BOOKS.
LORD OVERSTONE'S TRACTS AND EVIDENCE ON BETA LLIC AND PIPER CURRENCY.* IT is rarely that so large a volume as this appears with so apparently small a nucleus or theme for all the labours of the author both by tongue and pen are really devoted to secure the "convertibility of the note "—to establish the principle that a paper currency should be identical in value with the metallic currency it professes to represent; fluctuating as gold itself would fluctuate, not attempting to be any better, and legislatively prevented from being any worse. Of course much had to be done in clearing the ground when Lord Overstone, twenty years ago, first began to write upon the subject. Many facts or. questions, now established or historical, had to be treated disqmaitionally : for instance, the management of the Bank of England at various times, or the state of the commercial world at a given period. In the examination of Mr. Jones Loyd before the Committees especially of the House of Commons in 1840, much collateral not to say remote or irrelevant matter was introduced. Mr. Hume and others raised their own crotchets, and pressed them upon the witness,— that bills of exchange were currency ; that credit did not merely transfer .existing capital but created capital ; and so on. In fact, so much was this the case, and so often were the same ideas repeated, that the editor has shortened those parts by omissions. Still, notwithstanding the handling of these various questions, and the further subject of the difference between a bank of deposit and a bank of issue, the real pivot of the whole is the necessity of a compulsory identity between a paper and a metallic currency. If there is to be a fixed standard of value—if the promise of the Bank expressed on its notes to pay a pound sterling on demand is to be adhered to— the experience of 1825, of 1837, of 1839, shows that this great object cannot safely be intrusted to corporate discretion, but must be secured by law. This law, (the Act of 1844,) after allowing a certain vacuum counterbalanced by securities, which that act fixed at fourteen millions, compels for every note issued beyond that stun a corresponding amount of bullion to be lodged with a department of issue, whether called the Bank of England or by any other name. For every sum of gold withdrawn from the department of issue a corresponding amount of notes must be withdrawn from circulation. The convertibility of the bank-note—the certainty that he who is promised a pound sterling shall at all times receive his pound sterling—is all that the principle of Jones Loyd aimed at, and which the Act of 1844 successfully enforced. It did not attempt to endow money with magical properties, to remove the inevitable effects of natural evils, or to find a remedy for national passions or political convulsions which, among their other results, destroy large amounts of capital or suddenly divert them from their accustomed channels, producing more or less cost or difficulty to those who in great part carry on their trading operations with what may be popularly called borrowed money. If the harvest fell short, involving the necessity of paying in gold for the unusual demand for foreign corn—if a war diverted or destroyed (as regards purposes immediately productive) one, two' or three hundred millions of capital—the act could not attempt to prevent the evils that must of necessity flow from such causes, beyond removing all fear as to the convertibility of the note, and modifying the extreme severity of the pressure by early and gradual operation.
Although the difference between a bank of issue, that is a bank putting forth its own notes, and a bank of discount and deposit, discounting bills with its own capital and the deposits of its customers, seems obvious on the mere statement,—and so far as the , earlier discussions were concerned, it formed what an ontologist would call the " secondary property" of the measure —yet Mr. Jones Loyd had perpetually to call the attention of the measure,—yet in 1848 to the difference between the two : the Members could not see that the Bank's mismanagement of its own banking business, over which it had full control, was quite a different thing from the self-regulation of the issue department, over which it had then no control at all. This was the plight to which the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street had brought her banking affairs on the Saturday night before the issue of the letter of October 1847. Private deposits on Saturday 23d October 1847 £8,580,509 Available assets in notes £1,547,270
in coin
447'246 £1,994,516 Lord Overstone, however, thinks the Bank has the power of saving itself even in extrends.
"Such is the peculiar relation in which the Bank of England, from the magnitude of its capital and resources, stands towards the public, that I am rather inclined to think that the Bank could save itself at almost any point, and that the danger is rather of the extraordinary derangement which that effort would throw upon public affairs than that the Bank itself would actually stop payment. I speak with some doubt upon that point, but that is my impression.
