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In 1798, the Dividends amounted to £.17,750,402

The Bank Notes out in circu-
lation

..... 13,334,752

tional Debt in that year was, £30,093,447 | Rights of Man, the means of saving Eng(exclusive of Irish loans.) Now let this land in the way of finance. That work be tried by the Rule of Three, and you was written in 1791. So early as that he will see with what exactness the amount of foresaw and foretold what we have now the bank notes keeps pace with the amount before our eyes, and what we have daily of the interest upon the national Debt, to expect. He there pointed out the sure commonly called the Dividends, which and certain means of effectually putting a many poor creatures in the country look stop to the further increase of the Debt, upon, or, rather, used to look upon, as of insuring a real diminution of it, and, something of a nature almost divine. Let at the same time, of doing ample justice to us put this down a little more distinctly. the fund-holders. For this pamphlet he was prosecuted, and, having gone out of the country, he was outlawed. A Royal Proclamation was issued principally for the purpose of suppressing his work, scores of pamphlets having been written in answer to him in vain. He was burnt in effigy in mest parts of this his native country; and his works were suppressed by the arm of the law. Well, our government had its way; it followed its own counsel and rejected that of Paine; he was overcome by it, and driven from the country; those who endeavoured to cause his principles to have effect were punished or silenced, or both: and, what is the result ? That result is now before us, and fast approaching us; and, in a short time, in all human probability, events will enable us to form a perfectly correct decision upon the respective merits and demerits of the then conflicting parties.

In 1809, the Dividends amounted to... 30,093,447
The Bank Notes in circula-
tion

21,249,980

Here we have the real cause visibly before us. What folly, what madness, is it, then, to talk of lessening the amount of the notes while we are continually augmenting the amount of the Dividends, which are the cause of the notes? Here we have before our eyes proof that the Dividends (by the use of which word I mean to include all the annual charges upon the Debt) and the Bank Notes have gone on increasing together for the last ten years, and I had before shown that they had done so theretofore; and, with this fact before our eyes, we, the people of this "most thinking nation," hear some of our legislators propose to lessen the amount of the paper, while not a man of them seems to dream of lessening the amount of the Debt. We hear them propose to narrow the stream, while they say not a word about narrowing the spring whence it flows. They have seen, or, you, at least, have seen, Gentlemen, that the bank-paper arose out of the national Debt; you have seen that the Bank was created in a short time after the Debt began; you have seen the increase of the paper keep an exact pace with the increase of the Debt; and, is it not, then, to war against facts, against a century of experience, against the nature of things, to propose to narrow the issues of the paper without previously narrowing the bounds of the Debt and its Dividends? If the authors of this proposition had read the work of PAINE, they would never have offered such a proposition. Read his work they may, but they have not duly considered its arguments, or they have shut their eyes against the clear conviction that it is calculated to produce. He pointed out, in his Second Part of the

Now, Gentlemen, if you have attentively read the Letters, of which I now address to you the XXVth, you will have no doubt at all, that the cause of the influx of paper and of the consequent depreciation of all money first, and then of the paper itself alone as compared to the money; you will have no doubt that the real cause of all this, is, the increase of the national Debt; and, yet, in all the parliamentary debates upon the subject, you have heard of scarcely any man who ventured to mention this cause. It was a thing too tender to touch. It was what we call a sore place; and, the old proverb about the galled horse applied too aptly. If the depreciation had been traced to the national Debt, as Mr. HORNE TOOKE Once traced it while he was in parliament; for he then foresaw and foretold what has now come to pass, and told the House, that, if they continued the then expenditure, the fundholder would not get, in a few years, a quartern loaf for the Dividend upon a hundred pounds of stock; if the depreciation had thus been traced back to its real efficient cause, it would have awak

they mean by setting the matter at rest? Is it possible, that they could imagine, that this matter was to be set at rest; that this great question of paper-money; that this subject in which every human creature in the country is so deeply interested; is it possible that they thought this matter would be completely set at rest by a vote of their majority? No, no! This is one of the things that that House cannot do. They can do a great deal; they can do more than I dare to trust myself to describe; but, they cannot set this matter at rest, nor have they, and all the branches of the government united, the power to stay the progress of the paper money only for one single hour. The Minister and his people have now seen what rest they insured for the subject! I always said, that the "first man of "landed property who openly made a "distinction between paper and gold, "would put the whole system' to its

