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friends that he requires "freedom of discretion." He is habit and repute addicted to the exercise of that branch of liberty. He is a sturdy beggar, who takes first, and then asks permission. The cool civility with which he invites his constituency of Tamworth not to elect him unless they are pleased with the condition, is a mere flight of satire. They know, of course, that they must elect him. That is his affair. He alone can prevent them from electing him, by keeping off the hustings. When he is once there it is much the same thing whether he requests "freedom of discretion" or "freedom to have the Bishops out of the House of Peers"-whether he solicits their leave to endow Dr. M'Hale, or to invite Pius IX. to take apartments in Lambeth palace-the electors of Tamworth must return their man. To gild the matter, they are informed that Sir Robert has been invited to stand for many commercial constituencies of greater numbers and importance. We have heard of a requisition from Birmingham, and another from Glasgow. The first was stopped by the way, and the second perished of inanition. Requisitions are matters entirely at variance in their nature with returns. Nothing is easier than to get up a requisition; and often nothing more difficult than to get it followed by a return. It is quite obvious that Sir Robert Peel could not have been returned for Glasgow. We sincerely doubt whether he could have polled five hundred votes. We do not believe that he would have been more successful in Birmingham. We remembered, though others may have forgotten, the feeling against him respecting the currency-laws in both these towns, whose inhabitants and traders have been heavy losers by his prejudice for metal. We regard the great commercial constituencies, therefore, as cast into the pamphlet merely to soften the fate of Tamworth. That is, however, a matter between the writer and his own conscience. In his old borough, Sir Robert Peel has full freedom of discretion; and our object is to protest against the gradual assumption of the privilege by other and by lesser, and by less discreet men.

ON FINANCE AND FREE TRADE.

bargain is the hardest ever driven. We are not certain that Sir Robert Peel ever enjoyed the confidence of his party, and at present he is nearly deserted; although the time may come when the helm will again be offered to the dangerous pilot, who will then recover the intention and the wish to resume that authority which belongs, or ought to belong, to office.

The candidate of Tamworth speaks of office as at his disposal. He slumbers with pen in hand, and dreams that the ball is at his foot. It is not his intention to resume office. The refusal rests with him; the offer is really with the electorswith the people-although directly with the Crown. The resumption of office is not, therefore, his affair. As yet the offer is not made, and never may be made again. There are, undoubtedly, more principles to be retracted by Sir Robert Peel, ere he has the refusal of office in his power, than those that he has already gainsaid. The feeling forming on the currency-laws may bear him back again to repeal them, and to complete the circle of his self-sacrifices. There will then remain no principle which he has ever defended, and has not lived to assail and overthrow. For the possibility of this juncture, notwithstanding his present intentions, the ex-Premier prepares by a careful and elaborate review of the success that has attended his experiments in finance and taxation. Finance is supposed to be Sir Robert Peel's strong point. Talk of him and of his measures in the cabin of any steamer in our seas, and the chances are that half-a-dozen persons will break in with, "but Sir Robert is a splendid financier." There are few stage-coaches on the roads now, but there are some; and the name of the Tamworth Representative could not be mentioned on the top of one of them by a travelling and inquiring American, but he is certain of hearing from the guard, "that Sir Robert is a great hand at figures." A great hand he is assuredly a very great hand-for he cuts and shuffles, and tosses so here and there all the nine numerals, with lots of "noughts," that one gets bewildered amongst them, and would require to be extricated by a Mr. Tidd Pratt―the very soul of modern accountantship. As Mr. D'Israeli declares that all science is of Arabic origin— which may be true enough in one way, if the garden of Eden be in Arabia-and as the nu

that he might not be able to see through some of Sir Robert Peel's mystifications of the Multiplication Table; but for our own part, we have long thought seriously, that the ex-Premier had yet one service to render his country, and which he can alone accomplish-namely, to account the National Creditors out of the several sums due to them. He has only to commence operations on them individually, in order to show, by columns of statistics, that they were paid off five years ago, and have since been receiving in interest a bonus upon nothing, for nothing was due.

