On the High Price of Gold Bullion. 
maintains the value of money, and, by 
the permanency of that common standard 
of value, secures the substantial justice 
and faith of monied contracts and obliga- 
tions between man and man. | 
Your committee moreover beg leave to 
advert to the temptation to resort to a 
depreciation even of the value of the gold 
coin by an alteration of the standard, to 
which parliament itself might be subjected 
by a great and long continued excess of 
paper. This has been the resource of 
mavy governments under such circum- 
stances, and is the obvious and most easy 
remedy to the evil in question. But it is 
unecessary to dwell on the breach of pub- 
Jie faith and dereliction of a primary duty 
of government, which would manifestly be 
uuplied in preferriug the reduction of the 
coin down to the standard of the paper, to 
the restoration of the paper to the legal 
standard of the coin. 
Your committee, therefore, having very 
anxiously and deliberately considered this 
subject, report it to the house as their 
opinion, that the system of the circulating 
medium of this country ought to be brought 
back, with as much speed as is cumpa- 
tible with a wise and necessary caution, 
to the original principle of cash pay- 
ments at the option of the-holder of bank 
paper. 
Your committee have understood that 
remedies, or palliatives, of a different na- 
ture, have been projected; such as, a 
compulsory limitation of the amount of 
bank advances and discounts, during the 
continuance of the suspension ; or, a com- 
pulsory limitation during the same period, 
of the rate of bank profits and dividends, 
by carrying the surplus of profits above 
that rate to the public account. But, in 
the judgment of your committee, such 
indirect schemes, for palliating the possible 
evils resulting from the suspension of cash 
payinents, would prove wholly inadequate 
for that purpose, because the necessary 
proportion conid never be adjusted, and 
if once fixed, might aggravate very much 
the inconveniencies of a temporary pressure ; 
and even if their €fficacy could be made 
to appear, they wonld be objectionable, 
as a most hurtful and improper interfer- 
ence with the rights of commercial pro- 
perty. 
According to the best judgment your 
- committee has been enabled to form, no 
suffivient remedy for the present, or secu- 
rity for the future, can be pointed out, 
except the repeal of the law which sus- 
peuds the cash payments of the bank of 
England. 
In effecting so important a change, 
your committee are of opinion that some 
difficulties must be encountered, and that 
there are some contingent dangers to the 
719 
bank, against which it ought most care- 
fally and strongly to be guarded. TJiut all 
those may be effectually provided fur, by 
entrusting to the discretion of the bank 
itself the charge of conducting and com- 
pleting the operation, and hy allowing to 
the bank so ample a period of time for 
conducting it, as will be more than suffici- 
ent to effect its completion. ‘To the dis- 
cretion, experience, and integrily of the 
directors of the bank, your committee be- 
lieve that parliament may safely entrust 
the charge of effecting that which parlia- 
ment may in its wisdom determine upon 
as necessary to be effected; and that the 
directors of that great institution, far from 
making themselves a party with those who 
have a temporary interest in spreading 
alarm, will take a much longer view of the 
pertianent interests of the bank, as in- 
dissolubly blended with those of the public. 
The particular mode of gradually effecting 
the resumption of cash payments ought 
therefore, in the opinion of your com- 
mittee, to be left in a great measure to 
the discretion of the bank, and parliament 
ought to do little more than to fix, de- 
finitively, the time at which cash pay- 
ments are to become as before compul- 
sory. The period allowed” ought to be 
ample, in order that the bank directors 
may feel their_way, and that, having a 
constant watch upon the varying circum- 
stances that. ought to guide them, and 
availing themselves only of favourable cir- 
cumstances, ,they may tread back their 
steps slowly, and may preserve both the 
course of their own affairs as a company, 
and that of public and commercial credit, 
not only safe but unembarrassed. 
With this. view, your committee would 
suggest, that the restriction on cash pay- 
ments cannot safely .be removed at an 
earlier peried than two years from the pre- 
sent time; but your committee are of 
opinion, that. early provision ought to be 
made by parliament fur terminating, by 
the end of that period, the operation of the 
several statutes which have imposed and 
continued that restriction. 
In suggesting this period of two years, 
your committee have not overlooked the 
circumsiance, that, as the law stands at 
present, the bank would be compelled to 
pzy in cash at the end of six mouths after 
the ratification of a definitive treaty of 
peace; sothat if peace were to be con- 
cluded within that period, the recommen. 
dation of your committee might seem to 
have the effect of postponing, instead of 
accelerating the resumption of payments. 
But your committee are of opinion, that 
if peace were immediately tu be ratified, 
in the present state of our circulation, it 
would be most hazardous to compel the 
bank to pay cash in six months, ae 
wou 
