been inferred by the right hon. Baronet | seemed simple enough. Our present monthe First Lord of the Treasury. To that etary system effected a compulsory exproposal neither he nor his hon. Friend change between labour and gold, or its subscribed. They begged distinctly to representative, and in this exchange the disavow it. Mr. Alison himself, as labourer was injured. To supply the meshown by the quotation from his pam-dium of exchange the Bank was obliged phlet read by the right hon. Baronet, laid to keep a very large amount of gold in its very little stress upon that suggestion. That which was of real and very great value in Mr. Alison's pamphlet, was the historical review of the monetary policy pursued in this country during the last fifty years, and the synopsis of its effects. unto the present time; and he (Mr. Newdegate) thought that no hon. Member who had any knowledge of these circumstances would hastily cast aside the monitions of experience. He (Mr. Newdegate) felt convinced that this subject could not be much longer neglected, and from its great practical bearing upon the interests of commerce and of the country generally, he thought that any Legislature was defective whose commercial policy was uninfluenced by consideration of this important element. Day by day this subject, in one form or another, obtruded itself on their attention. Was not the difficulty in obtaining silver (which had been adduced by the hon. Member for Chichester that evening) evidence of the restricted state of our currency? Was not the loss to the community by wear and tear of our coins (which was the ground of the Motion now before the House), evidence of the expensive character of our monetary system. So long as the domestic trade of the Empire was kept in subjection to those stringent provisions which modern legislation had enforced upon the medium of exchange, so long ought our domestic trade to be a matter of the deepest concern to the House, for it was upon our internal commerce and upon the remuneration of labour that our present monetary system bore with peculiar severity. He (Mr. Newdegate) rejoiced that this discussion had taken place, although he regretted that the House had not had earlier notice of the lucid and most able exposition of this subject given by his hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham. He could have wished that it had fallen earlier in the Session, but still he was sincerely glad that at last the attention of the House had been attracted to this subject. The question of the currency had long been so distasteful to hon. Members, that it was little understood; but to him its action cellars. Now, only a certain quantity of gold for the currency of the country fell to her share by the course of exchange, as abstracted from that amount of bullion, which formed the circulating medium of the world and if we would have more than our share, we must purchase it by reduction of the price of our produce, that is, of our labour, in order to render our commodities more desirable to foreigners than bullion. And this was a heavy burden upon our labouring classes; for the effect of the Bills of 1816 and 1819 was to impose upon them the heavy charge of maintaining a currency the most expensive in the world, besides the burden, 30 or 40 per cent., added to the value of the national debt and of taxation generally by these measures. The injurious effects of this system upon agricultural interests were as clearly traceable. The Bank, as he had said, was obliged to keep a large amount of bullion; and if the price of bullion rose, the Bank contracted her issues. The consequence was an immediate fall in the price of commodities. The master manufacturers were not slow to shift the loss off their own shouldersthey reduced their men's wages-dissatisfaction, perhaps turbulence, ensued among the workmen and then the right hon. Baronet came forward and told the agriculturists that it was necessary they should have their prices reduced, to meet the exigencies of the manufacturing classes, as he did in 1842. Thus did the loss and burden ultimately devolve upon the land and its cultivators. He (Mr. Newdegate) was most unwilling to detain the House; but before he concluded, he trusted that hon. Members, particularly those of his own standing, would forgive his expressing a hope, that hon. Gentlemen who came down to the House to legislate upon great commercial questions, involving elaborately the interests of the country generally, and who were in the habit of expressing opinions on these important matters, should not have to avow their ignorance of the state and characteristics of our currency, which formed so important an element in all commercial transactions. Those who pro- I to adopt free trade in all things else, and ceeded to legislate upon questions so ex- at the same time render the monopoly of tensive, involving our commercial rela- money still more exclusive; for the Letions with foreign countries, should surely gislature had created a strict monopoly in have some knowledge of that system favour of money, when by law it fixed the which depended upon foreign exchanges, value of our coin. Were not those whose and so powerfully affected prices at home. property was in money, measured by a What would be thought of a physician fixed standard-if they gained security who prescribed for his patient without from the maintenance of that standard, feeling his pulse, without any knowledge and the restricted system of our circulaof the state of his circulation, or the action tion, bound in justice to protect those at of the heart? Would he not be con- whose expense they enjoyed that security? sidered a quack? And were not those His hon. Friend (Mr. Spooner) had been Members who were in the habit of legis- taunted by the right hon. Baronet with lating for the country in total ignorance of having made no definite proposal. Neither