"The grapes are sour," quoth the fox, as he turned from the tree, after many an ineffective effort to reach them. The fox is a true philoso-merals are ascribed to the Arabs, we don't know pher; he always strives after the self-command that conceals mortification, and wears in defeat the brow of victory. This kind of hypocrisy is by no means despicable; in political life it is particularly desirable. Sir Robert Peel assures his friends at Tamworth that he is "without the intention or wish to resume either that authority which belongs, or ought to belong, to office, or that influence which is conferred by the lead and guidance of a great political party”—the lead and guidance of a great political party will naturally spring from the confidence of that party, or from its necessities. A party without a leader according to its wishes, must, in the freedom of discretion, make a compact with necessity; and this

The object of his arithmetic, addressed to the people of Tamworth, is to show that from 1841 to 1846 he reduced taxes amounting to £7,625,000,

without reducing the revenue more than £779,000. We have no natural reluctance to figures-having twenty years since studied book-keeping by single and double entry, and since then had to deal with several twisted skeins of numerals; but we cannot discover any immediate sequence between the reductions of taxation effected by Sir Robert Peel and the increase of revenue from the departments which he did not reduce. There are some elements of revenue that might be increased by the abolition or reduction of other taxes. The removal of the tax on tea would be followed by a greater consumpt of sugar than at present; and necessarily there would be realised an additional income from the sugar duties. But indiscriminate reductions can have no great or immediate result of this nature. Nothing is more calculated to injure any cause than sanguine and unfounded calculations propagated in all quarters, certain to be refuted by experience, and liable ever to prejudice a particular policy in public estimation. Freedom of trade, for example, would not work an instantaneous miracle. A patient reduced to weakness from a long course of bad living is not to expect strength immediately on his abandonment of evil practices. He may be restored by perseverance to sound health. Months or years of a proper course of life may entirely change and renovate his system but he need not run round his friends on the third day of his return to reason and morality, inviting them to mark the strength that cold water has imparted to his frame on receipt. An invalid cannot draw on health bills payable at sight. He must write out a long date if he expects his drafts to be accepted and paid. The social economy of a nation is, at least, equally difficult to cure. The repeal of some acts, and the adoption of other statutes, will not convert gloom into sunshine with a magician's stroke. In this, as in most other matters, we must wait and work thankful that the Legislature has, in removing impediments, done its part.

Sanguine calculations characterise all the exPremier's arithmetical arguments; and he has been an eminently fortunate statesman. He came last into power on the back of a season of great distress, and he was thrust out of office at a date immediately preceding the greatest calamity that has fallen on this country since the

war.

The interval was marked by great prosperity, and by an excitement and speculation unprecedented in the current century, or perhaps at any other time. The rapid distribution of capital, and the influence of tolerably good harvests, and low prices, combined to increase the demand for colonial and foreign produce, and the amount of duties payable on their importation. Even in 1847 the importation, the consumpt, and the revenue from colonial and foreign produce, has increased; and in many quarters this symptom of weakness has been mistaken for a proof of returning strength. Grain has reached a price that renders the use of sugar in distillation advisable, and thus its consumpt has increased. Tea and coffee have been substituted to a great

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extent for the ordinary food of the Irish, and even of a large number of the Scottish and English people; and it must be remembered that a considerable portion of the increase in the consumpt of these articles in the Clyde, the Mersey, and the Severn, has been on Irish account, although nominally set down to the English and Scottish receipt of custom. There is not an importer or a wholesale grocer in Glasgow, Liverpool, or Bristol, who cannot substantiate this statement; and who knows not, what Sir Robert Peel seems to forget, that our increased revenue in 1847, in part at least, and in no inconsiderable part, arises out of our increased misery; being, in fact, part of the eight million loan repaid in duties. The fact, to any party acquainted with these subjects sufficiently clear without a parade of figures, shows the limited degree of trust that must be placed in tables; and the probability that deception may lurk even amongst the numerals, leading us to believe in the reality of prosperity, while we are driving rapidly on the road to ruin. The flattering array of tables may be only the hectic spot on the face of beauty, disclosing its progress in consumption, and to the grave.

