institution of that Company up to the year 1797, there had been no interruption to the convertibility of their notes into money; nor any interference on the part of the State, in any thing that concerned the issue or circulation of those notes. This Company were simply the Bankers of the State, and, by a condition of their charter, its agent for the payment of the dividends due to the public creditor.

In 1797, in consequence of a demand upon the Bank for gold, continued for a time, and in a degree, altogether unusual, and arising from a combination of untoward circumstances and events, partly political, and partly commercial, the Directors of that institution felt themselves bound to state to the Government the unprecedented difficulties and embarrassments of their situation.

It is but justice to them to remark, that they did not resort to this measure, till they had tried, and found unavailing, all those means of checking the drain of cash, which had been effectual on former occasions. On these former occasions the Directors had uniformly found, that to lessen the amount of their issues of paper, was the sure mode of checking, and ultimately stopping, the demand for gold. It was natural for them, as practical men, to follow their established course; but when they found that, instead of abating, the drain increased every day, in proportion as they contracted the amount of their paper, it was equally natural for them to mistrust their own experience.

In this state of affairs, the remedy which was applied to the difficulties of the Bank and of the Country, was an Act for the temporary suspension of cash payments.

It is material to understand precisely the nature of the change which this act created in the state of our circulation; a change of the magnitude of which no man was more sensible than the persons whose duty it was to propose it to Parliament.

This act did not repeal any of the former regulations to which I have adverted, and which are the foundation of our money system. Neither did it make Bank notes a legal tender. It did not alter in any respect the existing state of the law, either as to the weight or the fineness of the gold coin; or the act of the 39th of the King It merely suspended other provisions of law (having in themselves no reference to our circulation, or money system), by which, in default of payment, the person and goods of a debtor are made liable for his debt. This liability it suspended, in cases where a tender shall have been made to the creditor of the amount of his claim in notes of the Bank of England.

If it had been proposed, at once, to make Bank notes a legal tender, and, in direct terms, to enact that every man should, thenceforward, be obliged to receive them as equivalent to the gold coin of the realm, without reference to the quantity of gold bullion which might be procured by a Bank note of any given denomination ;-such a proposition would have excited universal alarm, and would have forcibly drawn the attention of the Legislature and the public to the real nature of our circulation, and to the possible consequences of such an innovation. But, certainly, nothing of the sort was in the contemplation of any man when the first suspension act was passed. That it was then considered and proposed, as an expedient which would be but of short duration, the course of the proceedings in Parliament abundantly indicates.

Such being the original character of the measure, it is not extraordinary that, in that crisis, Parliament, without much hesitation, and without any suspicion of the ultimate possible consequences, should have afforded a temporary protection from arrest to a debtor, who should have made a tender of payment in Bank notes. But if, in the year 1797, it had been foreseen that this temporary expedient

would be attempted to be converted into a system for an indefinite number of years; and that, under this system, in the year 1810, every creditor, public or private, subject or alien, to whom the law, as it then stood, and as it now stands, had secured the payment of a pound weight of standard gold for every 467. 14s. 6d. of his just demand, would be obliged to accept, in full satisfaction, about 104 ounces, or not more than seventeen shillings in the pound, with a prospect of a still further reduction in every subsequent year; it is impossible to conceive that the attention and feelings of Parliament would not have been alive to all the individual injustice, and ultimate public calamities, incident to such a state of things; and that they would not have provided for the termination of the restriction, before it should have wrought so much mischief, and laid the foundation of so much confusion in all the dealings and transactions of the community.

Whether the actual state of things be such as I have just described, is the question upon which the public attention is now fixed :-and to which, I conceive, there can be but one answer. If the reader shall go along with me in the following statement, that answer will appear to him as obvious as it does to me.

1st. A pound, or twelve ounces of gold, by the law of this country, is divided into forty-four guineas and a half, or 461. 148. 6d.

2dly. By this division, which is made at the public expense, and without charge for coinage, nothing is added to the value of the gold; and nothing taken away from it.

3dly. A pound of gold, therefore, and 467. 14s. 6d. being equivalent, being in fact, the same thing under different names, any circulating credit which purports to represent

467. 148. 6d. ought, by the law of this country, to be exchangeable at will for a pound of gold.

4thly. No alteration has been made in this state of the law except by the Act of 1797.

5thly. The professed and intended operation of the Act of 1797 was not to diminish the quantity of gold for which any specific amount of circulating credit ought to be exchangeable, but merely to suspend, for a time, the option of the exchange.

6thly. But the sum of 467. 14s. 6d. in our present paper, will procure in exchange for gold, only 104 ounces of that metal :-A pound of gold is now exchangeable for 567. in paper currency. Any commodity, therefore, which is equivalent to a pound of gold, is also equivalent to 567. in paper.

It follows, that the difference between 561. and 461. 14s. 6d. or between 12 and 10 ounces of gold, arises from the depreciation of the paper; and is the measure of that depreciation, as well with respect to gold, the universal equivalent, as to every other commodity.

Those who differ from me in opinion, must be prepared to deny some one of these facts, from which, if not disproved, the conclusion necessarily follows. They must either shew, that I have mistated the permanent laws of the realm which regulate our coinage, and determine our legal tender; or they must shew, that gold is not the basis of our money—that its value is not measured by its quantity that the value of that quantity is varied by its conversion into coin. But these are propositions which no man who has ever looked at the subject will attempt to maintain.

Otherwise they must shew, that the intention of the temporary law 1797 was different from that which I have ascribed to it; and that it was intended, by that law, either to lower our standard, to alter our legal tender, or to leave us without any standard at all. But even if they should

be able to shew, that the intention of this temporary law was to make any one of these alterations, still, by the establishment of their proposition, they will not invalidate but confirm the conclusion which I have stated. They will only have established, by their own arguments, the fact of the depreciation, and will no otherwise have varied the question arising out of it, than by making it appear, that such depreciation of our currency was not the unforeseen consequence, but the premeditated result, of an act of the Legislature.

Although these appear to be the only imaginable grounds on which any exception can be offered to my statement, they are such as will not be taken by any man who does justice to the character of the legislature, or has any recollection of the circumstances under which it passed the Act of 1797.

It would be monstrous to imagine that it could ever be in the contemplation and intention of either House of Parliament, that Bank notes, at their present, or at any less value, to which they might possibly be reduced, should be a legal tender. To entertain such an opinion would be to impute to Parliament a design to practise a deception, and to encourage a fraud. What would have been the consistency, what the integrity of a Legislature, which, leaving unrepealed and unmodified the regulations which take away the character of a legal tender from every guinea weighing less than 5 dwts. 8 grs., would give it to a Bank note, purporting to be a security for the same denomination, but the real value of which is, at this moment, 4 dwts. 14 grains, or, in other words, about three shillings less than the lightest guinea which is allowed to pass in payment?

If such be the effect of the Act of 1797, let us see, by a comparison of that effect with the whole purport and tendency of all the antecedent laws, which regulate and govern