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thing and another, comedy was, by degrees, so far arrested from its primitive signification as to be the symbol of something highly ludicrous. If we take the word in this latter sense, I must own that I should have been sorry had Miss O'Neill excelled in the comic department of her art. Old humorists, young coxcombs, old virgins smitten by the tender passion, are all the fitting dramatis persona of this kind of comedy-not so young and beautiful girls. Playful the sweet creatures may be, sportive as the first breeze in May-but comic they must not be. Only consider for a moment whether, in real life, the dashing, intriguing, repartee-making young ladies are to be tolerated? Why, then, should we admire them on the stage? Could a girl who turned bar-maid to get a husband, or who pretended to be an idiot to escape one-could a widow, full of her jokes, or a wife full of plots, (Heaven grant Mrs Gentle be neither one nor the other!) ever pretend to more than a watering-place respectability? For Miss O'Neill to have romped through the Romp, rattled through the Widow Cheerly, or simpered a-la-chambermaid through Miss Hardcastle, would to me have been profanation. But there is another kind of comedy, called genteel. I hate the term, but let it pass-in which the principal female character may have all the liveliness of real talent, combined with the refinement of real feeling, and may be high-minded, yet, (to use your own words, Mr North, for I cannot find better,)" earnestly and keenly alive to all the cheerful and pleasant humanities and charities of this everyday sublunary world of ours." In

such characters as these Miss O'Neill

was herself, and was, therefore, admirable. Had she made a good romp, she would have been Miss O'Neill no longer. Do not, therefore, ye dear dramatic critics, insist upon finding an intellectual turtle, (combining all tastes of fish, flesh, and fowl,) in every, or in any great actress that may be thrown upon our "bank and shoal of time.""But, bless me, all this time you have said nothing about that essential article

the voice!" Not expressly, Mr Pinchbeck; but can you not gather from the flowers of my discourse the honey of a voice rich as hybla, powerful as Lacryma Christi, piercing as Champaigne, tender as May-dew? No; you cannot, for you are only a drone, and never gathered any honey in your life, and have nothing of the bee about you, but the sting. I must now, "my patient brethren, bring my discourse to a finish," as the parson said, after having divided his sermon into sixty-three heads, all of which he touched upon in the course of the evening. Farewell, my patient readers, and farewell, Mr North. Should I have pleased you, you may, perhaps, hear from me again, for I must tell you, that, although I once contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine, I cannot find in my heart to prefer it to Blackwood's-another striking instance of my freedom from all old prejudices! You must allow me to conclude with a Sonnet, which an ingenious young friend of mine has indited to the memory of Miss O'Neill. It is too much in the modern style to please me, who am of opinion that all good writing expired with the last generation. However, as the thoughts are tolerable, it may go down now-a-days.

SONNET, TO THE SOMETIME MISS O'NEILL.

Shakspeare's own Juliet! oft I vainly try
To pierce the mystery of thy two-fold life;
Once thou didst shake all hearts with passionate strife,
Once thou wert ever in the public eye,
And not a smile of thine, or murmur'd sigh,
But waked a thousand plaudits, and was rife
With potent magic. Now, thou art a wife-
And round thee dwells a calm reality.
Men speak of thee as dead-thy glory scan
As of a wonder that hath past away;

And yet thou see'st the household light of day,
And human hopes and fears thy being fan!
Oh! thou, who art to other souls a gleam
Of Fancy, art thou to thyself a dream?

THE EFFECTS OF VARIATIONS IN THE CURRENCY.

THE various changes which have taken place within the last five-andthirty years in our monetary system, will undoubtedly form one of the darkest pages in the annals of this country, and furnish to all coming generations an imperishable monument of the ignorance of British statesmen, in an age which vaunts itself on the progress which it has made in every species of knowledge, and more especially in what is called the science of Political Economy. The changes in question have spread more ruthless and wider ruin, and created more public inconvenience, as well as private misery, than any public calamity which has ever occurred in the history of any known nation. Had the task of effecting these changes fallen into the hands of intelligent men-of men possessing but even a tyro's knowledge of the general principles on which they ought to have proceeded, means would have been devised to obviate the monstrous and incalculable wrongs, both public and private, which have resulted from the alterations which have been made in the standard of value.

