per cent. discount, and Navy bills at ten or twelve shillings. Some of the most respectable houses even could not procure funds upon their paper; to which, under other circumstances, no objection could be made.

Was that the state of the country at the present moment? Quite the contrary. In the former instance, there was an actual deficiency of circulating medium, in consequence of which the very best bills could not be discounted; but at present, all the public securities were at a premium, instead of being at a discount, as in 1793—and all this at a time when the loan of the year, if he was not mistaken, could not be much short of five-and-twenty millions, including the loan for Ireland. If he was rightly informed, and he had every reason to rely on the accuracy of the very respectable authority whence he had derived his information, there was not any difficulty felt at present in getting bills, with good names upon them, discounted to any amount. No later than that morning, Navy Bills were discounted at four-and-a-half per cent. The Bank of England had now to complain, not of a want of funds, but of a deficiency of paper to discount.

If that were the case and he was perfectly satisfied it was the period of 1793 was as dissimilar from the present, in almost every respect, as it could well be. In the former period, the persons applying for relief had sufficient unexceptionable security to offer, but the bankers had not the means of affording the relief required. At present, on the contrary, the bankers had the means to afford the relief, but the parties wanting it were unable to furnish adequate security. In the year 1793, all goods had fallen in price; the depression not being confined to any particular species of goods: even land had fallen in price, as must be well recollected by many gentlemen who heard him. This had proceeded from a rise in the price of money, caused by the deficiency in its amount: but there

was no interruption of the foreign markets-no stagnation of trade-no effect of overtrading-no glut of the markets, to contribute to the production of the distress. The cause was simply a stagnation of individual confidence. He could shew, from the evidence taken upon that occasion, that the quantity of paper in circulation had been diminished one half. Was such the case at present? Then, the amount of Bank of England paper in circulation was fourteen millions; in 1805 it was seventeen millions; in 1808 it was twenty millions; and last year it was twenty-three millions. This did not prove that there was any deficiency of paper at present. Where was the resemblance, then, between the two periods? The Bank of England at present only wanted good bills; and for the want of them, it was, as he understood, investing largely in government securities. It had been expressly stated by Mr. Thornton, Mr. Alderman Alderson, Mr. Chiswell, and several other members of the committee in 1793, that, in the knowledge of each, several most respectable houses could not obtain cash for unexceptionable bills; and the fact he believed was, that no house had stopped upon that occasion, which had not afterwards. paid every demand upon it in full. The witnesses examined had even stated the manufacturers who had capitals to be the persons who felt the greatest distress.

Under all the circumstances, therefore, the question for consideration was, whether the remedy resorted to in 1793, ought to be resorted to now, when the situation of things was so different? He could have wished that the Committee had, in this instance, inquired into the causes of the recent failures, and into the state of the assets and effects of the parties. The present Report went, as it were, to countenance the idea, that there were manufacturers at present who had no capital at all. It stated, that such merchants could not obtain credit; as if it was to be con

sidered a strange thing that there should be a want of

credit where a manufacturer was not solvent. This was the difference between the Report of 1793, and that now before the House.

He would not, on this occasion, anticipate the discussion, whether it would not be most desirable to amend the defect in our circulating medium. An honourable and learned gentleman,* who had given notice of a motion upon that subject, would, he hoped, in the present session, afford the House an opportunity of entering into that discussion, and of ascertaining how far the present evils arose out of the state of the currency. The Bank, he admitted, had, in 1793, done every thing in its power to remedy the distress; but now, the want of security controlled its liberal disposition to afford relief. Let it be considered, that in the present state of the currency, the Bank of England, and indeed all banks, became partners in every wild speculation, to the extent of five per cent. without any risk, and enjoyed their share, whether the enterprize was profitable or not. Under these circumstances, could it be surprising, that there should be great readiness to give credit to carry on extravagant speculations? The obvious cause of the evil was, the great facility to speculate afforded by the state of the currency.

He would ask any honourable member who looked back to the last two or three years, whether our merchants had regulated their speculations by any reference to their means. And here, without intending any thing offensive to the very respectable individuals concerned, he could not help adverting to the sad catastrophe which had recently occurred in the city to one of the contractors for the late loan,†, as a consequence of the facility of speculations to

• Mr. Horner.

+ Mr. Abraham Goldsmid; who committed suicide, at his house at Morden, in Surrey, on the 28th of the preceding September. As

a large amount, and beyond the means of the parties, and as an illustration of his argument. Did gentlemen not see, that the race of English merchants, who never could be induced to go beyond their capital, was superseded by a set of wild and extravagant adventurers, who never stopped so long as they could obtain credit ?—that individuals of notoriously small means now eclipsed the career of the most respectable traders, in their speculations on credit, by which the most extraordinary fluctuations in the price of all articles of general trade were produced? In this way had been introduced a sort of wholesale gambling into the practice of British commerce, such as had never before been known in the country.

The present state of our circulating medium was such as fully to justify his observations. No good could be done by encouraging further speculation. He wished relief to be afforded to the manufacturers; but if any person, upon giving personal security to the Commissioners, could receive any part of the sum to be advanced, and, instead of applying it to relieve himself out of the particular embarrassment in which he was at present involved, engage it in new speculations, the effect of the measure would be to aggravate the evil which it was intended to remedy. Part of the sum so to be issued might even get into the hands of great speculators, who might use it for the pur

soon as intelligence of the event reached the city, Consols fell nearly three per cent., and Omnium declined to ten per cent. discount. Mr. Goldsmid had been a joint contractor for a loan of fourteen millions, with the house of Sir Francis Baring. His losses by that loan are stated to have amounted to 200,000l. Ever since the decline of Omnium from par, Mr. Goldsmid's spirits were observed to be progressively drooping; but, when it reached five and six per cent. discount, without the probability of recovering, he appeared restless in his disposition, and disordered in his mind; and, in a moment of mental delirium, he terminated his existence.

pose, not of diminishing, but of increasing the risks to which they had been already exposed, in the hope that they might thereby extricate themselves entirely. There appeared to him to be no security that the relief would be actually applied, where it was really wanted: and, if so, the measure would only go to add six millions to our circulation, and thereby raise the price of all our commodities. He had thus thrown out what occurred to him as doubts upon this important subject; hoping that they might be removed in the course of the discussions, which the measure would necessarily undergo in its future stages through the House. If they wished for an effectual remedy, they must go to the root of the evil.

The Resolution was agreed to.

REPORT OF THE BULLION

COMMITTEE-COMMER

CIAL DISCOUNTS OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND.

April 5.

Mr. Horner, the Chairman of the Bullion Committee, announced his intention of referring, on the 29th instant, the Report of that Committee to a Committee of the whole House. Preparatory to which,

Mr. HUSKISSON rose to move for a certain document. He observed, that in submitting to the House the motion with which he should conclude, he should touch as little as possible upon the Report of the Bullion Committee; although the information which he required was, in his view of the question, necessary to the elucidation of that report. If the principle assumed by the Committee were just, namely, that the depreciation of our currency must be tried by the relative value of gold and silver, it was manifest, that a depreciation had taken place, and that