Their

There are two classes of duties which Sir R. Peel's Government touched: one, that they reFrom pealed-and another, that they reduced. those that were repealed there is nothing to expect. Out of nothing, nothing can be made. removal is a direct and dead loss to the revenue; but may be a gain to the people, greater in extent than their money value; and thus they may render good service to the State, even in their demise. The duties, for example, have been withdrawn from the importation of the raw material of manufactures-from cotton wool, from flax, and other produce; and thus the manufacturers of these articles have been relieved. Lord George Bentinck, in endeavouring to refute the arguments of Sir Robert Peel, quotes the fall in the exports of cotton, linen, and woollen manufactures in the first five months of 1847, compared with the first five months of 1845, as evidence that the repeal of the cotton duty has not served the interests of our manufacturers. Both statesmen err by leaning fixedly on the numerals. The fact adduced by Lord George Bentinck, only shows that a mere accountant is incapable of estimating, through the channels afforded by his profession alone, the progress or the decay of a nation. We fear that all parties have allowed themselves to be misled by an exhibition of figures, without a consideration of principles. It cannot be denied, that the exportation of cotton, linen, and woollen manufactures fell in the period quoted by Lord George Bentinck; and it even makes the case more favourable for the noble Lord that there was a rise in the value of the raw material; so that although no higher prices may have been obtained for cotton yarns and goods exported, yet the duty repealed had all been thrown into the cost of production, rather than into the profit fund. It does not, however, follow, from a reduction in the foreign exports occurring immediately on the abolition of the cotton duty, that the trade

was not greatly benefitted by the repeal of that | ness into new channels, after obstructions are

tax. Except for that step the demand for foreign markets might have been less, and our power to compete with foreign makers crippled. Lord George Bentinck, therefore, has no evidence, in figures, that the repeal of the duty, in any way, interfered with the sale of the products, and Sir Robert Peel is not supported, even by his figures, in the response for which he works the oracle.

cleared away; and we cannot yet look for the fair and legitimate results of acts that only passed the legislature a few months since, in a season that has been exceptional to all general rules.

Sir Robert Peel's address begins with 1841. He seems to have cut away all the previous | years of his lifetime. To the last parliament, and to that alone he invites the attention of his constituents. History will not thus deal with facts. Whatever degree of assistance he may have ultimately rendered to a system of policy that could be no longer obstructed, however it might have been weakened-its delay was mainly to be ascribed to his opposition. The credit that he can claim belongs only to a late convert. He has proclaimed how much wiser than the Premier of England had many a spurned and contemned village politician been, who even before the Manchester League had given weight and consistency to the agitation-proclaimed within his circle the principles of free trade which the Legislature have recently adopted. This fact has been much overlooked, and with it the earnest consistency of men who furnished the arguments on which this great change proceeded when its advocacy was repaid by scorn and persecution. We have heard of a penny subscription to Peel-a penny subscription to provide a testimonial to a man for being, by his own confession, a fool during thirty years of his public life, and a wise man only in the thirty-first! A penny subscription to pay the means of testifying national gratitude to the statesman who has always kept upon the winning side, and has stood by injustice until there was not a plank left for wrong to float by! A penny subscription for a convert who resisted reason, and was only instructed by famine and the regis