our system of currency, and the state of did he (Mr. Newdegate) make any specific its circulation, liable to the same imputa- proposal for the alteration of the currency. tion? For years, any one who presumed The commencement of a Session would be to differ from the right hon. Baronet at the the proper time for such an undertaking head of the Government on this subject, as that; but he was prepared to tell the had been considered a lunatic; for years, right hon. Baronet what he would not the right hon. Baronet, by his eloquence, have done. He would not have introduced and by his sarcasm, had completely stifled the banking measure of 1844, to restrain all consideration of this subject. But still further our currency and circulation, public attention was gradually turning to already too narrow for the exigencies of this subject, and he (Mr. Newdegate) did the country. the country. He would not, when the hope that hon. Members would no longer population, the realized wealth, the comsubmit to be laughed out of the use of merce, the exports, the imports, of this their senses. Was it patriotic-was it country had vastly increased, have still fair towards the constituencies-was it further contracted our circulating medium. just towards the labouring and productive He would not, as had been eloquently classes of this country-that a subject so observed by this very Mr. Alison whose deeply involving their interests, should judgment the right hon. Baronet appeared virtually be left out of account by the to hold in such contempt, have diminished great majority of that House? The action the quantity of oil supplied for the comand effects of the currency were so power-mercial machinery of this country, when ful, so universal, that, as had been eloquently observed in the able pamphlet of the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary, "its operation extended from the Queen upon the Throne, to the most abject pauper who exchanges the smallest fraction of our coin for the barest means of subsistence." He had endeavoured to describe the depressing action of our currency, as it affected the productive classes; and if the House, blind to these considerations, determined to expose them to the still further pressure of free trade-determined that our labourers, obliged to maintain the most expensive currency in the world, and compelled to pay taxes in that currency, should also be exposed to the unrestricted competition of comparatively unburthened foreigners, he (Mr. Newdegate) believed that the Legislature would bring about in this country a state of things unparalleled in the history of civilized nations. Now, could it be just that machinery had been so enormously extended, as it had been, in the last thirty years. He would not, when the supply of meat for an army had been diminished, have provided that the rations of bread also should be so rapidly and extensively curtailed-that is, he would not, when the gold was abstracted by the course of exchange, have provided that the paper circulation of the Bank should be so unsparingly contracted. He (Mr. Newdegate) would conclude by expressing his sincere anxiety that this question should no longer be denied that attention to which, by its importance, it was so justly entitled. Mr. Muntz said, that as he had not been in the House during the speech of his hon. Colleague, he could only form an opinion of it from the comments he had heard made upon it by the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government; but if it advocated the payment of bank notes at the market prices of bullion, and after such prices should have been materially advanced, then that the notes in circulation should not be payable in bullion at all, he must dissent from such principle and practice. Although he very fully agreed with the speech he had just heard delivered by his hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, (Mr. Newdegate), and could subscribe to nearly the whole of his statements, he doubted the discretion of both his hon. Friends, in introducing a currency debate upon the Motion of the hon. Member for Montrose (Mr. Hume). In the first place, the two subjects appeared to him to have very little connexion; and in the next place, to debate the money question at a time like the present, when everything appeared bright and smiling, was only giving the right hon. Baronet opposite an opportunity of amusing himself, by ridiculing the views and opinions of all those opposed to him upon the subject, although they possibly might eventually be found more sound than his own. The right hon. Baronet had only done him (Mr. Muntz) justice, when he said, that he had formerly recommended an alteration in the standard of value, upon the ground that a very large proportion of the liabilities incurred under the former depreciated circulation remained unadjusted; but the right hon. Baronet ought to have gone further, and informed the House that he (Mr. Muntz) had recommended that the standard in which the notes shall be redeemed should be a silver standard, like the other countries of Europe, and as this country formerly had; and also that such silver standard should be fixed, so that the relative value of the ounce of silver to the average value of the bushel of wheat, which had long existed, should be maintained; and the price of silver in this country, therefore, should be determined by the average value of the bushel of wheat obtained by the Corn Laws, which were supported by the right hon. Baronet. He could assure the right hon. Baronet that he (Mr. Muntz) was as much at issue with him upon the money question as ever he was; that the question appeared to him as unsettled as ever; that it would again have to be discussed and debated in that House; and that the time would come when the right hon. Baronet would find that he had been mistaken; that the House also would find they had been mistaken; that the country would find it had been mistaken and misled; and that all the three would have most dearly to pay for having been so long ignorant upon this important subject. He would not now say more upon the general question, but would now notice the Motion of his hon. Friend below him (Mr. Hume); and to him it appeared a matter of the first importance that some steps should be taken which should prevent the loss upon light sovereigns from falling upon the poor in the manner it had latterly done, and would do again, if nothing were done to prevent it in future. