true that memoranda printed for the purpose, and distributed by the office, with blanks for sums and names, are presented, filled up, to be sanctioned by the initials of that clerk who is called the accountant; but these printed forms may be had previous to the day on which the bills are taken in: they are generally so obtained, and generally filled up also, before the holder comes to the office, to save time when there.

The bill-holder having received back his bills from the clerk who may have told, or according, to the official phrase "valued them" at the counter, ought next to take them to the accountant, who sits in a small room apart. It is the duty of the accountant to write in a book the names of the persons who bring the bills from the outward office in succession, as they happen to appear. Taking for granted that the bills have been properly valued, he writes the names of the different parties whose bills are tendered from their lists, places the sum of bills belonging to each against the name; and having affixed his initials to the printed Memorandum, the party should pass on to an adjoining room where the paymasters sit, which is called The Board Room; where the names and sums having been written into another book, kept under the inspection of the paymasters, exactly similar to the one kept by the accountant, the bills themselves are deposited. The initials of one of the paymasters are added to those of the accountant, and the holder of the bills having completed his business departs with the Memorandum, which, it is to be observed, forms the only voucher to the holder of Exchequer Bills for the property left in the office. At the late Funding a temporary staircase was thrown out from one of the windows at the end of a passage in the office up stairs, for the convenience of departure.

Planta, says that he found those gentle men in the board room upon his arrival at the office; that he knew it to be a great impropriety; that he expressed indignation at the proceeding, and ordered the doors to be immediately thrown open to the public. The names, however, of the gentlemen so introduced stand among the very first on the books of that day. This irregularity appears to have been sufficiently known and noticed to have prevented a repetition of the same practice; but it probably would not have been brought under the observation of the House of Commons of itself; because the whole of the 8,000,000l. of Exchequer Bills was not subscribed in bills bearing 34d. interest per diem; all who wished to subscribe such bills had room. On the 22d of March, the day on which the 34d. bills were first admitted, there remained of the 8,000,000l. a sum of 2,188,700l. unsubscribed. The holders of those bills were very eager to fund them; a great competition was excited, and a great number of persons assembled; there was great press and hazard to those in the throng, and many irregularities were on that day committed in the office, and much partiality was shewn. In the first place, from neglect of constantly casting up, an excess of bills to the amount of 311,000l. were admitted on the books, and when bills to that amount were returned to the bill-holders, it appears that some per sons who had been in attendance at the doors of the office from the earliest hour, and who had been admitted amongst the very first after the doors were opened, received their bills back under pretence that they were not in time to have their names put down before the 8,000,000l. were completed, whilst others who had manifest, ly arrived in the office at a later period, some who had obtained admittance into. the office by ways not intended for that purpose, and some who had not been in the office at all, nor any one for them, at the proper period, had their bills included in the funding. The circumstances attending these separate modes by which an undue advantage was allowed to some persons to the injury of the public at large, will be found in the Evidence con tained in the Appendix, which your Com.. mittee is sorry to observe has been rendered much more voluminous than was ne cessary by the mode in which some of the witnesses have answered to their examina tions; but your Committee forbear to press their opinion on such conduct, or the

Such is the mode in which business ought, by the custom of the office, to be conducted in the operation of Funding; a mode sufficiently loose and inconvenient, but which certainly should be the same for all. In the late funding it appears, that one of the paymasters, sir John Peter, according to an arrangement previously made, did on the first day of funding, before the doors were open to the public, take into the office with him Mr. Goldsmid, Mr. Sutton, and Mr. Gillman, as appears from the evidence of Mr. Goldsmid and Mr. Sutton. The other paymaster in attendance, Mr.

motives of it. The House will judge | Exchequer bills of that house were placed, for itself. The House will also perceive he got into the office without the least difin the evidence of sir John Peter, the rea- ficulty, and from the position of the stairsons why his examination was not con- case, when he arrived at the top of it he tinued by the Committee. faced the crowd which had just then entered, and was close to the door of the ac

valuation of his bills at the counter, proceeded immediately into the room of the accountant Mr. Palethorp, from whom he received the initials of his name upon the memorandum already prepared, passed on to the board room, and completed his business. The name of Messrs. Thomas Coutts and Co. appears first on the list of that day (the 22d of March). A person by the name of Dunn wandered into the office by some unusual mode, and obtained, as he states, an accidental preference.

It appears, first, that a communication was held between sir John Peter, Mr. Sut-countants room; he therefore omitted the ton, and Mr. Roberts, partner to Mr. Sutton, on the 21st of March, relative to the funding which was to take place on the 22d, and that the scheme of Mr. Sutton's going with sir John Peter, as on the 20th, having been objected to by the latter on account of the umbrage taken by the public at what had happened on the preceding day, a plan was concerted, that sir John Peter should be furnished with a list of bills in the charge of Roberts and Sutton; that Mr. Sutton should call upon sir John Peter on the 22d, after the business of the day was over, and that the getting those bills upon the books was to be left to the management of that paymaster; but Mr. Sutton having reflected, that if by any accident it should happen that the plan so laid should fail, he could not answer to his employers the not having used due diligence to obtain a preference for them, determined to go personally into the crowd, and did obtain admittance into the office by the public door, in the second set of those who were allowed by the police officer to go in, to the number of about ten, as far as your Committee can ascertain, in each set. When in the office Mr. Sutton did not, in the regular routine, go to the counter, from the counter to the accountant, and from the accountant to the board; but he went at once into the board room and delivered his bills into the hands of sir John Peter, and then departed from the office without any memorandum at all as a voucher for the security of himself or his customers. The memorandum was delivered, in the course of the same afternoon, by sir John Peter to Mr. Roberts, in consequence of a note from Mr. Sutton. The bills of Messrs. Roberts and Sutton were included in the 8,000,000l.