The reduction in our foreign exports, on a comparison of the first five months of 1845 with the similar period of 1847, is established by tables. There can be no doubt that we exported more goods in 1845 than in 1847. It does not follow that we sold more. When Sir Robert Peel was moving the adoption of his new measures in 1846, he quoted the liberal exports of 1845 to prove the success of his policy. The quotations were applauded. The triumph was considered complete. The Minister and his friends were deceived by numerals. They looked at the bare figures, which are facts of doubtful character, and forgot all other considerations. The exports of 1845 were largely composed of consignments. Goods were sent out in the hope that they would sell. In some cases bills were drawn upon them. In others orders were given for produce to be paid by these proceeds. Either alternative produced the same issue of forcing the sale of manufactures in foreign markets below their value. In 1847 there have been fewer consignments. Money has been scarce, and discounts have been dear, so that even distant orders have been occasionally neglected, and the business done has been of a more substantial character than in 1845. When, therefore, Sir Robert Peel quoted the increase of exports in 1845, as the ground of proceeding with his measures in 1846, he relied upon a show of figures which were thoroughly unsub-tration courts! Then, surely, we should have a stantial; and now when Lord George Bentinck twenty shilling's subscription to such men as retaliates these same figures on his opponent, he Colonel Thompson, Mr. Hume, Ebenezer Elliot, is in a similar error. We believe that the time and Mr. Villiers. If Peel is to be rewarded for is not yet fully come when the consequences of succumbing when resistance was unavailable, the late commercial measures can be judged from how should the men be remunerated by whom facts. The present year is, and even the previous the siege was conducted, the breaches made, and year was, exceptional in the ordinary course of this citadel of corruption compelled to surrenevents. The harvests of 1845 and 1846 disorder! ganised all commercial proceedings; and even if that had not occurred, there has not been sufficient time given from practical results to prove the expediency of these measures. On that subject we entertain no doubt. It is a matter dependent on principles to which statistics will ulti-thralling their native land from those very bonds mately conform themselves. The British people have done their part to open up the world's trade, and other nations must follow in these paths. Early in 1846, Sir Robert Peel quoted the imports of live cattle to show that the removal of the prohibition to import them had not led to a great influx of foreign stock. He had forgotten that stock of this description cannot be reared in a There is in this pamphlet a curious omission. single quarter. At the time the foreign cattle The writer professes to give an account of his brought into this country were not numerous, Parliamentary career from 1841 to 1847. He is but in 1847, so far as it has yet gone, they have at the confessional, and pretends to make a clear increased three hundred per cent. on the impor-exposition of all his transactions; but he omits tations of 1845. Years are required to bring busi- those measures which he said in 1844 and 1845

Even before the Manchester men, who finally settled the question of the corn law, combined for that purpose, how many individuals in humble circumstances, in small towns and even in rural districts, suffered loss, and reproach, and persecution, from their desire to aid in disen

that Peel was applauded and rewarded for defending. Good men do not work for applause; and it is well, for amongst the friends of free trade virtue had need to be its own reward.

THE CURRENCY LAWS.

were designed and calculated to ensure all the protection to capital and industry that human legislation could afford. In 1844 he thus described the probable operation of his new currency law :

"To ensure, so far as legislation can ensure, the just reward of industry, and the legitimate profit of commercial enterprise, conducted with integrity, and controlled by provident calculation."

In 1845 this law was partially extended to Scotland. The nature of the changes then accomplished was important. The issue of paper circulation was converted into a gradually narrowing monopoly. It was not fixed in the hands of a definite and non-decreasing body, but in that of a body limited only against increase, and exposed to all the probabilities of decrease. The new currency bills are self-acting in this respect. They make certain, not merely that the monopolists shall not increase but that they shall decrease. All the contingencies of failures, of removals, of deaths-all these means that are ever operating to remove one, and produce another race of business-men-are employed to reduce the amount of the paper circulation, or to compress the paper issue within smaller limits; and thus to render the privilege more obnoxious.

The

largest transaction in Scottish banking.
banker is an agent between those who have to
lend and those who have to borrow. He lends,
however, on time bargains. Discounted bills
must run their dates. The holder cannot demand
payment until the date is run out. But deposits
are accepted without any limitation of this na-
ture. They are payable on demand. The depo-
sits of Scotch banks are supposed to exceed their
circulation in the proportion of 12 to 1. This
supposition is, we believe, greatly within the
truth. We observed, in the accounts of one bank
recently, deposits amounting to five millions, and
in the proportion of 16 to 1 on its circulation.

The Currency Laws offer no precaution against a run by depositors and the power to pay in gold would not survive three days in a panic of this nature. There is no security afforded by these laws that is value for a tenth of their cost.

