paper money and discounts, as it is to calicoes; we distrust the system by which shareholders have been allured; and, without meaning disrespect in any quarter, we must be excused for an opinion that the directors (self appointed, in a manner) as a body, are not of the standing, nor qualified by that extensive and general experience which alone could compensate the want of more special instruction." The wary and measured step" of the Bank of England was then also pointed out as "significant to the local banks," and worthy of "imitation as well as approval;" inasmuch as it was then narrowing its issues, whilst the jointstock ephemera were zealously extending theirs. 66 Upon traders, ever sanguine, our monitory cautions were for the most part expended in vain; but in the Legislature, if not in the Ministry, heads cooler and more reflecting were still to be found, and our labours were not altogether cast away. The voice of Reason, like the zephyrean breath of summer, is, however, felt rather than heard it infuses its influence slowly, however surely. It was not until the 12th of May that a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed "to enquire into the operation of the act of the 7th Geo. IV. c. 46, permitting the establishment of joint-stock banks, under certain restrictions, and whether it be expedient to make any alterations in the provisions of that act." The Report, ordered to be printed on the 20th of August, but not actually published for two or three months afterwards, now lies on our table. The Committee, in the outset, state, that "their enquiries have not yet been brought to a close," and strongly recommend the House to renew them at the opening of the next session, a recommendation, the propriety of which must be unquestionable to all who have glanced, even in the most superficial manner, at the minutes of evidence already delivered, or who have marked with observing eye the rise, progress, and spread of the paper money manufactories with which the land has been deluged during the last seven years, but more peculiarly since the commencement of the exciting era of organic change and political revolution at home and abroad. The Committee confined their inquisition within the limits of England and Wales. The exclusion of the joint-stock banks of Ireland from the searching test of legislative scrutiny can be accounted for only by the active intromission of that silent but absolute dictation before which the paralysed powers of Government salaam in all abjectness, and whose rule is no less paramount over a slavish and anti-national majority of the popular branch of the Legislature. It may be that the renewal of the Bank of Ireland charter, which expires in 1838, will, in the ensuing session, force on an examination of the whole question of Irish joint-stock schemes, and the Irish monetary system, in despite of manoeuvres for extending over paper circulation the same despotic sway which regulates the collection and distribution of Peter's pence. If the discussion be pursued with the righteous resolve to elicit the truth, the whole truth, a harvest of facts, rankly rich, will be housed for present profit, and against the perils of impending shipwreck for the future an indestructible landmark will be raised for timely advice of shoals and shallows on the one hand, and on the other to guard against the cunning devices and false lights displayed by prowling wreckers, wherewith to decoy the unsuspecting prey within the reach of clutches rapacious as relentless. The range within which the Committee of the past session circumscribed their operations, was, however, far too restricted to fulfil those high purposes of public utility for which it was professedly instituted. In the syllabus of the course of duties prescribed no allusion is to be found to the desirableness and the means of information under sundry heads of special interest. Strict justice, equally with the well-being of the nation at large, requires a thorough insight into the origin, no less than the working, of joint-stock banks. The formula of queries of the forthcoming Commit. tee ought, and if prevention as well as cure be aimed at, will, embrace a larger sphere of action. If the disgorgement of past plunder be beyond the reach of art, the further career of robbery may be stayed, and its prospective repetition rendered less practicable. A list of leading questions to the purport we shall indicate, should be added to the catalogue of those which have already occupied attention, explicit satisfaction upon which is of the deepest import. If, in the case of the famous South-Sea bubble, the necessity was urgent that fraudulent combination should be rigorously traced through all its courses and sinuosities, with signal efficacy fixed upon and prosecuted in the persons of the real conspirators, national honour vindicated, and society restored to more healthy action by the unflinching excision of its diseased members, not the less keenly should the shame of national character degraded be felt in these days of civilisation and progress so vaunted, not the less unsparingly should the lightning of public vengeance scathe the unprincipled traffickers in public credulity in their high places, and with them consign to the ignominious award of offended laws the low-lived instruments and participators in the accumulations of their infamy. Examples more recent are not wanting to justify a purifying process of investigation such as we allude to. The Parliamentary Annals of 1826 and 1827 will