The clerk who had charge of the bills belonging to the house of Messrs. Thomas Coutts and Co. arrived in Palace-yard long after the time at which many persons had been collected, but having accidentally found the door at the bottom of the temporary staircase a-jar, of the existence of which staircase he had been informed by Mr. Dickie, another of the principal clerks in the house of Messrs. Coutts, and under whose management the whole of the

Mr. Abrahamı Goldsmid was in the crowd on the outside of the door, and exposed to great danger, but he saw two sets of persons admitted into the office before he withdrew for security towards a passage leading to another part of the office, where he met sir John Peter, to whom he delivered his pocket-book, containing Exchequer bills to the amount of 350,000%. and then went away. Sir John Peter delivered the pocket-book unopened to Mr. Palethorp the accountant, who wrote in the bills, and then carried them to the paymasters in the board room; Mr. Goldsmid received his memorandum of receipt afterwards. The Bills carried by Mr. Goldsmid were included in the 8,000,000%. A small sum in the name of Buckley, was delivered to Mr. Palethorp by sir John Peter personally, and was likewise funded. A number of Exchequer bills under the names of Mapletoft, Poole, and Harrison, were sent by Mr. Fisher, of the Auditor's office, to Mr. Palethorp, by the messenger of the office, and another parcel was delivered into the hands of the same gentleman by Mr. Gimmingham, a clerk in another department of the Exchequer office, before the hour of public admission, without any person having mixed in the crowd or come in by the public door, and all these bills so described were included in the 8,000,000l.

It appears to your Committee that the entries in that part of the first page, in which any entries are made in Mr. Palethorp's book relating to the 34d. bills, and the whole of the next page, are entries made by preference, as far as your Committee has been able to trace them, except in the case of Mr. Oliviera, and two

others at the foot of the second page; the erasures there found by the knife and the pen are explained in the evidence of Mr. Blane.

On the other hand, it appears that persons who had attended from the earliest hour, and had succeeded in obtaining admittance amongst the very first, and whose bills were received, and memorandums by them taken, had their bills returned; others had their bills refused. Of these cases the most remarkable is that of Mr. Cundy, clerk to the house of Messrs. Bruckshaw, Capel and Co.; he by his own testimony, corroborated by that of others, was one of the first who entered; he had his bills regularly valued at the counter, entered by the accountant, and received by the paymasters; he took away the proper memorandum properly signed, and yet the name of the house for which he was employed stands very low in the list, and his bills were returned. They were entered in the name of Bish, &c.

Upon the whole, your Committee are of opinion, That gross partiality has been shewn in the late funding of Exchequer bills, and that the details of the particular

facts, before enumerated, call for the immediate revision and reform of the office.

Your Committee are not authorized to point out any mode by which it might appear to them the business respecting funding Exchequer bills could be placed on a better footing, but the defects of the office in the department submitted to the consideration of the Committee are manifest; the system is radically bad; and the public are proved to have received material injury, to the advantage of favoured individuals.

It is positively asserted in the oral evidence of some of the persons examined, and by letters received from others, in answer to questions put by the Chairman in writing, in obedience to the orders of the Committee, that no corrupt motive has actuated the persons who gave such preference.

It is evident, that to the disappointed bill-holder, the motive which may have induced a person in office to give to another preference to his disadvantage, can be of no importance, although the moral guilt of the person so acting may be dif ferent in one case from the other.

REPORT FROM THE SELECT Committee on THE HIGH PRICE of Gold BUL LION.-Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 8 June 1810. THE SELECT COMMITTEE appointed to en- | pidly, and continued very high during the quire into the cause of the High Price whole year 1809; the market price of of Gold Bullion, and to take into constandard gold in bars fluctuating from 41. sideration the state of the Circulating 9s. to 4. 12s. per oz. The market price Medium, and of the Exchanges be- at 41. 10s. is about 15 per cent. above the tween Great Britain and Foreign Mint price. Parts; and to report the same, with their Observations thereupon, from time to time, to the House ;-Have, pursuant to the Orders of the House, examined the matters to them referred; and have agreed to the following REPORT:

Your Committee proceeded, in the first instance, to ascertain what the price of Gold Bullion had been, as well as the rates of the Foreign Exchanges, for some time past; particularly during the last year.

Your Committee have found that the price of Gold Bullion, which, by the regulations of his Majesty's Mint, is 31. 17s. 10d. per ounce of standard fineness, was, during the years 1806, 1807, and 1808, as high as 4. in the market. Towards the end of 1808 it began to advance very ra

Your Committee have found, that during the three first months of the present year, the price of standard gold in bars remained nearly at the same price as during last year; viz. from 4. 10s. to 4l. 12s. per oz. In the course of the months of March and April, the price of standard gold is quoted but once in Wettenhall's tables; viz. on the 6th of April last, at 41. 6s. which is rather more than 10 per cent. above the Mint price. The last quotations of the price of gold, which have been given in those tables, are upon the 18th and 22d of May, when Portugal gold in coin is quoted at 4. 11s. per oz: Portugal gold coin is about the same fineness as our standard. It is stated in the same tables, that in the month of March last, the price of new doubloons rose from 41. 7s. to 41. 9s. per oz. Spanish Gold is from 4 to 44 grains better than standard,