182 The Currency and the Bank of England. [FEB. 



tuary laws prevent the circulation of the money of the rich ; and though 

 China contains the wealth of half the nations, yet its masses of gold and 

 silver lie accumulated, buried, and useless. Bread cannot be obtained 

 by the people more than in the poorest country ; travellers see the lower 

 orders devouring offal and vermin ; at length famine drives even that 

 feeble race to despair, gang-robbery, and rebellion, and the throne is, of 

 course, overturned. This is the inevitable order of events. In this 

 small island these scenes of revolutionary violence will arrive too soon, 

 for it is not in the power of human government to stay the increase of 

 our race. Encompassed by the sea, we cannot fly beyond these san- 

 guinary laws, and it is upon extensive continents alone, where abun- 

 dance of land is open to a retiring population, that tyrants have existed 

 who have laid their dominions waste. It is a temptation of their fate 

 that our ministers should presume to stem the increase of mankind j our 

 population has doubled since 1798, and, in defiance of human regula- 

 tions, will continue to multiply with all the rapidity of progression ; 

 whilst emigration, cottage destruction, and transportation are but as 

 drops subtracted from the sea. Under a just government there can be 

 no surplus population in this country ; wealthy, fertile, and secure at 

 home, with the stores of all nations poured at our feet, and a super- 

 abundance, not of people, but of the blessings of existence. Give us but 

 our natural rights of human intercourse and barter abolish the mono- 

 poly of the trade in money by the Bank of England abolish the mono- 

 poly of the trade in bread by the aristocracy in the corn laws, and the 

 monopoly of the trade of half the world by the East India Company, 

 and there is then a certain, plentiful, and unfailing provision in this 

 country for five hundred millions of people, if so many could stand 

 upon the island. Clear away these obstructions from the channels of 

 trade, and the tide of population, however full, will then flow easily and 

 usefully along. Indeed, no alternative remains, for the people of Israel 

 will be strangled no more ; there is a fiery pillar in the sky, and our 

 ministers must retrace their fatal steps, or Pharaoh, and all his host, 

 at last will be buried in waves of blood. 



But it is the province of a counsellor not only to point to the errors 

 apparent to us all, but to exhibit also their most speedy and effectual 

 remedy. 



The Bank of England, then, is at the head and front of our commer- 

 cial dangers, and ought to be abolished. The Bank of England is a 

 common joint-stock company consisting of Mr. Horsley Palmer and 

 his partners ; men who have no more right than any other company of 

 money-dealers to the rank, style, and title, of the Bank of England ; 

 for it is the magic of its name alone which enables this bank to mono- 

 polize the whole credit of the English nation to create panics, and 

 desolate the commerce of the kingdom. There is no necessity for any 

 national bank in this country : the same amount of capital is in the 

 kingdom the trade in money should be allowed to flow in its natural 

 channel, like the trade in corn, iron, wool, or other merchandize ; and a 

 national bank is no more required than a national tallow-chandlery, or a 

 national bakehouse. Even retrenchment demands the immediate abo- 

 lition of this charter : for the Bank of England receives annually two 

 hundred and sixty thousand pounds for the management of the national 

 debt ; and as this enormous sum is the mere commission of the banker, 

 we propose to remove the management of the national debt to some 