furnish dates and precedents in point. Even were the malpractices of more grovelling and needy adventurers alone in issue, the safety of public morals imperiously indicates a thorough fumigation of the atmosphere, contaminated by the pestilential taint of their presence at large; but the core of the crying evil could not be reached, the thrust would not strike home, unless the head were impeached as well as the hand. There are no quarantine regulations by which the spread of leprosy is confined to the pauper hinds, and the filthy regions of St Giles's; lepers have before existed, and are yet to be found within the precincts of St Stephen's. Let these be cast out-let these be dragged forth, along with their meaner accomplices, before the tribunals of outraged justice and public opinion; the innumerable victims of imposture and fraud call out aloud for this reparation or atonement for wrongs-any inquisition which stops short of this will be viewed as little more or better than a solemn mockery enacted by a legislative majority, enslaved or confederate. Amongst the points on which the people demand to be enlightened, and on which no director or official representative of joint-stock banks, honestly constituted, need demur explanation, are the following: previous situation in life of the projectors? 2. Nature of the CONSIDERATION demanded by, and what assigned to the projectors-if in actual money, shares to be unpaid upon, or secretaryships, or salaried seats in the direction, with statement of cash amounts present or contingent, of such bonuses or salaries? 3. NUMBER of Shares originally appropriated by, and to each director, as well as projector-how many sold, and at what premiums and dates-how many still held-how many still unpaid upon, and why and till when the time of payment deferred-how many advanced upon and held in trust by the Bank for account of the same parties from its first establishment to the present moment? 4. STATEMENT of Salaries and per centages of secretaries, managing directors, and directors at the head office-salaries to agents at branches, with the per centages allowed besides for pushing out notes and doing discounts? 5. SCALE of Expenditure for management, general and local-amount of business done, and issues by the year-amount of loss, and bad debts incurred; these to be stated tabularly, and published so as at one view to exhibit the actual condition and working of the system ruling in each bank? It is sufficiently notorious that on most of these particulars no information was sought by the Committee of last session, and equally so, that the shareholders, entitled as they are to force the fullest disclosure of the affairs of their association in all their details, live in profound unconsciousness of every thing beyond a yearly exhibit of liabilities, assets, and the balance in hand. From our own means, it were easy to furnish a series of histories sufficient to stock the whole of this Number with fraud and trickery more flagrant than the annals of swindling --even those of 1825-26-could parallel; but of which, to this day, the en snared stockholders remain in a state of ignorance which, compromised as they are, may almost be described as blissful. For reasons which will readily be comprehended, we shall at present content ourselves with the record of examples already authenticated in the pages of our contemporaIncredibly flagitious as they 1. ORIGIN of the Bank-names, and ries. may appear, they are but specimens, and not exaggerated specimens, as it comports with our means of verification to testify, of a numerous class-of the genus Chevaliers d'Industrie-of most fruitful multiplication among us, no less indefatigable than unscrupulous in enterprise-Protean in their disguises and transformations. The first is cited from the Edinburgh Review, and will not lose in effect by transference to our columns, by the visé of our confirmation, and the solid public benefit of our more extended circulation : "During the course of the present year" (says our contemporary) "the Stamp-Office prosecuted a person at Manchester for carrying on the forgery of stamps on a large scale, and had him convicted and transported. Now, what will our readers think when we tell them that there were found on the person and in the repositories of this notorious culprit, several letters addressed to him by an individual who was at the time engaged in the formation of a great joint-stock bank! The letter-writer knew perfectly well what his friend at Manchester was about, and the burden of his letter is to press him for loans to enable him to get his scheme matured and fairly set afloat. It may perhaps be imagined, considering the sort of project the party had on his hands, that he would have required large advances but no! His utmost demand was for some L. 15 or L.20, and he sometimes modestly limits himself to the pressing solicitation for a sovereign, or even half a sovereign! He had, to make himself respectable, taken a house looking into Park; and, provided he could continue to hold that, and get his prospectuses printed, and advertisements paid, he had no doubt and in that he was right-that he should in a few weeks be rolling in wealth! Only think,' says he to his correspondent, of a person without a shilling, establishing a bank!' There were to be ,600 shares, and a deposit of L.5 was to be paid on each. And this very bank is now in the field. Its success has not been quite so great as that of some others; but, considering its parentage, we need not