Atamoment of great public embarrassment and distrust, Mr Pitt was induced to have recourse to the fatal step of restraining the Bank of England from paying cash for its notes. For several years after this event, matters went on smoothly enough, and no harm, on the contrary, much good, seemed to have resulted from the measure. The Governors of the Bank, kept within bounds by old habits, and accustomed to the restraint of cash payments, did not at once perceive that their fetters had been withdrawn; hence they acted with their wonted reserve and discretion for some time after the necessity for that circumspection had ceased. By degrees, however, they began to feel their liberty. Their responsibility being lessened, if not altogether removed, they became freer in the issue of bank-notes, and in the end saturated the kingdom with paper money. This paper money gradually displaced our metallic currency, and became the sole circulating medium of the country. In the course of a

short period after the suspension of
cash payments, it became apparent,
both from the price of gold in the
bullion market, and from the rate of
foreign exchanges, that the pound
note had sustained a considerable
depreciation, and that although no-
minally representing about the fourth
of an ounce of gold, it was only
worth, in exchange, about the fifth
of an ounce of that metal; or, in
more familiar language, although
nominally purporting to represent
twenty shillings, it had depreciated
so far as to be worth no more than
fourteen, at the most fifteen shil-
lings, in exchange for other commo-
dities.

We must request our readers to
pause at this point, and contemplate
for a moment the change which then
took place in our currency, together
with the effects which it produced
upon the pecuniary relations of so-
ciety. The old standard of value
was in effect destroyed, and another
standard, considerably depreciated,
was adopted in its stead. All pub-
lic, as well as private creditors, were
compelled to receive payment in pa-
per money, and consequently plun-
dered to an amount equalling the
difference between the real value of
the paper money in which their
claims were liquidated, and that of
the metallic currency in which their
capital had been lent. Supposing,
therefore, the real value of the pound
note to have at that period fallen to
fifteen shillings, it is manifest that a
loss of twenty-five per cent was in-
flicted by this change upon the whole
body of creditors throughout the
of his
realm, while every debtor profited
expense
to this amount, at the
creditor. Nothing could have been
more unfair or iniquitous, but such
was the fact. Every person who had
lent twenty shillings, was forced to
put up with a repayment not ex-
ceeding fifteen shillings. This alter-
ation in the currency has been call-
ed, and very properly called, an act
of bankruptcy; for it was, to all in-
tents and purposes, an act of nation-
al, as well as individual bankruptcy.
The creditors, both of the state and
of private individuals, were compel-

led to forego at least twenty-five per cent upon their honest and just claims.

An inconvertible paper currency having been thus established as the actual, as well as legal, measure of value, all bargains were henceforward made-all debts, and other liabilities, contracted in this new and depreciated standard of fifteen shillings to the pound sterling.

About 1810, the political economists took the field on the subject of the currency; they delivered themselves of long and vehement harangues against an inconvertible paper circulation, denounced our whole monetary system as vicious and fraudulent, and loudly demanded its reestablishment upon a metallic basis. In 1811, the Bullion Committee made the report which has been since so much vaunted. With infinite pains and labour this committee proved, what no man of common sense and ordinary experience doubted for a single moment, that for many years the paper pound note had depreciated from its nominal value. Lord Bexley and his party, however, steadily combated this proposition: with equal intelligence and pertinacity, they maintained that the currency had not depreciated, and that a pound note and a shilling were, in public estimation, equal in value to a golden guinea.

By degrees, the arguments and facts of the Bullion Committee began to penetrate the brains even of these official persons, who seemed at length to perceive that the paper pound note had depreciated from its nominal value. The Bullion party having, after about eight years of hard labour, hammered into their antagonists the conviction, that the paper currency had sustained a depreciation, eagerly proceeded to make the most of the vantage ground which they had gained; they saw that the battle was half won, and that the object, for which they had so long and so arduously struggled, was now within their reach. Having prevailed upon anti-bullionists to consent to the establishment of the currency upon a metallic basis, they went one step farther, and persuaded them to render the new standard of the same weight and fineness as the old standard, which had, in effect, been abolished when cash pay

