measure of value; but such a measure we never had, nor ever could have. In the present case, gold might have fallen in value, at the same time that paper-money had been rising; and therefore, when they met, and were at par with each other, the rise in papermoney might not have been equal to the whole of the former difference. To speak with precision, therefore, of the value of money at any particular period, was what no man could do; but when we spoke of depreciation, there was always a standard by which that might be estimated.

Mr Western's motion was supported by Mr Attwood, member for Callington, in a very elaborate and animated speech, remarkable, if not for the soundness of the principles it developed, at least for the great practical knowledge and acuteness which were brought to bear upon the subject. Mr Attwood's doctrines, which he illustrated with much ingenuity and ability, and enforced with considerable eloquence, and all the resources of a refined logic, were substantially these: First, he maintained, that the old standard which we have re-established, is incapable of sustaining any higher scale of prices, than that which now exists, and which has accompanied its re-establishment; that the law which re-established that old description of money of the value of L.3: 17: 103, re-established also the old scale of prices generally; and that with respect to agricultural produce in particular, it appears that no higher average rate of agricultural produce than the present ever has existed, or can be with reason expected to exist, in conjunction with our present monied standard. The doctrine thus laid down, he endeavoured to support by comparing the prices of corn during the period of the restriction, with the average price it bore under the metal standard; from which he deduced the conclusion, that as the difference thus

estimated was equal to 45 per cent, that was to be taken as the amount of the rise in the value of money which had been occasioned by the measure of 1819. And that this, and not any excess of production, was the real cause of the depreciation of corn, he entered into some calculations to show that iron, cotton, and wool, our three great staple articles, had, since 1818, suffered a depreciation to the same extent with corn, namely, upon an average of the three years, 45 per cent. He further stated, that taking the list of thirty of the principal articles of manufacture and commerce, which had been delivered by Mr Tooke, as part of his evidence to the Agricultural Committee, and in which the prices of each commodity were given for several successive years, as taken in the month of May each year, and causing to be added to it the prices of each of these articles for the month of May in the present year, he found that the fall which had taken place between May 1818 and May 1822, in the prices of the articles contained in this table, deducting the direct tax payable on some of them, was exactly 40 per cent.; and that, if 5 per cent. more were added, for the difference between prices as marked in the table, and those for which commodities can really be sold in the market when depressed, the result would be a fall of 45, or precisely the amount of the fall on the price of grain. He asserted, therefore, that there was no truth in the opinion, that any fall in prices peculiar to agricultural produce had taken place; that the fall in prices was universal, not particular; and that, as there was no other event to which this universal depression could be ascribed, except the change produced in the value of money by the measure of 1819, it was inconsistent with all the rules of sound logic to deny that it was the cause of all the evils which now overwhelmed the country.

In the second place he held, that the amount of money withdrawn from circulation for the purpose of preparing for the introduction of the old standard, must necessarily have occasioned a fall of prices as great as that which has been experienced; that the fall of prices was general; and that it was simply an increase in the value of money occasioned by its lessened quantity. By referring to the returns showing the amount of bank-notes in circulation from 1817 downwards, he showed that a regular diminution had taken place till, in May 1822, the circulating medium had been reduced one-fifth of what it was in the latter half of 1817. This he described as a forced and systematic contraction, which did not take place in consequence of a fall of prices, but preceded it. But the fall of prices which ensued, was, he said, in a greater proportion than the quantity by which the amount of the currency had been reduced; the Bank had called in only one-fourth or one-fifth of their notes, but the fall in prices approached nearly to one-half. He was aware that it had been denied that prices would fall except in proportion to the reduction of the quantity of money; but the fact was incontestable, and to facts we must reconcile our theories as well as we are able. Twenty-three millions of bank-notes in circulation in reality did no more than sustain prices, somewhat more than one-half of those prices which were sustained by thirty millions.

Lastly, he asserted, that the repayment of the Bank advances by Government was the measure on which this reduction in the quantity of money, and the consequent increase in its value, had been founded. "We found," said Mr Attwood," existing high prices, money in great quantity, of low value, of a depreciated, a debased value, as compared with a description of money which had formerly existed. Our

VOL. XIV. PART I.

public money had been thrown into circulation, and retained there by means of advances made by those who issued it to the Government. We caused those advances to be repaid and reduced. We lessened by that means the quantity of circulating money; we raised its value to a level with that of the old standard, and caused a proportionate fall in prices; and finally, by the act of 1819 we established permanently by law, that standard and those prices which we had thus introduced. These are the proceedings by which we have reduced prices, regular, systematic, effectual. Their existence, their operation, cannot be disputed or denied. I am perfectly persuaded that no honourable gentleman will venture to deny, with respect even to this last operation, that if the Bank were to advance again that fifteen millions repaid it by the Government since 1817, and were enabled to do so by the necessary alteration in the act of 1819; it will not, I am persuaded, be denied that that advance would be at once followed (in spite of all the influence of excessive production, to whatever extent it exists), by a scale of prices as high as that which existed in 1818, and which existed during the war.