ened reflections of an unpleasant ten-
dency; it would have set men to consider
what was the cause of the increase of the
Debt; to look back and inquire whither
the money was gone; for what purposes
it had been borrowed; who were the per-
sons that had profited from that borrowing;
who, in short, it was that had swallowed
all that money the interest of which the
nation was paying, and had so long
been paying. These reflections it was
not the desire of either party to awaken;
but, they belong to the subject, they na-
turally present themselves to every one
who looks only a little beneath the sur-
face, and I venture to say, that, in the
end, they will become familiar to every
man in the kingdom. If this real cause of
the evil had been acknowledged, it would
have saved a great deal of time; for,
then, men would not have amused them-
selves with talking about such REME-
DIES as that of Mr. HORNER; and all
the talk about the narrowing of discounts"
and the purchasing of gold and the improving
of the exchange would have been heard like
the twice told tale of an ideot. The short
and the only question would have been
this: ean we, by any means, diminish the
amount of the Dividends? And, if that
question had been answered in the nega-
tive, there was no course, for those who
wished to support the Pitt system, to pur-
sue but that of letting things take their
own course, and aid the paper with their
wishes.

trumps, and compel the Bank notes to "sue for the power of the government for "their protection." This has now been verified, and the remainder of my prediction, which I need not here repeat, is not far from its accomplishment.

The grounds of LORD STANHOPE's proposition were stated by himself very explicitly, in moving, the 2nd instant, the second reading of his Bill. He said, that he had long thought upon the subject and had long entertained the opinion, that some legislative measure was necessary to preserve the bank notes system from total ruin; that a notice recently given by LORD KING to his tenants, signifying that he would no longer receive his rents but in gold or in a quantity of paper equivalent in powers of purchase to gold,* had convinced him

So much for the REMEDY of the Bullion Committee; but, our attention is now called to another, founded on more imperious circumstances. I allude to the proposition of EARL STANHOPE, which was on the 27th of June, brought forward in the shape of a Bill, and which is, in that shape, now actually before the House of "By Lease, dated 1802, you have Lords, where it has undergone a second "contracted to pay the annual rent of reading. Compared with this proposi-"£. 47. 5s. in good and lawful money of tion, all that has been said and done be- "Great Britain. In consequence of the fore is mere child's play. This Bill brings" late great depreciation of paper-money, the matter home to the public mind; it "I can no longer accept any Bank-notes, shows the most credulous that even those, "at their nominal value, in payment or on whose stoutness they rested their faith, "satisfaction of an old contract. I must begin to quiver. It cries, a truce with all "therefore desire you to provide for the pretensions. It puts the sense and the sincerity of every disputant to the test. The minister told us, that he wished the debate on the Bullion Report to come on, that the matter might be set at rest. Set at rest! Mercy on us! Set at rest! And so said OLD GEORGE ROSE too. But, what did

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payment of your rent in the legal gold "coin of the realm. At the same time, having no other object than to secure "payment of the real intrinsic value of "the sum stipulated by agreement, and "being desirous to avoid giving you any "unnecessary trouble, I shall be willing

that there was no time to be lost, and that the measure in contemplation ought to be adopted before the parliament rose. He said, that the Ministers having declared, that their only objection to the measure arose from an opinion, that they thought no measure of the kind necessary, being persuaded that nobody would be found to follow the example of Lord King, it was only necessary for him to shew them that there were others to follow that example, in order to convince the ministers, that the Bill was entitled to their support. Having made these preliminary observations, he said, that he had a bundle of instances of this sort, and he only wished that a great many other persons would declare their intentions at once, and then the House would proceed to prevent the evil. He then produced a number of letters, from which he read extracts. One person wrote, that his landlord had said, "what one landlord can do, all can do, and if "Lord King succeed, I will do the same." Another letter related a recent transaction in Hampshire, where a man bought an estate for 4001. and paid down 100%. of the money, and afterwards laid out several hundreds of pounds upon the premises, and when the time of payment came, the seller, insisted upon having payment in guineas, which the buyer could not obtain, the seller, however, would have it, or have his land back again, and the only consolation left to the buyer was an intimation from a friend of the seller that he could inform him where he might obtain the guineas at 27 shillings each. Another

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letter stated that a Lady, who was a Landowner, had insisted upon her rent in gold, and that the tenant apprehended a seizure of his goods, and was ready to verify the facts if called on. Another informed him, on the part of an Attorney, that the practice was become very common to sell guineas and then pay debts with the paper.

