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MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



POLITICS. 



The Currency Question in a Nutshell. 8vo. pp. 16. Ridge way. 



WE ventured a very few observations on this important and difficult subject 

 in our March number ; and we are glad to find the same views which we 

 took of the matter are espoused by the writer of this small but useful pam- 

 phlet. We have read, till we are tired, the writings of Torrens, Jones Lloyd, 

 Salomons, &c. ; but it may be well asked cui bono ? They admit not, or else 

 they wilfully pass over the great principle which constitutes the basis of all 

 sound reasoning on this subject, namely, that in a country taxed as ours is, 

 not by imposts graduated according to the wealth of its inhabitants, but by 

 levies made on foreign goods sent into or out of this country, and on certain 

 other commodities produced or manufactured at home, there can be no fixed 

 standard of value : it must rise or fall accordingly as the amount of taxation 

 rises or falls. If Sir Robert Peel, whom we consider to be the author of the 

 present monetary system and of all our troubles, had properly considered the 

 effect of the customs and excise taxation on the currency, he could not have 

 committed himself so far, as to cripple the resources of a great commercial 

 nation by recommending a return to cash payments in 1819, at a time when 

 we were still labouring (as we are now) under those oppressive taxes, to bear 

 which a paper currency was legalized in 1/97. We do not mean to accuse 

 the ex-premier of any dishonesty in having so done ; but certainly there never 

 was any act, of whose injustice the agriculturists, who at the beginning of the 

 French war were the most prosperous and influential members of society, can 

 so justly complain as the decree by which the government virtually broke all 

 the promises and contracts that their necessities had compelled them to make 

 twenty-two years before. In 1797 it was thought that 20,<)00,OOOZ. of taxes 

 could not be paid without a Bank restriction : how could Sir R. Peel propose 

 a return to cash payments when our yearly taxes are not only not lighter, but 

 actually heavier by 26,000,0002. ? His specious argument was, that we really 

 could bear it, and that the return to a healthy and substantially valuable cur- 

 rency would be cheaply purchased by the fall in prices, which would not be 

 more than/ow per cent. : they have fallen fifty per cent. ! No one is bene- 

 fitted by the change except those who should have been the last to be consi- 

 dered, namely, the capitalists ; and a large section of the national population 

 is plunged into the deepest distress, involved in irrecoverable ruin. This is 

 no alarmist's howling, no overcoloured and exaggerated statement, but bare 

 unvarnished truth ; and to a more prosperous state of things we cannot return, 

 until money becomes so plentiful that taxation may be superadded to prices, so 

 as to give that fair equivalent for labour which cannot be obtained under the 

 present system. Gold, however, which our sapient governors in time past 

 have forbidden to rise or fall in value like every other commodity that we ever 

 saw or heard of, cannot be procured in sufficient quantities to meet our in- 

 creased demands ; and besides if it could, it would not serve us, for the 

 foreigner coolly takes it from us ; unceremoniously carries away our circulating 

 medium into other countries, because he can get it cheaper than the produce 

 of our taxed labour which he would otherwise take in exchange for our im- 