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had just said that he hoped the circumstance would never occur again; but he had not given the House any reason why it should not do so, and if the different Members of the Government knew as much as he (Mr. Muntz) did of the sufferings of the poor three years ago, he was sure they would see the necessity of taking some steps to prevent a recurrence of the evil. At that time he (Mr. Muntz) was in South Wales, and he could assure the House that for want of preparation on the part of the banks, sovereigns of full weight could not be changed; that he had seen women at Swansea, with children in their arms, unable to obtain the necessaries of life, and crying because they could not change sovereigns of full weight, which they had in their hands. Under these circumstances the unprincipled took advantage of their necessities: and he had known sixpence, a shilling, and even two shillings paid for changing a sovereign to silver. At that time he addressed a letter upon the subject to the right hon. Baronet, and even at this late period he would thank him for the prompt attention which he paid to the subject, and his interference, through the Bank of England. But how did such a state of things agree with the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that every preparation had then been made? Surely there must have been some neglect. Now he (Mr. Muntz), feeling assured that there would be a return of the evil, so long as the country amused itself by the present practice of rubbing gold together, so as to waste it to the tune of many thousands per annum, and periodically to suffer a loss in gross amount of some three to four hundred thousand pounds, as in the last instance, would submit a plan for the consideration of the and unjustly upon his poorer fellow subjects; and he trusted that even before the end of the present debate, the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would propose some means of avoiding the evil in future. The House divided on the Question, that the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question:-Ayes 64; Noes 34: Majority 30. Order of the Day read. CEYLON.] On the Question, that the Speaker do now leave the Chair, Mr. Tufnell called the attention of the House to the regulations lately issued, with regard to the compulsory disposal of lands held in the Island of Ceylon, and purchased from the Governor of that Colony by the members of the civil service, and the reflections that have been cast upon their character as public servants in the Governor's minute, dated the 14th day of February, 1845. The circumstances of this case peculiarly called for the attention of the House. It was not surprising, when a former Governor of Ceylon, a few years ago, held out great inducement to the cultivation of coffee in that Colony, that the civil servants were induced to invest their savings in the cultivation of land. This, so far from meeting with the censure of that Governor, met with his warmest approbation, as well as that of succeeding Governors, up to nearly the present time. To such right hon. Baronet and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which should at least get rid of nineteen-twentieths of the evil. He must, however, guard himself against the supposition that he was one of those who advocated a circulation of 11. notes with the view of elevating prices, and producing permanent prosperity; no one knew better than he did that such a measure must be subject to a speedy re-action, with still lower prices. As, however, the prejudices against 17. notes were on the wane, and the right hon. Baronet had allowed them to be continued in Scotland and Ireland, it might be well to consider how absurd was the present practice in England, of wasting the gold by thousands per annum in abrasion, whilst we might lock it up safely, and as effectually use its representative in paper. Years had now elapsed, nearly twenty years, since 11. notes were first abolished, under the impression that gold could only thereby be retained in the country; but that doctrine had completely exploded, by our having during the period before-named been fully as subject to the exportation of gold as we had been previous to the abolition of the notes. The next objection to 14. notes was, that they encouraged forgery and crime; but this objection must be allowed to have little force, now that they were continued by law in both Scotland and Ireland. He had long been convinced that it was of no importance to the stability of the circulation and the steadiness of prices, whether the notes were 10l., 5l., 1., or 10s., pro-an extent had this been carried, that in vided that they were payable in bullion on demand; and also that the amount of bullion held by the Bank bore the same proportion, at all times, to the aggregate amount of all the paper in circulation, which would be effectually produced by the management of the Bank of England underland for a certain period; and some of the Bill of the right hon. Baronet in 1844. With these views he (Mr. Muntz) seriously recommended to the consideration of Ministers during the recess, the allowing the circulation by the Bank of England of 17. notes against the gold now in circulation, with a view of preventing its useless and unnecessary waste to the