equal laws should prevail throughout Great Britain and Ireland, and that Her Majesty's Government should forthwith bring in a Bill to regulate and reform the Currency Laws of the United Kingdom, so as that the same system should prevail and be applicable in every part of the realm,"—(Mr. Delahunty,) —instead thereof.

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

MR. BAXTER

said, although he had listened with great pleasure, the House would scarcely expect him on that occasion to follow his hon. Friend in his instructive and amusing, although, at the same time adverse criticism on the Irish policy of Her Majesty's Government. Like a skilful orator, his hon. Friend left his strong point to the last, and then propounded his panacea for the evils of Ireland, which was that the circulation of £1 notes should be no longer permitted, but that a gold currency should be largely introduced in their place. The consistency and perseverance with which his hon. Friend pressed his views on Parliament showed the strength of his convictions; but he was a man of too great candour not to confess that he had not only failed to convince Parliament of the soundness of his views, but he had failed to raise up any considerable party among his fellow-countrymen who shared his views. His hon. Friend had no army at his back, and if the Government were to agree to the Motion he had put upon the Paper, they would immediately have to deal with a far more serious agitation in Ireland than any which existed at present. The circulation of £1 notes in Ireland amounted to between £3,000,000 and £4,000,000, and he felt sure that if those notes were withdrawn from circulation it would be a serious blow to the prosperity of the country. Such a step would be followed immediately by a depreciation in the price of all commodities, and, as a necessary consequence, commercial disaster and widespread distress would result. The main fact, however, was that the people of Ireland thought things ought to remain as they were with regard to the currency question; for in Ireland, as in Scotland, the £1 note was more popular than the sovereign. On one occasion he himself offered a gratuity of a sovereign to a Scotchman, who looked at it in a distrustful manner, and ended by saying that he would rather have a note. Further, there was no part of Her Majesty's Dominions more prosperous and contented than Scotland; but any attempt to stop the circulation of £1 notes there would be followed by the people reverting to the memory of Bannockburn and rising en masse to demand the repeal of the Union. His hon. Friend seemed to think that the decadence of the cotton and woollen trades in Ireland was due to the introduction of £1 notes; but how did he get over the fact, that during the same period the linen trade in Ulster had expanded with wonderful rapidity, and the population of Belfast had increased in the last 10 years by 50,000, or in a greater ratio than had any other town in the three kingdoms? If his hon. Friend thought the circulation of £1 notes had had nothing to do with the prosperity of Ulster, let him cross over to Scotland and visit the shipbuilding yards on the Clyde, the cotton and print works in Lanarkshire and Dumbartonshire, and the linen and jute manufacturers of Forfarshire, in each of which places he would be able to witness, notwithstanding the circulation of £1 notes, a degree of prosperity not to be surpassed in any part of the world. What, however, struck him most in the speech of his hon. Friend was the indefiniteness of the charges he brought against the £1 note circulation. His hon. Friend failed to show that any of the banks issuing £1 notes in Ireland had failed, or that the value of the notes themselves had ever been depreciated below that which they professed to represent. Now, he (Mr. Baxter) could not admit that the circumstances of England and Ire- land were the same in this matter; on the contrary, he thought that in a country constituted as Ireland was, the circulation at present existing had considerable advantages. On the general question, however, he confessed that he was not at all enamoured of a metallic currency; but, on the contrary, he thought that paper based on gold had very great advantages—of course he referred to a paper currency which could always be converted into gold, and with reference to the amount of which there should be in circulation certain restrictions should exist. The preference for a metallic currency under all circumstances he regarded as a mere prejudice. It was an undoubted fact that great practical advantage had been found to result in the United States from the circulation of greenbacks, consequent upon the war in that country. With regard to the Motion, he agreed that it was "expedient, as far as was practicable, that equal laws should prevail throughout Great Britain and Ireland;" but he was Conservative enough to say with regard to the currency—"Let well alone." There was no real complaint on the subject throughout the country; and as he knew the hon. Gentleman to be a friend of Her Majesty's Government, he hoped he would agree that the Government had quite enough on its hands just now without undertaking this difficult, delicate, and, he would add, dangerous task of "forthwith bringing in a Bill to regulate and reform the Currency Laws of the United Kingdom." He hoped, therefore, his hon. Friend would be satisfied with having disburdened his conscience and enlightened the public by the excellent speech he had just made, without asking the House to go further with the question.

