1832.] The Currency and the Bank of England. 181 



injury was sustained by their hollow operations is equally certain, and 

 so there will ever be some poition of dishonesty and folly amalgamated 

 with the vast and complicated transactions of a great commercial nation. 

 But still the common principles of human self-interest will protect us suffi- 

 ciently against the effects of speculation, for bankers do not usually give 

 away their notes for nothing to these speculators : the speculators do not 

 deliberately encounter ruin and a prison ; our insolvent and bankruptcy 

 laws are the only available defence against speculation, and since none 

 are compelled to speculate, or to be speculated upon, it is apparent that 

 the loss of property consequent upon such transactions is the proper 

 punishment of voluntary folly. 



But let us examine these speculations, and lay bare the imbecility of 

 Robinson and the other ministers of that time. It has been shewn by the 

 author of the "Wealth of Nations,'' in his consummate reasoning upon 

 the subject of monopolies, that the only companies entitled to special in- 

 corporation are joint-stock banking companies, road companies, and fire 

 and life insurance offices ; those alone having these three requisites to 

 be of great national utility, such as cannot be executed by private capital, 

 and the affairs of which can be brought into a regular routine of man- 

 agement. This is founded upon the equal rights of all subjects in a 

 free state, where the exemption from the usual severe liability to con- 

 tracts and the other privileges of a joint-stock company ought only to be 

 granted in return for some national advantage ; besides that the opera- 

 tions of private self-interest are more beneficial to the whole community 

 than the waste, irregularity, and fraud, which are found in all incorpo- 

 rated bodies. Now the various companies incorporated by Robinson 

 were of no national utility washing, milking, and mining can all 

 be carried on by private individuals. These companies should have all 

 been stopped in parliament ; and if the Bank of England was induced to 

 contract its issues by the mania for these speculations, still the panic, 

 and the ruin of thousands, is much more directly at the door of those 

 improvident ministers themselves. Thus legislative folly destroyed one 

 of the most prosperous scenes of commerce ever known in England, 

 when comfort reigned almost universally through the country ; our 

 wealth was overflowing upon every land, and Lord John Russell and 

 Parliamentary Reform were neglected, forgotten, and unknown. 



But the suppression of the paper currency has been persevered in by 

 all succeeding ministers upon a principle of over- trading, over-produc- 

 tion, and over-population new terms in the art of government, which 

 seem to have been borrowed from the Suetan or from Satan. Our own 

 poor exhibit no superfluity of wages, clothes, or food ; our gaols are 

 crowded ; Ireland is strewed with men expiring in the agonies of want ; 

 and we yet live under a government which in the midst of famine, fires, 

 and rebellion, yet attributes our calamities to an over-production of the 

 blessings of existence. A short time, indeed, will this monarchy en- 

 dure if this diabolical policy be followed, and if our ministers do not 

 speedily unlock the sluices of the stagnant pools of trade. The history 

 of China presents a timely warning to these over-population ministers. 

 That empire has seen twenty-two dynasties, each brought to the throne 

 by a vast and bloody revolution, caused, says Montesquieu, by commer- 

 cial restraints upon an industrious people in a populous empire. Their 

 government discourages navigation and foreign trade ; the cities are 

 jealously guarded from commercial intercourse with strangers ; sump- 