nation, and particularly the loss sustained by the poorer classes. He should certainly give his warmest support to the present Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for Montrose, fully believing that the subject was one of great importance, not only in a national point of view, but as bearing unequally 1842, the last year he had returns on the subject, the quantity of land under cultivation for coffee, was not less than 48,500 acres; and by far the greater portion of this was held by the civil servants. Those parties were under contract to hold the them were prevented disposing of it under the stipulations by which they held it. The Colonial Government, under instructions from home, however, had given orders that they should all part with this land within a limited period, or cease to belong to the civil service in the Colony. He might be told, that by holding land for cultivation they had been guilty of a violation of their oaths; but it should be recollected that the Governor and the highest civil servants of the Colony, had long been in the habit of purchasing and taking land for cultivation. These parties, therefore, were not aware that they were doing wrong in following this example. | land; and if he did not do so, he was not He considered that the Colony of Ceylon to remain longer in the civil service of was greatly indebted to the civil servants of the Government. There could be no the Government there; for they had led the difficulty in obtaining information reway in the cultivation of coffee, and thus specting the land, for in the Ceylon Caheld out inducements to others to go out lender published every year, there was there and invest their capital in land. In a statement as to the grants of land made, 1838, the value of coffee exported from of the land sold, and to whom sold. The Ceylon was 116,8007.; while the whole Colonial Office, therefore, must have been value of the exports was 250,000l. In long aware of the civil servants being ex1842, the coffee exported was of the tensive cultivators of coffee; but it came value of 269,7621., being more than the down and left it to the discretion of the value of all the rest of the exports. It Governor at once to say, whether these certainly might be wrong on the part of parties should all dispose of their land. the civil servants to engage in such pur- He feared, however, that the Governor suits, and it might be proper to prevent himself, and other high authorities in the the practice for the future; but still ample Colony, not coming exactly within the time ought to be allowed them to dispose narrow meaning of the lower civil serof this description of property. This was vants, were extensive holders of land. peculiarly necessary with respect to this He found that in 1840, a grant of land description of property; for land taken had been made to the Governor of 2,244 into cultivation for the production of acres, to the Secretary of the Colony of coffee in 1841 and 1842, would only 1,371 acres, and to the Archdeacon of come into bearing this year. Without 1,970 acres. Here was another injustice any previous notice, an order had been with respect to which they had ground of issued by the Governor of the Colony to complaint; for when they asked whether the effect that he had stated; and in the order extended to the clergy who culwhich it was directed, that they should tivated coffee plantations, they were told either dispose of this description of pro- it did not. This, therefore, was a great perty within a reasonable period," or injustice to them; and it was known, also, cease to belong to the civil service. Now, that the chief colonial jobber in land in the he did not object to this, if due time was island was the archdeacon. If the order given; but the Governor insisted that this was to be persisted in, he trusted that it should all be done within twelve months; would be extended to all persons in auand that that period should be stated in thority, and above all to the clergy, and the Gazette. The result was, that no not be confined to the technical term civil one would purchase land, as so much servant. The civil servants had sent to was suddenly brought into the market; the proper authorities the following reand it therefore became depreciated to an alarming extent. He understood, that the Colonial Office had proposed to extend this period to two years; but this was nearly as bad. The following was the notification in the Order : monstrance : "Those among us who are connected with agricultural pursuits, may now be permitted to solicit your Lordship's serious reconsideration of the order given with respect to the disposal of our landed property. We do not presume for one moment to question the ab"His Lordship has directed, that it be dis- solute right of Her Majesty's Government, to tinctly understood that no civil servant will make it a condition of employment, that a be permitted to engage in any agricultural or civil servant shall not be engaged in agriculcommercial pursuits for the sake of profit; tural or commercial pursuits; but we venture and that all who may have done so must, to urge upon your Lordship the extreme hardwithin a reasonable time, dispose of their pro-ship of compelling those who have already perty, or retire from the public service; and that this rule be fully and promptly carried into effect; the penalty of any evasion of the boná file compliance with this rule will be immediate dismissal." embarked in them, to extricate themselves altogether within so very limited a period. We have now to plead that Her Majesty's Government, in the first instance, encouraged agricultural undertakings by the civil servants; that it has been throughout aware that they were so engaged; and that it has never, until now, intimated any sort of disapproval of their so doing: and that the Governors of the Colony have, in more that one instance, been 20 |