"By these proceedings the debt of every debtor, by whatever description of pecuniary contract he is bound, has been increased. These measures are laws, by which we have enacted, that an augmentation should be made to every debt which one man owes to another, and to that which the nation owes to the public creditor. For every L.60 that we found owing, we have enacted by law that L. 100 shall be paid. We have made the claim of the creditor as strong and valid for this false and fraudulent augmentation which we have given him, for this fictitious L.40 which he had never lent, which the debtor had never received, as it is for his real and just debt, for the L.60

H

which he had lent, and which the debtor did in reality and justice owe. For this fictitious debt which we have thus created we have rendered the property of the debtor subject to execution and his person to imprisonment. It is not that we have protected the creditor in his just rights; we have defrauded the debtor, and taken away his property, in this proportion and in this manner, throughout the whole extent of the kingdom.

"These measures are laws by which we have established that all the public burdens shall be in a like proportion increased. They are additional taxes which we have imposed; pensions and salaries which we have distributed, amidst the increase of the public distress. We had accumulated a mass of annual taxes, to the amount of sixty millions, by a long and gradual course of taxation, directly imposed; we had increased pensions and salaries to twelve millions annually, by a long course of gradual, direct, and progressive augmentation; and then by these measures we proceeded to augment at once every existing tax on whatever it was imposed; every pension and every salary for whatever service: we accomplished this by a disguised and hidden operation, concealed from the view of the people, on whom we caused these augmented burdens suddenly to fall, from the view of their representatives, from our own view, our attention being occupied with one miserable object, and with one only. The sixty millions of annual taxes we thus made equal to one hundred millions, and the twelve millions of salaries and pensions have been made equal to twenty millions. We found eight hundred millions of accumulated debt, and we increased it at once to fourteen hundred millions, in their effectual pressure on the industry of the people, in their effectual drain on the property and resources of the country; which property and

which resources we thus gave over to the creditors and servants of the state. Our annual taxes are at this moment, and by these means, more than three times the amount of all the rent of all our land; and we pay more in pensions and salaries than all the cultivators of all our soil can ever in future obtain.

"These are the effects, the nature, the character of these operations, of magnitude and wrong without a parallel, which have been thus carried into effect."

demand.

Bolder sophisms than these have seldom, we believe, been advanced in the British House of Commons; but as they were refuted by anticipation, in the masterly speech of Mr Huskisson, it is not necessary to extend farther our account of the debate, or to attempt any abstract of Mr Peel's reply. We may, however, be permitted to observe, that the whole reasoning of Mr Attwood is built upon assumptions, all of them false in theory, many of them erroneous in point of fact. For example, he denies that the fall in the price of corn has been produced by an excess in the supply, as compared with the And how does he prove this allegation? By informing us that a concomitant fall to nearly the same amount with corn has taken place in the price of iron, wool, and cotton. Now, assuming the fact to be as he has stated, it is clear that the analogy here attempted to be established cannot possibly hold; for the price which these commodities bring in the market, must depend upon the demand for the articles into which they are manufactured. But this demand may be affected by a number of causes, which can have no influence upon the demand for corn, an article of the first necessity, and which undergoes no process of manufacture before it is fitted for consumption. the next place, in estimating the increase in the value of money at 45 per cent., it is plain that Mr Attwood does

In

not refer to the period when Mr Peel's bill was passed, but to the period of the greatest depreciation; and that he charges the whole increase in the value of the currency to that measure. Now, it is to the system which allowed of such violent fluctuations in the value of money, that Mr Peel's bill put an end. If, indeed, as Mr Ricardo remarks, the price of gold in 1819, or immediately preceding 1819, had been L.5, 10s. per ounce, no measure could have been more inexpedient than to make so violent a change in all subsisting engagements, as would, on that supposition, have followed the restoration of the ancient standard; but the price of gold was then, and had been for four years, about L.4, 2s., that is, the currency had come within 5 per cent. of gold; and surely no proceeding could have been more monstrous, than to have again degraded it 30 per cent. below the value of the standard. How, then, could Mr Peel's bill have raised the value of money 45 per cent., and sunk the price of all other commodities in the same proportion, when it is evident that it only raised the value of paper 5 per cent., as compared with gold; or, allowing for the effect produced on the price of gold by the premature purchases of the Bank of England, at the most 10 per cent. *? Upon what principle will he account for the supposed increase, amounting to the remaining 35 per cent.? Even in 1813, the depreciation did not exceed 30 per cent.: how then can it be alleged, with

any show of reason, that Mr Peel's bill raised the value of the currency 15 per cent. above the maximum of depreciation? As to the expedient of the Bank renewing its advances to Government, it only amounts to this, that now when contracts of all kinds have begun to adjust themselves to the restored standard, when the prices of all commodities have been nearly regulated to a better and sounder state, and when the country has just begun to recover from the evils which unavoidably followed the abandonment of the pernicious system pursued from 1797 to 1819, every thing is to be unsettled by a new convulsion, and the whole country thrown into confusion, that a nominal, not a real rise, may take place in the money price of corn. But it is useless, after what has been so ably urged against this perilous proposal, to waste another word in attempting to refute it. Mr Brougham having, inconsistently enough, spoken in support of the motion, and Lord Londonderry against it, the House divided, when there appeared for Mr Western's motion 30, against it 194, majority 164. Mr Huskisson's amendment was then put and agreed to.

Undismayed by this total and memorable defeat, Mr Western, tenax propositi, determined to encounter the peril of a second, and on the 10th of July brought the subject again before the House, in a string of eighteen resolutions. Fortune, however, does not always favour the bold: the resolutions were negatived without a division.