and to some in Holland. The number of houses that failed in Hamburgh, between August and November 1799, was eighty-two, and the amount of their engagements upwards of 29,000,000 banco marks, or about L.2,500,000 sterling. In a contemporary description of this distress published in the beginning of November, it is stated that the embarrassments of the merchants at Hamburgh have increased to an alarming degree; and during the whole month of October, every mail that has arrived, has added several names to the unfortunate list of houses which have stopped payment in that city, where there are scarcely any persons in the mercantile line, whatever may be their wealth and connexion, who have not experienced considerable difficulties, while the effects thereof have extended to Bremen, Frankfort, Amsterdam, and many other of the principal trading towns on the Continent." In the Gentleman's Magazine and Annual Register may be found descriptions of three great commercial revulsions which originated on the Continent, where the currency was wholly metallic; the first in 1763; the second in 1771-2, and the third in 1778-9.

But it is not our object at present to go into any detail respecting the means by which a paper circulating medium might be placed upon a secure basis; we have no doubt that in four and twenty hours a second rate clerk in the Treasury, assisted by a second-rate clerk in any ordinary banking-house, might devise a plan which would put such a currency upon a secure footing.

Forming our opinion not from the speculations of theorists, but from facts and experience, we entertain no doubt that the extinction of the small note circulation has added at least 25 per cent to the standard of value; and that all money obligations have been increased in a proportionate ratio. At this moment every article of agricultural produce sells for at least 25 per cent under its price at this time twelvemonth. There is no pretence for saying that this fall in the price of commodities has been occasioned by over-production. That hack and thread-bare argument cannot, without the most palpable insult upon common sense, be applied to

the past year. Our crops of every kind were acknowledged to be under an average; indeed, Mr Jacob, who is generally admitted to be an authority in those matters, and who was specially employed by government to investigate the subject, states that the produce of the last harvest falls considerably short of an average crop; but in the face of this statement, which no man who knows Mr Jacob's accuracy in enquiries of the kind, will venture to dispute, and which the government which employed him will scarcely have the hardihood to controvert, it is still found that the price of every article of consumption has fallen at least one-fourth; which places it beyond all doubt that the change has been effected-not by an over-supply of commodities, but by a change in the standard in which they are valued. This furnishes fair ground to conclude, that if it had not been for the rise which the change in our monetary system has occasioned in the value of money, there would have been, instead of a fall, a rise in the price of agricultural produce, proportioned to the diminution which has taken place in the supply.

One of two alternatives is now offered to the choice of Government: we must either return to a paper circulating medium, which, by banishing gold, will lessen its exchangeable value, and, by that means, restore the pound sterling to its standard value before the act for the suppression of one-pound notes came into operation or a reduction must be made in all taxes, annuities, and payments, proportioned to the increased value of the medium of exchange in which they are to be liquidated. With regard to this point, the Lincolnshire petitioners hit the right nail on the head: they say, "either re-establish the measure of the value in which all our obligations were contracted, in which rents were arranged, annuities granted, mortgages borrowed, and taxes assessed: or reduce the amount of these demands in proportion to the enhanced value of the currency in which they are to be discharged: we are willing to meet all the just claims both of our public and private creditors; but we will not submit to be plundered by a legislative regulation which entitles the tax

gatherer, the annuitant, and moneylender to exact at least 25 per cent more than he has any moral right to claim." From this dilemma we feel quite certain that Government cannot escape: if, for reasons which we cannot comprehend, they persist in an attempt to uphold our monetary system on its present footing; in refusing to accede to the moderate demand of the public for the restitution of a paper circulating medium convertible into cash at the will of the holder-they must be prepared for the other alternative, and take off taxes to the amount of ten or twelve millions per annum. To enable them to do this, a reduction of 25 per cent must be made on the interest of the national debt; on all salaries, on all pensions-in short, on all payments issuing out of the exchequer, of whatever kind or amount they may be. The operation of the recent alteration of our currency has, at one stroke, increased our load of taxes one-fourth; it has produced the same practical effect as if the legislature, retaining a paper circulating medium, had added twelve millions to the forty-eight millions per annum, which already pressed upon the resources of the country. Forty-eight millions sterling paid in a metallic circulating medium will command as large a quantity of commodities as sixty millions sterling in a paper medium of exchange. The public are still willing to bear as much as they bore before; but they will not submit to the recent additional load, which the recent change in the currency has imposed upon them. Let other counties but follow the example which has been set them by the Gentlemen and Yeomen of the county of Lincoln; let them act with firmness, unanimity, and temper. Let them demand, in the bold language of British freemen, acquainted with their rights, and determined to protect themselves from injustice, and their property from plunder, either the restoration of the circulating medium, in which all their pecuniary engagements have been entered into, or a reduction in the amount of taxes and all other payments, proportioned to the alteration which has been recently effected in the standard of value, and we venture to promise them a successful result. Although backed by a cabal

of placemen, pensioners, and fundholders, who batten upon the vitals of an impoverished and exhausted country, no minister would dare, if he should even desire, to refuse listening to their just and equitable petitions.

