The Present Monetary Troubles. 22? 



amount of exported manufactures without any reference to correct 

 financial principles. 



We have not the space to enter at length on the history of the 

 errors that have brought us into our present difficulties difficulties 

 attributable in the main to the same causes that led to the embar- 

 rassments of 1745, 1759, 1771, 1783, and (then after a season of 

 prosperity owing to an accidentally better system) of 1793-7, ending 

 with the stoppage of cash payments in the memorable 1 797,* of 1 8 1 3- 

 and of the troubles that have been increasing on the country from the 

 date of Peel's bill up to the present moment. We refer our readers 

 for a short but very ingenious and sound analysis of this point to Mr. 

 John Taylor's Catechisms of the Currency and Foreign Exchanges, 

 which deserve to be very generally read and studied. The great cause 

 of these troubles is, that we are struggling against^ impossibilities 

 trying to arrive at a prosperous state of things with a currency which is 

 a false standard of value : we have done so for nearly a hundred years ; 

 and this long trial has proved that we are quite unable to maintain our 

 station as a great trading country, unless we altogether reform our 

 principles of commerce. The foreigner in times past has traded with 

 us on equal terms, nay, sometimes on terms highly advantageous to 

 himself without a murmur of complaint. Now, however, we grant 

 him advantages which our circumstances never ought to have allowed, 

 (at a sacrifice of nearly 200 millions in fifty years): we are impera- 

 tively required to adopt such a system, as shall in future secure us from 

 the losses which we have hitherto borne with so little concern. 



After saying so much in condemnation of past measures, it certainly 

 becomes us to urge and we do so with much deference on so difficult 

 and intricate a subject, some steps for removing the inconveniences 

 that we have so much lamented and deprecated. The most ruinous 

 financial measure that has been adopted during the present century is 

 Peel's Bill for the resumption of cash-payments a bill, which, vainly 

 opposed by the good sense of many eminent financiers in and out of 

 parliament, was passed as a most salutary measure destined to produce 

 solid and lasting prosperity to the country. The consequence has been 

 simply this ; that, whereas in our previous commercial transactions we 

 sacrificed only the moderate sum of eight millions per annum, we now 

 sacrifice thirty millions per annum. Sir Robert Peel's measures were, 

 we doubt not, well meant ; but this is the issue. We must have some 

 other physician. 



Cash-payments, says the modern physician, are utterly insufficient 

 for the purposes of the country. The capitalist profits by the dis- 

 tresses of the commercial community : Sir Gilbert Heathcote, at the 

 beginning of the last century, gained 60,000/., and the late Sir 

 Robert Peel, a man of shrewd practical sense, is reported to have 

 said that his son's measure would double his property, while it ruined 

 .the nation. We have no doubt that Goldsmid, Rothschild, Baring^ 

 and other great capitalists, have drawn from the public a share of 

 spoil no less considerable than the father of the leader of the present 



* See an interesting acount of this stoppage of the Bank of England in 1797, in 

 Dodsley's ^AnnualRegister." See also the "Parliamentary Register" of the same year* 