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK

agreed in the opinion that it would be desirable to have one set of laws for the whole of the Empire, and that it was undesirable to have notes of a lower value than £5 in circulation; but he also agreed with the Secretary to the Treasury, that until the views of the country generally pointed in this direction it would be unwise to impose upon the Government, heavily burdened as they were, the duty of acting upon the very sound doctrines laid down by the hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. Delahunty). The hon. Member had somewhat exaggerated the impor- tance of the defects in the Irish system of currency, for it was impossible to believe that the great commercial prosperity of England at present was due to the absence of £1 notes. The increase in our trade and commerce was traceable to one or two great central ports, and if these were excepted the progress of the country generally would be very much as Ireland's. It was, at least, certain that of those places where Custom's revenues were collected in England but few of them could pay their expenses. It was not so much the presence of the £1 note in Ireland, as the absence of coal and other materials available for manufacturing purposes to which the comparative want of prosperity was due; and it was the universal tendency of trade and commerce to have a common centre, and, fortunately, our geographical position had contributed to make England the centre in these days; but if the doctrines propounded by the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury were to be carried out, that distinction would be lost by us. It was rather a matter of convenience than anything else that we should have no notes under £5; but the value of our standard should be entirely beyond question, and he (Sir John Lubbock) attached the greatest possible importance to the maintenance of a metallic currency in this country. If anything were done to endanger it; if anything were done to throw a doubt upon the value of the pound sterling, it would not be very long before we had to deplore a mortifying diminution in our commercial returns. The recent gratifying increase in our Clearing House returns was owing to the fact that certain other countries had introduced changes in their currency, so that a man taking a three months' bill in America, France, or Italy, would be quite unable to tell what he would get for it when it became due. Formerly, Americans could estimate the value of the French franc almost as well as the English pound; but now the franc was as uncertain as the Italian lira, and the consequence was that French, American, and Italian traders had a tendency to settle their foreign bargains in England, because England's was the only currency which had the element of stability about it. He trusted, therefore, he had misunderstood the words which fell from the Secretary of the Treasury; but if he understood him aright to express doubts as to the importance of maintaining a metallic currency, and that it would be a step in the right direction to introduce some such currency as greenbacks, he was bound to express his emphatic protest against so dangerous a doctrine. Although the hon. Member for Waterford had attached undue importance to the inconvenience of the £1 note, he had erred on the right side, and he could not refrain from expressing his regret that other Irish Members did not follow his example to some extent, and devote more thought to those great economical problems upon which the future prosperity of the country so much depended, instead of allowing political agitations to absorb their attention.

MR. M'CLURE

said, he must express his belief that the present system of currency in Ireland was the best the country could have, for the banks were well able to meet any call that would be made on them, and offered facilities to traders which they would not otherwise possess. He, therefore, thought that to attempt to assimilate the currency system of Ireland and England at the present time would prove very injurious to the interests of the former country.

MR. HERMON

said, he must congratulate the House on having had the benefit of the opinion of the hon. Member for Maidstone (Sir John Lubbock) on that important subject. Everyone engaged in commercial transactions must be conscious of the inestimable advantage of a certain currency, and he therefore went as far as thinking the Government should pay its debt of some £14,000,000 to the Bank of England, and that the bank-note should be truthfully represented by coin. At the same time, he wished to do nothing to cripple credit; but credit should be based upon responsibility, and he should strenuously deprecate anything that would tend to depreciate the £5 note.

MR. MACFIE

said, he had listened with great pleasure and attention, but he had not understood the Secretary of the Treasury to imply that either he or any other Member of the Government contemplated the introduction into this country of greenbacks, or a very small paper currency. In Scotland, smaller notes than £5 notes were found very convenient; and the system existing there enabled the great banks to have their branches in almost all the villages of that country, without incurring the overwhelming cost of a central establishment. The proposal of the hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. Delahunty) ought to be most carefully guarded against, for it would interfere seriously with banking arrangements and prevent the extension of branch banks throughout the country—a most important social, as well as a commercial advantage to the localities in which they existed. In certain parts of Ireland capital did not find itself so secure that it would care to plant itself there; he (Mr. Macfie) trusted, however, that security would be extended to all parts of that country, and then they might expect commercial prosperity to follow. The misfortune of Ireland was its isolation; it had too little connection with this island. Something should be done to facilitate movements backward and forward of the people on the two sides of the Channel. It was unfortunate that there was almost no communication carried on by sea between the North of Ireland and the South-west of Scotland, and it was most desirable and worthy the attention of the Government that regular and frequent intercourse should be established between the parts of the two countries which were geographically nearest to each other. They knew how large an amount of riches went to Scotland from tourists, and he was of opinion that a great deal of money would find its way to Ireland if there were better means of communication, and tourists could regularly take Ireland as a part of their round either in going north to, or returning south from the West Highlands. As to the equalization of the laws of Great Britain and Ireland, advocated by the hon. Member for Waterford, much depended on the character of the laws that Ireland would become subject to. Not all past assimilations had directly benefited her. He would cite the case of the copyright and patent laws as illustrations to show that sometimes the progress of legislation was not exactly beneficial to Ireland. Formerly, Dublin publishers, when English copyright did not extend to Ireland, drove a considerable trade in reprinting English works; and as patents were seldom taken out for Ireland in days when the English patent did not extend to Ireland, that country had the chance of manufactures being introduced there whenever patentees charged high license royalties in Great Britain. Ireland had, however, shared in the great prosperity of the Empire; and if she had not increased in population, that arose from two causes—first, because she relied so much upon agriculture; and next, because her people availed themselves of the beneficial outlets to emigration. He wished, however, that the Government would soon find a home for Irish emigrants in all our own Colonies, whereby the strength of the Empire would be increased.

MR. DELAHUNTY

said, he would withdraw his Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.