They are equally inefficient in obtaining stability. Within the short period of three years since their enactment, we have seen money more abundant and cheaper than at any former period : and again money scarcer and dearer than ever it has been since the country became distinguished by a very marked expansion of commerce. Its business for some years has been wisely done. With the great exception of the railway works, its commerce has been based on the soundest foundations. Except for this circumstance, the present year must have been distinguished by the most ruinous and widely spread embarrassments. The export of four or five millions of sovereigns shook credit and confidence. One man became nearly insolvent with a little silver mine in his possession. A bankrupt, overstocked with silver, would certainly have been a rare phenomenon in the practice of Mr. Commissioner Fonblanque; but the contingency was not impossible. Money rose, and other property, excepting corn and foreign imports, fell. All home manufactured property was (and is) reduced in value. Everything receded before the corn and the money powers. Ten and twelve per cent. were freely paid for mo

The laws enacted in 1844 and 1845 fix the paper currency to a definite amount. They enact a fixed currency without ensuring fixed prices or fixed numbers. They operate for its gradual destruction. It is true that the banks may issue paper to any extent on a metallic basis. There is nothing to prevent them from purchasing sovereigns, storing them past in their vaults, and issuing notes to correspond with the quantity in their possession. That, however, is not a paper, but a gold currency. It is extended, or contracted, with the metal which it represents. Sir Robert Peel himself declares that gold is the most expensive currency. The fact is undeniable. In the first instance, gold must be bought. The capital which it represents is sunk. It becomes of no further utility, and the annual charge of interest, of tear and wear,ney by houses of ample means; and credit has and of absolute loss incurred to the nation, is a comparatively small, but not an inconsiderable disadvantage. The law was, however, to provide security and stability. Security it does not provide. The public have still to confide in the capital, the property, and the prudence of the bankers. The security provided by the Act is an expensive delusion. There are, indeed, two branches to which the term security may be applied. The convertibility of the notes might be, but is not secured. Even in the case of the Bank of England, there is an issue of fourteen millions, based upon Government securities. It is calculated that the circulation never will fall within that sum; but the calculation is entirely arbitrary. There is no absolute security attainable that the catastrophe which is deemed impossible may not occur; and the security for convertibility would become immediately worthless. Bankers, however, not only issue paper, but take deposits. That forms the

been supported by such costly sacrifices as business cannot afford. Even while we write, one of the greatest public companies in England, the London and North-western, is advertising for loans on three years' bonds at five per cent; and two years ago the same company could have borrowed at three and a half per cent.

The meaning of this is, that the man who, two years since, could command £100,000 may now be nominally worth no more money, but its value is really equivalent to that of £145,000 at the period named. Capital has gained and industry has lost on that sum £45,000. Property in shares, in stocks, and even in goods, has been depreciated in a corresponding degree. The reduetion of the property invested in the national funds is nominally not less than sixty millions sterling within twelve months. An eminent and well-informed sharebroker stated in one of his monthly circulars, that the reduction in the value of all stocks ordinarily saleable in our markets, includ

ing national funds, could not be calculated at less than one hundred millions within the same period. Our foreign exports may be roundly estimated at fifty-five millions, and, in conducting that branch of business, there must be an average outlay of money for a not less period than eighteen months, from the day that the miner strikes his pick into the ore, or the husbandman casts his seed into the soil, or the hatches are closed over bales of cotton wool in the Mississipi, of raw silk in the Ganges, or of Australian wool in the Yarra Yarra, until that day when the British merchant obtains payment of the hardware, the cottons, the linens, the silks, or the woollens sold to his foreign customers. The period named is too short for the process; but as the outlay progresses at each stage of the manufacture, we may assume eighteen months as something like an average. The difference in the value of money within twelve months-caused, we insist, by those Currency Laws which Sir Robert Peel has omitted to number amongst his achievements of the last six years-is even to the best trading houses equal to two per cent. For eighteen months this rate gives three per cent. on all our foreign exports; and a gross sum on fifty-five millions of £1,650,000 taken annually from the wages of labour, or the profits of capital actively engaged in business, and the returns of skill, risk, and enterprise and paid over to the mere money-lender. Capital is to that extent enriched, and industry impoverished.

