396 THE CURRENCY DUEL. 



butcher and the baker not to sell less than five loaves of bread, or five 

 pounds of meat. And when it has become apparent after five years of 

 miserable experiment, that a gold standard is impracticable in the wide- 

 spread and immense transactions of this great nation ; when our com- 

 merce, manufactures, and foreign trade are daily sinking into a con- 

 dition of inextricable ruin ; our industrious population crowding to the 

 workhouse, the jail, and every foreign land ; and when an instantaneous 

 remedy is at hand in the relaxation of the barbarous laws by which this 

 national anguish has all been brought about, we trust that the first 

 measure of the ensuing parliament will be an instantaneous liberation 

 from its shackles of the trade in money. 



The remedial measures proposed by Mr. Cobbett we hold to be useless 

 and absurd. Allowing that his commissioners had travelled throughout 

 the kingdom, and executed the proposed work of an " equitable adjust- 

 ment," and that every debtor had been in the due proportion released 

 from responsibility to every creditor ; still this change being universal, 

 would be nominal and nugatory, since the man who is thus absolved 

 from his own just debts, is at the same time despoiled of his claims upon 

 others, and matters would in reality remain in their present state. The 

 proposal to reduce the interest of the national debt, by violent means, is 

 another most atrocious proposition ; for the holders of government 

 stock at the present time are persons who have purchased a year, a 

 month, or a week since, who are wholly innocent of the original con- 

 tracting of the debt, the stock being now a part of the general capital 

 of the nation ; and to reduce its amount would be to single out a few 

 accidental individuals to pay the engagements of the whole community. 

 It appears, moreover, that the national debt is now subdivided into an 

 infinity of small shares, for it is asserted by Mr. Alexander Baring that 

 more than a hundred thousand persons possess stock whose dividends 

 do not amount to ten pounds per annum ; these, therefore, are all per- 

 sons in very humble circumstances, and to diminish the interest upon 

 the national debt would thus drive to the parish the majority of these 

 hundred thousand holders of stock, thereby increasing tenfold the real 

 payment in the shape of poor-rates for their maintenance. However 

 imprudent and extravagant may have been the ministers who contracted 

 this debt, still individuals are not to be robbed for the errors and crimes 

 of a government over which they possessed no controul ; and if criminal 

 proceedings were now any satisfaction, still Pitt has gone to his long 

 home, and the drivelling Vansittart is not worth the expense of an im- 

 peachment. For better and for worse we are now wedded to the debt, 

 and we trust that no English parliament will ever adopt that most par- 

 tial, unjust, and dishonourable expedient which is most falsely termed 

 an " equitable adjustment/' 



There is, therefore, no remedy so just, practicable, instantaneous and 

 easy of execution as a recurrence to the paper circulation in which the 

 national debt, and all other debts of recent years, have been contracted. 

 It is in vain to expect prosperity without again adopting the only 

 measure out of which all our former prosperity has arisen. A paper 

 circulation has brought into existence almost all our useful inventions, it 

 has covered the sea with ships, and the land with cities, roads, bridges, 

 and canals; it has brought activity and plenty into our workshops, 

 mines, and foundries ; it has built asylums, hospitals, and schools. In 

 other countries the wonderful consequences of a paper circulation have 