as a

ments were suspended in 1797, and which, therefore, for all practical purposes, had ceased to exist for upwards of twenty years. "Since paper," argued the Bullionists, standard of value, must, from its very nature, be fluctuating and uncertain, it is expedient that a metallic standard should be substituted for it; and gold is, in many respects, the most convenient metal to constitute this standard." To all this there seems no reasonable objection. "Therefore," say they, "the pound sterling now about to be established, ought to weigh 120 grains of gold of the standard fineness." The inference here drawn is unquestionably a very extraordinary instance of jumping at a conclusion. It is difficult to believe, without positive proof, that such reasoning could for a moment have imposed upon any man; and still more difficult to conceive that it should have been acted upon by practical statesmen. The premises above stated will not support the conclusion which was then drawn from them. It appears absurd to say, that because it is expedient that the standard of value should be metallic, it is a necessary consequence that the pound sterling should contain the same quantity of gold as it contained previously to the suspension of cash payments. Reasons unquestionably may exist, why the pound sterling should contain this identical weight of gold; but the expediency of restoring a metallic standard of value is certainly not one of them. was, in fact, the fallacy which so fatally misled the Legislature in 1819. All the absurdity in argument which has been advanced on this subject, and, what is much more to be lamented, all the mistakes which have been committed in practice, with regard to the currency, have arisen from confounding two questions, which are in their nature perfectly distinct. For it requires but little sagacity to perceive that a resolution, grounded on expediency, to return to a metallic standard, is one thing, and that fixing the weight of this metal which is to constitute the standard of the pound sterling, is another question, totally unconnected with the former.

This

It was not the object of a return to a metallic currency to increase the

real value of the pound sterling, in which all contracts for the twenty preceding years had been made; the object of this measure was merely to prevent the uncertainty and fluctuation in the standard of value from the continuance of an inconvertible paper currency. To avoid the fluctuating uncertainty to which the pound sterling, regulated in a paper standard, could not fail to be liable, it was, no doubt, highly expedient that the currency should have been placed upon a metallic basis. But because it was judged expedient, that, on account of its greater certainty, our currency should be placed upon a metallic, instead of a paper basis, it surely did not follow that the new standard of the pound sterling should have been made to contain a greater weight of the metal, selected for that purpose, than was actually represented by the paper pound note, for which it was adopted as a substitute. Because gold was fixed upon as the metal by which the pound sterling should for the future be measured, it was a monstrous absurdity to infer, therefore, that this pound sterling should contain 120 grains of this metal; or, in other words, be of the same weight with a standard which, to all practical purposes, had been abolished twenty years before.

The committee appointed to consider the state of the currency previously to the introduction of what is called "Peel's Bill," in 1819, seem to have had no conception of the question which really required investigation. For reasons which we cannot pretend even to conjecture, the members of this sage committee made it their principal object to ascertain how much gold the pound sterling contained before the suspension of cash payments. But this was undoubtedly a gross misapprehension of the object to which their attention ought to have been directed. It was unnecessary to appoint a committee of the House of Commons to ascertain the metallic value of the pound sterling before 1797; that fact was already well known to every city 'prentice: on the contrary, its researches should have been directed towards ascertaining the average weight of gold which the paper pound note represented during the continu

ance of the Bank Restriction Act. Having ascertained the weight of gold which the paper pound note represented, or would have exchanged for, they should have recommended it as the standard of the new currency. If, for instance, it had, on proper enquiry, been discovered that the paper pound note, though nominally representing 120 grains of gold, really represented no more than 96 grains, or three-fourths of the nominal weight, the new standard should have been made to contain 96 grains, and not, as it now does, 120 of that metal.

Instead, however, of pursuing this enquiry, and making the result of it the means of determining the weight of the metallic standard about to be re-established, the committee, most unaccountably, turned aside to hunt after a guinea-a coin which, since the suspension of cash payments in 1797, had ceased to be the standard of our currency: and having, after a laborious and painful research, for which they consider themselves, no doubt, entitled to the thanks of the country, made the amazing discovery, that the guinea contained 126 grains of gold, they decided that the new standard should therefore contain 120 grains, or of a guinea.