The money requisite in the preparation of manufactures for the home market, in the ordinary transfer of goods here, in our agriculture, our commerce, and our fisheries, is much larger than is supposed, even by parties largely engaged in business. So far back as 1831, it appeared from the returns of the stamp tax on bills and receipts, according to M'Queen's calculations in his "Statistics of the British Empire," that the amount of capital transferred by bills of exchange, and on which discounts were paid, was £398,392,951. The addition to prices in this season, and the general increase of business within sixteen years, justify us in assuming the capital transferred on bills of exchange at £500,000,000 within 1847. We presume that the average of these bills run for ninety days or three months. Large numbers are for shorter dates-some for eight, ten, and twenty days-a larger number at one month-a comparatively small number at sixty days; but to meet that there are numerous and heavy bills drawn at four, at six, and even at twelve months. We assume three months as a fair average, and one-half per cent.-taking the increased rate of money at two per cent.-is the gross extra charge made on this capital per annum, by Peel's bills-which he forgets to mention in his address, as if they were matters of comparatively little moment, though they are at present agitating society everywhere; influencing elections; and felt in their consequences by all classes who work and earn. The extra charge for that part of the country's business done through bills of exchange, on the preceding basis of calculation, is £2,500,000. Even there, however, we have

At

only a comparatively small portion of the capital affected by these acts. Whatever raises the value of money taxes industry. The annual produce of the agriculture and fisheries of Great Britain and Ireland was estimated in 1831 at £474,029,688. The capital, requisite for preparing agricultural produce for the market, is not to a large extent transferred by bills of exchange. There are bills passing amongst the smaller class of farmers; but generally the advances, where advances are requisite, are made by bankers or private individuals in the form of loans. Since 1831 the value of agricultural produce has very greatly increased, and we are not guilty of any reflection on the circumstances of the tenant farmers by supposing that this accumulation of produce is not raised without loans of at least, on an average, £175,000,000, because the capital invested in the soil by tenant farmers is assumed to be equal to £700,000,000; and we may fairly presume that one-fourth of the sum is held on loan. an additional interest of two per cent., the extra cost on this department is £3,500,000. The gross value of property in land, timber, mines, and all other matters that range under the general title of the landed interest is £250,000,000. We do not over-estimate the value of that portion of this property which is under mortgage in assuming it to be one-fifth of the whole, or £500,000,000, on which we believe at least £400,000,000 to be borrowed. An addition of two per cent. to the annual interest on this sum is a yearly charge of £8,000,000. The value of house and shop property, and buildings of that description, is estimated at £750,000,000; and we believe that they are mortgaged to one-fourth of their value, or to the amount of £187,500,000; and the addition of two per cent. per annum to this sum makes £3,750,000. The capital absolutely sunk in manufactures within the three kingdoms may be estimated at £250,000,000; of which, we presume, that one-fourth is on loan, or £62,500,000; and, pursuing our previous estimate, the extra annual charge is equal to £1,240,000. The stock of goods in the hands of wholesale and retail dealers, and in transit, forms another item connected with this department. This division of the national capital was estimated sixteen years since at £350,000,000. Notwithstanding the increase of business, we doubt if this particular outlay has increased; because the facilities of communication are daily lessening the inducements to keep large stocks on hand. We may suppose regarding it, however, assuming the estimate of 1831 to be correct in 1847, that onefourth is held on loan, or advances in some form; and we shall thus find that an extra charge is again incurred in this department of £1,710,000. The money loans on railways, shipping, roads, harbours, and similar public works, greatly exceed £100,000,000; but, assuming that sum, there is an extra charge upon it of £2,000,000, on this calculation. The summation of these different charges makes a large sum, although we have avoided altogether the outlay on articles of luxury.

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