be surprised if, at first, it should be a little ricketty. No doubt, however, if the present facilities continue for another year, it will get fairly under weigh. Its directors will declare large dividends, and give white bait dinners at Blackwall; and those who have dealt with them will of course lose every thing." From the intimate connexion of the presumed writer of the article in which the foregoing paragraph was embodied with the Board of Trade, it may fairly be inferred from whence the informa tion was derived. We are justified, therefore, in demanding, how it came to pass that an individual so doubly steeped in infamy and beggary, was left at large to pursue, unchecked, his career of depredation against his Majesty's industrious subjects; and why that department of the government, specially instituted for the protection of industry, if his offences had not assumed so tangible a character as to bring him within the pale and rigorous application of the criminal law, did not take early steps to denounce this latent accomplice of forgery and fraud, to the directors of the banking scheme of which he was the daring fabricator; or why, to this hour, the damning evidences of villany so irredeemable have not been placed before them? Had this been done, and the delinquent then escaped instant and ignominious expulsion, the directors, or that portion of them found conniving at his continuance, and anxious to cushion the unimpeachable testimony to his disgraceful antecedents, might safely be denounced to their costock proprietors as his confederates in iniquity and fellow-leaguers for spoil. One other example, the following, not less remarkable, of the successful march of knavery, we select from the columns of our able and uncompromising fellow-labourer, the Newcastle Journal, which, after the recital of other cases, thus concludes :-* Something more than incidental allusion is due to this distinguished Journal. From the commencement it took, and at once, through the combination of unsurpassed tact and talent displayed in its writings and management, the first rank in the provincial press a station which, during five years of existence, it has not maintained only, but improved. Whatever equals it may find, it has no superior, and need not fear "We ourselves have heard a story about one of these bank directors, but one remove more creditable. The fellow was better known than trusted in more than one place, and therefore he had the sagacity to lay the scene at a distance from associations and recollections that might mar his enterprise. He, too, singularly enough, lived somewhere about Park; he was, moreover, so destitute as to be utterly shirtless beyond that upon his backwhich, therefore, as the joke goes, was turned, when desirous of enjoying the luxury of clean linen. Fortunately for him, the servant took a penchant in his favour; fully aware of the tattered state of the linen department, she purchased, and with a delicacy worthy of a better station, placed in his chamber, without comment or communication, some half dozen neat and new power-loom fabrics ready made up. Well knowing the while the source from whence the bounty flowed, our adventurer took and wore the godsend gifts with ignorance, apparently unconscious, and thankless of acknow ledgment to his benefactress. With the help of a clique of adventurers enjoying a standing somewhat superior to his own, he succeeded in his bank, which, tottering as it may perhaps be, is yet in existence. Only think of a person, not only without a shilling, but without a shirt, establishing a bank!" We have heard of more than one band of conspirators which, after inundating with rival zeal their own localities with joint-stock excrescences, have coalesced and betaken themselves to the tramp in order to view, not the fruitfulness, but the nakedness of other districts, so as to select the sites most abundantly stocked with fools, and least encumbered with money traders, whereon to raise the gaudy superstructures of promises to pay. One of these ambulatory caravans these companïas ambulantes, as a Spaniard would say-of monetary entrepreneurs, extended their travels for orders in the bank-concoction line, from the city of York to the Land's End, to the signal "fructification," doubtless, if we may a comparison with the most reputed organs of the metropolis. On its first appearance, a person known to be of Conservative opinions, could hardly hope to pace the streets of Newcastle-on-Tyne without insult or molestation-the change, of which it has been the instrument no less wise than fearless, may be significantly illustrated by the last election the popular candidate was a Conservative, and enthusiastically returned. The story is well known of the remorseless persecutions endured and braved by the editor with unexampled intrepidity. The harpies of law were let loose upon him, hallooed on with all the influence and wealth, prodigally expended, of the unprincipled scions of a neighbouring Whig aristocracy-assaults so dastardly were perpetrated on him, as to resemble in their atrocity the deeds of Italian bravoes with the midnight stiletto. That he has nobly triumphed over all, and achieved golden opinions even from the more worthy of his liberal opponents, redounds the more to his honour, and we are glad to learn, from incontrovertible sources, that more substantial reasons for consolation are not wanting in the circulation and success, ever increasing, of the Journal and the property he so ably presides over and has created—a