94 



A further consequence of the decline in prices had been an 

 augmentation in what might be called the tributes due from 

 certain foreign states, in the shape of interest on national and 

 other borrowings, on the part of such countries as Egypt, the South 

 American nations, India and Australia. These countries had 

 all been compelled to part with a greatly increased proportion of 

 the products of their labour in the mere discharge of the debts 

 annually due from them to the older nations. They had con- 

 sequently less of such products left for the purpose of commercial 

 exchanges, and were obliged either to take less of our manufac- 

 tures in return for the rest of their produce, or to pay lower 

 prices for them. Here again we had another indirect cause of 

 the decline of prices at home. For various reasons English 

 industry had suffered more from the fall of prices than any 

 other of the gold standard countries, and on this account the 

 restoration of the Joint Standard became to English agricul- 

 turalists and manufacturers a question of even greater urgency to 

 this nation than it was to the rest. 



Mr. Helm then enumerated the various influences which 

 ought, under ordinary circumstances to have produced within 

 the last dozen years great prosperity in home industries, such 

 for example as the absence of great wars, the spread of education, 

 and the lessening of crime and extravagance ; and after dwell- 

 ing upon the practicability of an international arrangement for 

 the restoration of the Joint Standard he urged that it was 

 essential to a revival of trade, and that in fact the re-estabUsh- 

 ment of the monetary conditions prevailing before 1878 was 

 reasonable and just as well as practicable and necessary. 



A SKETCH OF BURNLEY SEVENTY YEARS 

 AGO. 



By JAMES GRANT. December 6th, 1887. 



At mid-day, on the 16th September, 1818, the mail coach, by 

 name the " Telegraph," left Manchester for Burnley. Upon the 

 box, by the side of the driver, sat an elderly man, by name John 

 Stansfeld, and a younger one in his 18th year. The youth's 

 parents had lived at Goodham Hill, in Burnley, but had died 

 within two days of each other. The boy, Oliver, then nine years 

 of age, had been sent to reside with his uncle, who himself had 

 formerly resided in Burnley, but had removed to Manchester 

 some twelve years earlier. The lad's education was now finished, 

 as the phrase runs. Uncle and nephew were now on their way to 

 Burnley to find a sphere where the youth's energies and abilities 