"1540. In what way do you think the Bank would have saved itself ?— The Bank at that time held a very large amount of bills of exchange falling due daily, and the Bank might have refused to make any further advance whatever, and so have let those bills run to maturity. By this means the Bank would, day by day, have brought into its till a very large amount of money. The Bank, again, held a large amount of public securities ; the Bank might have brought those public securities into the market for sale, at any extent of depreciation. What the effect of that might have been, I can representative assembly; the gentlemen being, as it were, members for the ticket-of-leave constituency. The class were determined, Lord emery= said, "for the future to lead honest and industrious lives : many of them sincerely desired to carry out that laudable purpose, but many others fell from their good intentions, and yielded to temptation." The reasons are explained by several of the speakers in the hall; and the object of the meeting was to ascertain how those " difficulties " could be overcome. One honourable member was "certain that the best part on his elms would be glad to get employment, if the police and the publie would only let them " : but there is the difficulty of the ticketof-leave. "It was no more good to a man," said another honourable member, "than a previous conviction at the Old Bailey ; it only throws him back. The best plan is to throw it into the fire, and then try to get on by your own exertion." Both these speakers, as well as others, had certificates from their employers, that they were truly respectable ticket-of-leave men ; their conduct at the meeting showed that they are capable of transacting business ; but they are held down by the ticket. If they are suspected to possess that which should be their certificate of safety, they are cast out of work. The case is a hard one, and they all agree in asking a rescue from their position. Necessity is a comparative word. The nobleman thinks that necessary which the tradesman looks upon as a superfluity. The ticket-of-leave man considers that to be necessary which many a working man in the country will consider to be luxury. One of the gentlemen at the meeting, whose reputation is his misfortune, avows candidly that he will not starve ; but evidently, in comparison with many, an industrious man, he marks "starvation " at rather a high point on the scale of maintenance. He finds that he cannot live on less than three shillings a day ; which being added together makes eighteen shillings a week. Now we happen to know of working men who do manage, by some miracle which we cannot understand, to support large families on less than that amount. So that if an income of two-and-ninepence a day constitutes actual starvation, a large portion of the working classes might immediately take to garotting and other compulsory modes of levying an income. What the ticket-of-leave man desires as essential to his existence and comfort is—absence of the police, non-surveillance of the public, and three shillings a day as the minimum of income. The conditions are difficult in this country ; so he petitions to be transported. The ticket-of-leave in the Colonies is his desire. This is easily understood. In the Colonies, with their broad waste lands, and scanty population on the borders of settled districts, the public can exercise a very little control over the ticketof-leave man. Near the bush he is independent of the police ; or if the police interfere too much, what more easy than to silence the troublesome follower with a life-preserver. Easy circumstances, a choice of avocation, or of no avocation, and independence of the police, are the conditions which the ticket-of-leave man desires ; he thinks that he can obtain them in the Colonies, and he is right ; send him thither, and those restrictions which at present control him will be absent. None of the speakers made any reference to the Falkland Islands as a penal settlement, or a prison. Of course they would not prefer residence in a prison of limited extent; but they scarcely anticipate that Government will send them to an immense distance simply for the purpose of being confined within walls ; because the seine confmement can be effected in this country without the cost of a passage. If they are to be confined simply on an island, no doubt gentlemen so enterprising would calculate on the chances of boating expeditions, with freedom in prospect. Free emigration is what they desire.
New South Wales, Victoria, and Iran Diemen's Land,' give us exactly the same account of the freedom which the convict at large enjoys. The' proposal for a new transportation has received valuable sanction from the important meeting at Farringdon Hall; it is only on the point of expediency that convicts and colonists have entertained views totally opposed to each other.
A. COUNTY FOR A GUEST.—A local paper, the 24"otting1em Review, describes two days' "festivities at Clumber," which might carry one back to old times, from the magnitude, breadth, and heartiness of the welcome. "Reinstated in an important family dignity" as Lord-Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, the Duke of Newcastle celebrated that event, and the majority of his son, the Earl of Lincoln, by entertaining the noble and gentle families of the county at a feast and ball ; and next day the Duke entertained his tenantry and tradespeople. The hospitalities of both days were on the grandest scale. Not content with the easy imitation of the ancient usage, a boar's head in the centre of the table," the style of old profusion was adapted to modern refinement. For the first day, seven hundred invitations were issued, and nearly six hundred persons were present. "Stabling was provided for three hundred horses." "Champagne flowed like spring water." When the guests began to depart, at three in the morning, and while they were waiting for their carriages mulled claret from an immense Crimean vase was dispensed to the ladles, and the gentlemen were armed against the cold with hot punch. The hospitality was crowned by the most genial spirit. The Duke was everywhere among his guests ; he danced much ; and opened the ball with the beautiful and accomplished Lady Elizabeth Yorke," daughter of the Earl of Hardwicke,—whose loveliness manifestly exercised as much power in Nottingham as it did in Hampshire, when it took possession of the gallant Merrimac officer. The last carriage did not roll away till five o'clock, all in admirably ordered-regularity; save that one heedless coachman, deviating from the track, drove his wearied passengers about the park for an hour, lost in the mazes of the noble domain.
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