For more than twenty years previously to the restoration of a metallic standard in 1819, all bargains and contracts of a pecuniary nature had been entered into,-farms had been rented, taxes had been assessed, lands had been mortgaged, money had been lent both to the state and private individuals,-in a depreciated currency. For more than twenty yearsa period during which a new generation of men must have sprung up, and at the end of which very few pecuniary arrangements were subsisting which had been entered into before its commencement-the whole mass of the money transactions of this country had been regulated and settled on a paper pound sterling, which did not, in fact, represent more than 96 grains of gold. When the Legislature, therefore, determined to substitute a metallic for a paper standard, policy, as well as justice, required that the new standard should have been fixed at this weight. In settling the weight of the new standard, the Legislature should have considered itself as a jury sitting in judg

ment between a debtor and his creditor, for the purpose of deciding what quantity of gold the former had really contracted to pay the latter when he had borrowed from him a

pound note; and, having ascertained what weight of this metal the paper pound note lent by the creditor actually represented at the date of the transaction, this should, upon every principle of equity and fairness, have been fixed upon as the weight of the new standard. As to any practical measure to be suggested by the enquiry, the Legislature had no more to do with the weight of gold which constituted the standard of the pound sterling before the suspension of cash payments had taken place, than with the quantity of that metal which the Spanish doubloon, or any other foreign coin, contains at present. The old standard of our pound sterling was, to all practical purposes, abolished in 1797; a depreciated standard then came into use, and constituted the measure of value.

Had these principles been acted on in settling the currency in 1819, the country would have escaped the general confusion which that measure has since produced; and we should have experienced few, if any, of the frightful difficulties, in which the alteration which has been made in the value of the standard has involved the community. The change then made in the standard of value was as palpably unjust in principle, as it has proved irretrievably ruinous in its result. Had any man proposed, in direct and unveiled terms, to add twenty-five per cent to the amount of all pecuniary contracts at that period subsisting between debtor and creditor, the suggestion would have appeared too monstrous to be entertained for an instant. But the measure which the legislature was then so unwarily led to sanction, has indirectly produced this ruinous injustice for the injury inflicted upon the debtor is exactly the same, whether he be called upon to pay L.125 for each L.100 which he has borrowed, or be compelled to pay L.100 in a standard increased one-fourth in its weight.

Those who dwell upon the wrongs inflicted by the alteration of the standard in 1819, are instantly assailed with shallow declamations on the

fidelity with which the state should fulfil its pecuniary engagements; with vapid dissertations on the faith which should be observed towards creditors, both public and private ; but these declaimers carefully keep out of sight the injustice done to the debtor, by obliging him to pay onefourth more than he borrowed. The most scrupulous and honourable observance of the faith pledged by the debtor, does not surely require that the creditor should receive in repayment more than he lent? When the latter was, therefore, repaid in a metallic currency, money which he had lent in paper pound-notes, he could in fairness expect in repayment only that weight of gold, which these paper pound-notes would, at the period of the loan, have exchanged for in the bullion market. The same evenhanded justice, which gave him an indefeasible right to exact this amount, required that his demand should not exceed this limit; for, as to the nature and extent of the wrong committed, it requires a very nice casuist indeed, to discriminate between the injustice done a creditor, by obliging him to receive, in liquidation of his debt, 25 per cent less than he lent, and the injury inflicted upon the debtor, by forcing him to pay his creditor 25 per cent more than he borrowed.

It is now, on all hands, admitted, that the currency bill of 1819 inflicted upon the whole body of debtors an unjust wrong, proportioned to the excess of the new standard over the value of the depreciated paper currency, in which, with exceptions too trifling to be taken into the account, the whole bulk of the pecuniary engagements then subsisting had been contracted. It was a wanton and cruel injury, palliated by no considerations of justice, necessity, or policy, that those who had pecuniary claims to satisfy should have been obliged to liquidate them in a standard different from that in which they had been incurred; that every debtor throughout the community should have been compelled to repay 120 grains of gold for 96 grains which he had borrowed. To this addition to the weight of gold really represented by the paper money originally lent, no creditor could, on any principle of justice, establish

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