State Contention—Finance. 
137 
Peel’s bill extended it to 1823, and provided that a pound sterling 
in gold should redeem <£4 Is in Bank of England notes, scaling up 
gradually to the mint rate of £3 17s 10(7 Parliament was com¬ 
pelled to recede even from this in the session of 1822-3 on the 
pressure of public opinion brought to bear upon it by the disas¬ 
trous results and demands even from country gentlemen that pri¬ 
vate debts as well as government debts should be scaled or more or 
less repudiated under authority of law. Parliament authorized the 
issue of one and two pound notes for ten years, of which privilege 
the old and dignified lady of Threadneedle street declined to avail 
herself then, but one million of one-pound notes was all she had te 
pay out very soon after. 
Officially resuming in 1823 to pay coin for its notes, in 1825 the 
Bank of England was again obliged to succumb. She reduced her 
line of discounts about seven hundred per cent, between 1815 and 
1824, and her circulation was reduced about thirty-five per cent. T 
and that of the Scotch banks and private banks enormously. 
After the desirability of resuming the English S 3 r stem, we must 
consider its practicability, under the bill. It is assumed by the 
bill that the currency is worth less than gold, because it is redun¬ 
dant—excessive in volume. 
November 1, 1874, the total circulating medium in the United . 
States was $924,228,246, wich was an average of $20.50 per capita. 
At about the same date the amount of circulation medium in 
England, including all the items of the American estimate, was 
$26.82 per capita. The $20.50 per capita was considered redundant 
for the United States, though $26.82 was not considered too much 
for each Englishman. Verily, the principles that underlie the 
English system of finance are inscrutable! Why should $20.50 
be redundancy in a country as extensive and new as ours, while 
$26.82 was not deemed redundancy in a country like England, al¬ 
most like a village in its connections, using $1,750,000,000 of local 
bills of exchange in constant circulation as a substitute for bank- 
bills, $100,000,000 of exchequer-bills, and $2,000,000,000 of checks 
in circulation, representing bank-deposits, and with a clearing-house 
currency-saving machinery at London, but available for the whole 
country, where only one dollar in coin or paper is needed to make 
$135 of exchanges. 
It must also be remembered, in this connection, that England is 