These were the grounds, stated by LORD STANHOPE, of the measure that he proposed; and, upon his stating these grounds, the Ministers, who had, at the first reading, said that they did not see any necessity for the measure, or any measure of the kind, allowed that there was such necessity, and supported the second reading accordingly.

Now, Gentlemen, before I offer you any observations upon this measure itself, or upon the conduct of LD. KING, whose notice to his tenants seems to have given rise to it, it may not be amiss for me to say, that, from all that has ever came to my knowledge, there is not a more disinterested man, or a truer friend to freedom and to his country, breathing, than LORD STANHOPE, whom I trace through the parliamentary proceedings of the last twenty years, always standing nobly forward in the cause of justice, liberty, and humanity, and, but too often standing forward alone. His protest against the Antijacobin war, which began in 1793, and which has finally led to our present calamities, will live when we shall all be in our graves. He there pointed out all, yea all, that has now come to pass. That protest, every sentence of which is full of wisdom and of just senti ment, has these remarkable words: "Because war with France is, at present, most impolitic, extremely dangerous to our "allies the Dutch, hazardous with respect "to the internal peace and external power "of this country, and is likely to be highly injurious to our commerce ......... The war may, therefore, prove to be a war against our commerce and manufactures, "against the proprietors of the funds, against "our paper currency, and against every de"scription of property in this country." How completely has all this been verified ! Lord STANHOPE was abused: he was called a jacobin and a leveller, and now the nation is tasting the bitter fruit of the spirit that dictated that abuse. Every where was he to be found, in those horrible days, where

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"to receive payment in either of the man"ners following according to your option. "-1st, By payment in Guineas;-2nd, "If Guineas cannot be procured, by a payment in Portugal Gold coin, equal "in weight to the numbers of Guineas" "requisite to discharge the rent;-3rd, "By a payment in Bank-paper of a sum "sufficient to purchase (at the present "market price) the weight of standard "Gold requisite to discharge the rent."The alteration of the value of the Paper

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liberty was assailed. Not an act, which that opinion, I will now proceed to subhe deemed injurious to the rights of Eng-mit to you. A guinea is not to pass for lishmen, escaped his strenuous opposition. In short, were I called upon to name the peer, whom I thought to have acted the best and truest part in those times, and for the whole course of the last twenty awful years, I should certainly name this very nobleman.

You will, therefore, Gentlemen, believe that, if I dissent from the measure which he has now proposed, that dissent proceeds from my conviction, that the measure itself is not calculated to produce that good, which I am certain its author wishes it to produce.

The detail of the Bill I will not attempt to discuss. Its principles are what have struck me, and these I gather from its chief provisions, which are, that, in future, the gold coins shall not be tendered or taken for more than their nominal value, and that the bank paper shall not be tendered or taken for less than its nominal value. This is LORD STANHOPE'S REMEDY; and this he appears to think will prevent the possibility of a further depreciation of the paper. We have seen the cause and the progress of that depreciation; we have seen how the paper pulled down the coin along with it, 'till the coin could no longer endure the society; we have seen the time and the manner of their separation; but, LORD STANHOPE appears to think, that, by the means of this Bill, he shall be able not only to restore that harmony which formerly existed between them; but, that he shall be able to chain them together for ever after; to bind them as it were in the bonds of marriage, and to render the ties indissoluble. If he do this, he will do what never was done before in the world; he will destroy all the settled maxims of political economy as far as they relate to finance; his achievement will be a triumph not only over the opinions and experience of mankind, but over the very nature of man, which incessantly impels him to seek his own interest, and, at the very least, to use all the means in his power to provide for his own preservation.

After having said this I shall naturally be supposed to be convinced, that the Bill would be utterly inefficient for the purposes it contemplates. Indeed, such is my decided opinion, and the reasons for

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more than 21s. There must be some penalty to prevent the passing of it for more. Lord STANHOPE will propose nothing cruel; but, for arguments' sake, let the penalty be death. What, then? Why need any one risk any penalty, as far as a ready money transaction goes? One of you go to market with a pig for sale. "What do you ask for that pig, farmer?" Answer: "Twenty seven shillings." "I'll give you "a guinea." "You shall have him." Where is the possibility, then, of enforcing such a law? The parties, in any case, have only to settle, before they deal, in what sort of currency payment shall be made, and then they will, of course, make the price accordingly. As to debts, indeed, whether book debts, or debts arising from contract, in the payment of them, the gold and notes must, if this Bill pass, be taken at their nominal value; that is to say, the paper must; for, as to gold, who will be fool enough to tender gold in payment at its nominal amount, when it is notorious that it will fetch a premium of six shillings upon the guinea? If the Bill become a law, therefore, any tenant who bas rent to pay, and who has guineas in his purse, will first go and purchase papermoney with his guineas, and with the paper-money, he will go and pay his rent. This rent, for instance, is 1051. a year, and he has a hundred guineas in his chest. But, he will not be fool enough to carry these to his landlord. He will go and buy 105 pounds worth of paper-money with seventy eight of his guineas; and will then go and pay his rent, and will return home with 28 of his guineas still in his pocket. So that, as far as the bill will have effect, it appears to me that it will bear almost exclusively upon landlords.