One or other of these measures, however opposed by those who are interested in raising the exchangeable value of money and depreciating commodities, must be adopted-all other attempts to relieve the distresses which at this moment bear the agriculturists down to the ground, and which press cruelly and intolerably upon every other branch of national industry, will prove as unavailing as the remonstrance of King Canute against the encroachments of the sea. An alteration must either be made in our monetary system, which will bring back the pound sterling to its value when bartered for commodities before the change which has recently taken place in the currency; or the nominal amount of all fixed money payments must be reduced in proportion to the addition which the measures of the Legislature have made to the real value of the circulating medium. There is, to be sure, one other alternative; the Government, supported by its faithful band of placemen and pensioners, and the legislature, overborne by money lenders and fundholdersmen who derive a direct and enormous advantage from the substitution of a metallic for a paper circulating medium-may perhaps turn a deaf ear to the prayers of an injured people, and by that means utterly ruin the agricultural body. Even a delay of one year-the convenient parliamentary expedient of deferring the question to another session— would be quite sufficient to accomplish that object; for the present race of farmers are very differently circumstanced from those upon whom Mr Peel and his colleagues operated in 1819. At that period the farmers of this country were generally possessed of great wealth, acquired in the course of many years, by prosperous and successful industry; they were therefore in a condition to bear up for some time against the exhausting effect of the honourable Secretary's currency bill in 1819. They held on to their farms in the hope of

better times; they paid their rents and taxes, not out of their profits, but out of their capital; and the result was, that they were all completely ruined. But of the present body of farmers, there are very few indeed who possess any reserve of capital to which, in a season of distress, they can have recourse; and, therefore, an artificial rise in the value of money makes itself felt with extraordinary severity.

It must not be assumed, that because we recommend a return to a paper circulating medium, we wish for the re-establishment of an uncertain and fluctuating standard of value; we concur in all that has been said and written respecting the injustice and insecurity of a paper circulation unchecked by a metallic regulator of its value. But although we freely recognise the indispensable necessity of having an invariable standard of value, we are not therefore bound to admit either the expediency or the justice of a metallic circulating medium. It forms, indeed, by no means the least singular feature in the discussions which have recently taken place respecting the monetary system of this country, that those who pretend to advocate an invariable currency, should have been the very men who prevailed upon the Legislature to sanction the alteration in the value of the circulating medium, which, in its consequences, is, at this moment, so severely felt by the public: those who, within the last ten years, have already tampered with the currency in two memorable instances, (making each time an addition of 25 per cent to the real value of the actual circulating medium,) have now the unparalleled hardihood to turn round and exclaim against the impolicy and injustice of any farther tampering with the currency. They urge that the suppression of the small note circulation having been already carried into effect, it would be unwise and impolitic to disturb a regulation which has been in practical operation for about nine months, although its practical effect has been to add at least 25 per cent to the real weight of all fixed money engagements. Such an argument for maintaining our monetary system on its present footing amounts to a bold declaration, that, because for the last

nine months we have committed on all debtors an unjust act of spoliation, amounting to 25 per cent, or perhaps more, on the sum-total of the claims upon them, we must, for the sake of avoiding the imputation of vacillation and inconsistency, persevere in the wrong course on which we have entered, rather than review our measures, and retrace our steps. It is, in fact, an open avowal, that having given all creditors a legal claim to exact from their debtors an increase of at least one-fourth on the real amount of the pecuniary stipulations subsisting between them, we should turn a deaf ear to the petitions of the latter when they complain of the ruinous effects which have resulted from this change. But surely common sense and common honesty imperiously require, that if, through oversight and inadvertency, the Legislature have been led to sanction regulations by which one class of the community is enriched at the expense of another class, by that means unjustly impoverished, it should, rather than persist in their error, hasten to remedy, as far as lies in its power, the evil which it has produced. Every principle of equity and good faith requires, that if we cannot make a full compensasation to the debtor for the loss which the increased value of the circulating medium has already inflicted upon him; if we cannot restore to him that of which he has been already plundered, we should at least relieve him from the longer endurance of this injustice. It appears unquestionably a most extravagant reason to allege, that because for the last nine months the agricultural classes have been forced, by an unjust alteration of our monetary system to pay the taxgatherer and moneylender 25 per cent more than they had really promised to these claimants respectively, they should, for the sake of consistency, be compelled to endure permanently this addition to all their pecuniary obligations.

We are, above all things, desirous to see the currency of this country placed permanently upon a fixed and secure basis; but for this purpose it is not necessary to prevent the circulation of pound notes issued by Banks of known solvency, and convertible into cash at the will of the hold