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



it would occupy to convey it ; and when Lord Ellenborough laments that 

 forty-five millions of gold have been exported to China in a period of 

 eighteen years, he may be assured that that sum is a portion only of the 

 amount brought to this country, in a similar time, from countries with 

 which we have this favourable balance of trade ; that this partial outlet 

 of our specie produces no injury to this nation whatever ; that abundance 

 of gold will ever be in our power whilst we continue to export cloath- 

 ing, tools, and blankets, to the people of France, Russia, and America ; 

 and that bullion committees, bank restrictions, and currency regulations, 

 a,re mischievous follies in a nation possessed of our mines of coal and iron, 

 a temperate climate, and patient, ingenious, and industrious people. That 

 there is no deficiency of gold in this country is proved by that fatal 

 declaration of the Duke of Wellington, that there were twenty-eight 

 millions of sovereigns in the Bank of England ; for this immense mass 

 of gold might as well be all thrown down again into the mines of Mexico 

 as lie buried in the vaults of the Bank. We want, then, an instrument 

 for the dispersion of this gold, a service which the country bankers and 

 the one pound notes effectually performed. 



But it is advanced that London, Liverpool, and Manchester, possess 

 no paper circulation, and, none being wanted in these cities, it is not re- 

 quired elsewhere. Here the reverse is the truth. London, Liverpool, 

 and Manchester, from their advantages of situation, great capital, and 

 other commercial and manufacturing advantages, have a balance of trade 

 against the country, as England has against the nations ; this brings in 

 abundance of provincial gold upon the bankers in those cities, which, 

 therefore, require no paper circulation ; whereas the country bankers 

 require a circulation of small notes as a counterbalance to the advan- 

 tages of those cities. Consequently London, Manchester, and Liverpool, 

 will absorb, at last, the whole metallic money of the nation ruin will 

 encompass first the distant portions of the empire a deficiency of reac- 

 tion in the suppression of the usual supply of commodities into the starv- 

 ing country will carry the misery to the cities, and over all the kingdom. 

 The suppression of the small notes has produced the famine, fires, and 

 insurrectionary movements in Ireland. This measure counteracted the 

 good effects of Catholic emancipation ; we gave the people of Ireland 

 religious liberty, and took away their bread ; we stopped the overflow 

 of our superabundant capital into that impoverished country, and ren- 

 dered it impossible for an exhausted, disorderly, and famishing people 

 to pay their ancient rents, rates, and tithes, whilst this new extraordi- 

 nary inroad upon their trade rendered money of double value, and un- 

 attainable to the mass of the people. Abroad, the consequences of this 

 measure have been equally fatal. In the United States of America the 

 low prices of the staple exports of that country erroneously attributed 

 to the operation of their Tariff has almost dissevered the southern from 

 the northern states of the Union ; in the West Indies, the depreciation 

 of the value of sugar, coffee, and rum, has aggravated to despair the 

 distresses of the planter ; and all nations are now so dependant upon our 

 commercial policy, and so compelled to follow in the wake of England, 

 that this violent alteration in our moneytary concerns has shaken and 

 distracted the globe. 



All these evils are said to be rendered necessary by the excess of spe- 

 culations in preceding years. That many speculators arose during the 

 season of the administration of Robinson is certainly true ; that much 