I shall be told, perhaps, that, though guineas may now be bought and sold, in consequence of the decision of the judges, which, in the case of DE YONGE, has been promulgated since I began this Letter,*

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yet, we are not to suppose, that the preseut Fill will not provide against such traffic by making it penal to be concerned in it. But, as I have shown above, men may go on with all ready money transactions, and with perfect safety, make a distinction between paper and coin, which amounts, to the same thing as buying and selling the coin or the paper. It will require but very little ingenuity to discover the means of so managing the matter that the landlord shall never see a shilling's worth of coin from the hands of the tenant.

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But, suppose that the coin should not be permitted to be bought and sold; does any one believe, that any law will prevent a private traffic in the article? And, if Buckingham, had been reserved for the opinion of the 12 Judges, on a point of law. Both causes had been fully and "ably argued before the Judges in the "Court of Exchequer Chamber, and the argument had occupied a number of days. The question arising in the present case was, the Defendant having been convicted of purchasing 52 Guineas at the rate, in Bank Notes, of 22s. 6d. per Guinea, whether, in so doing he had been guilty of an offence punishable under the Act of the 5th and 6th of Edward VI. which prohibited the exchanging of coined gold for coined silver, or for gold and silver, the party giving or receiving more in value than the same was current for at the time? All the Judges, except three, were present at the whole of these arguments, and at the last of them the whole of the Judges were present. The Court had no opportunity of knowing what was the opinion of the absent Judges on that part of the case at the argument on which they were not present, but they "had no reason to presume that they dis"sented from the opinion of the other Judges who were present, all of whom concurred in opinion that the Defendant in this case was not liable under the "Act of the 5th and 6th of Edward VI. "The Judgment, therefore, fell to be ar"rested; and the Judgment was arrested "accordingly." Thus, then, this case is decided as I always said it must be, unless all semblance of law was banished from the land. Many people thought and said, that the conviction would be confirmed; but, I never thought so for a moment. Oh, no! The Judges knew a great deal better than to do that!

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that could be done, is any one mad enough to suppose, that the guinea will still circulate at par with the paper? Pass this Bill, or any Bill, that shall prevent men from passing the guinea for more than its nominal worth, and the consequence will be, that a guinea will never again be seen in circulation. Those who have them will keep them in their chests, waiting an occasion to export them, or more patiently waiting till circumstances have produced the repeal of the law which has driven the guinea into the hoard. The cause that tion, is, as I said before, that they cannot we see no guineas now in common circulabeen openly sold long enough ago, had obtain their fair value. They would have there not been an opinion, that the traffic was punishable by law. Now that obstacle is removed; but, in all likelihood, another will be erected by the present Bill. In that case the guineas will all either be hoarded or sent out of the country, and paper must and will be made to supply their place. The Dollars, the new things of three shillings and eighteen pence, now coming out from the Bank, will also be hoarded, and to notes for shillings and sixpences we must come, I am convinced, in the course of the year, if this Bill pass; so that the Bill, while it will be wholly inefficient for the purpose of arresting the progress of depre ciation, will be efficient enough in pro ducing a contrary effect.

The Bill does not, the author of it says, make bank notes a legal tender. It does not do it in words, but it appears to me to do it in effect; and, that being once done, all the usual consequences of a legal tender must follow. It was easy to see that the system would come to this pitch; there is nothing in the state to which we are come that ought to surprize any one; what has happened was to be expected, and was, indeed, long ago foretold; but, what might reasonably surprize one, is, to hear this measure represented by the ministers as necessary to the protection of the fund-holder! Can they be serious! Is it possible, that they can be serious when they say this? If they are, nothing that they say or do can ever be a subject of wonder. Men, who are capable of be lieving, that the Bill of Lord Stanhope will operate as a protection to the fundholder, are capable

but, really, I want words to answer my purpose. Imagination can frame nothing

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