circulation indeed equalled by few of its provincial contemporaries any where. The trumpery trash, voided by a cheap periodical in this vicinity respecting the vast increase in the Radical press since the reduction of the duty, is, for the most part, utterly devoid of truth-as, were it worth the while, it would be easy to demonstrate, from this and other instances within our own observation. The task indeed, has been sufficiently executed already by the more respectable part of the Whig-radical press, amongst others, by the Yorkshireman, a leading and ably conducted paper of York in the liberal interest. We cannot take leave of the Newcastle Journal without acknowledging our obligations to various articles on the monetary affairs and the money crisis, which have lately appeared in its columns. And we may be permitted here to remark, that it would be well if the same duty towards others were more scrupulously fulfilled by some of our contemporaries. In the first number of the Quarterly Review of last year, for example, a considerable portion of our preceding January article on "Foreign Policy and the Prusso-Germanic League" was transferred without the slightest certificate of origin into the review of a work of Sir John Walsh. The omission of acknowledgment was the less pardonable, as well as courteous, as the facts and matter thus ungraciously appropriated, of commanding interest as they were, and derived from peculiar sources, had been for the first time and exclusively made public in our pages. presume to borrow from the Poulett Thomson coinage, of various communities more overrun with sovereigns than wit. The inhabitants of Merthyr Tidvil, the principal seat of the great iron works of South Wales, were electrified one fine Saturday morning with an announcement of their excellent representative, the Merthyr Guardian, that the "land of the mountain and the flood" was in its turn to be inundated with an occan of transparent foolscap that a joint-stock Jupiter was about to descend into the lap of his Danae, seated amidst her fires everlasting, in a shower not of gold but of paper. With wonder stricken they turn ed them to seek the bounteous unbidden dispensers of mysterious treasures. The iron-clad potentate of Cyfarthfa sat tranquilly in his castle, complacently enjoying the roar of furnaces and the frightful blasts of blow-pipes in his city of flame below, as native elements in which alone he "breathed, moved, and had his being." The owner of surplus millions, if visited with the contemplative mood, was surely not dreaming of airy nothings and shadowy wealth wherewith to surcharge the heap of already countless stores, but forecasting, if at all, of the tens of millions still buried in the bosom of rugged Hirwain, and the triumphs of art and industry still reserved for accomplishment by himself and those of his race. The lord of Dowlais, with his ladye of high degree, was reposing at home in silken state, soothed perchance with the Cyclopian din of a thousand hammers reducing his bars of iron into ingots of gold, or ever and anon regaling his eyes with the refulgent floods of fiery metal, as torrentlike they issue, after the tap of the towery recipient withdrawn, and serpentine along their indented bed of sand. Neither he, nor the civic dignitary of Pen-y-darran with its cloudcapt regions, nor the father, benevolent as intelligent, of his tribes of workpeople of Plymouth, with their several hundreds of thousands of sterling unplaced and unbearing of interest, were the crowning capitals of the new temple to Plutus. The unknown artists were in sooth of a strange land and lineage, too well practised in their craft even to require the dimensions of the ground-plot previous to the construction of a plan. Friendless and unknown as they were in the scene of their contemplated operations, obstacles, to those less undaunted apparently insuperable, did not appal. The cornucopia of wealth to overflow was to be replenished from afar-the magic powers of steam were to be taxed for the fabrication of signs of value as for calicoes-South Wales was to be irrigated with a continuous stream of watermarks from plates cast and tempered in the founderies of Lancashire. Amongst the most busy of the schemers, and the patrons most apt to the hands of projectors, the Quakers, as in 1825, were found to be the most prompt, and, loath are we to say it, the least punctilious. This public rebuke we have been the less reluctant to administer, inasmuch as, from personal communication with many honourable and justly honoured individuals among the highest of the class, whom we are proud to rank among the number of our friends, we know how earnestly this pestiferous yearning after unrighteous speculation-this greediness of unholy gain-is reprobated, and the down-sliding parties denounced. To this departure among others from the purer practice of their fathers, may the recent schism so decidedly pronounced in the body be perhaps attributed. Members of character so unstained and of principles so uncompromising as Isaac Crewdson, may well revolt from contact with brethren of unclean hands, and questionable doctrine. Reports are current of princely doings in the way of the reciprocal repartition of the spolia opima of salaries and emoluments by and among secretaries and directors, of complexion so auriferous that scrip shares should represent not merely pepitas of gold, but gems of Golconda, and the paper tokens of the companies roll like the Pactolean river over sands of precious |