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The social evils which at first sight appear so alarming, therefore, in consequence of the extension of our manufacturing population, and the vast increase of our wealth, were in reality not only easily susceptible of remedy, but they might, by a wise and paternal policy, alive equally to the interests represented and unrepresented of all parts of the empire, have been converted into so many sources of increasing prosperity and durable social happiness. All that was required was to adopt a policy conducive alike to the interests of all parts of our varied dominions, but giving no one an undue advantage over the other; legislating for India as if the seat of empire were Calcutta, for Canada as if it were Quebec, for the West Indies as if it were Kingston. "Non alia Romæ alia Athenæ," should have been our maxim. Equal justice to all would have secured equal social happiness to all. The distress and want of employment consequent on the extension of machinery, and the growth of opulence in the heart of the empire, would, have become the great moving power which would have overcome the attachments of home and country, and impelled the multitudes. whom our transmarine dominions required into those distant but still British settlements, where ample room was to be found for their comfort and increase, and where their rapidly increasing numbers would have operated with powerful effect, and in a geometrical ratio, on the industry and happiness of the parent state. Protection to native industry at home and abroad was all that was required to bless and hold together the mighty fabric. So various and extensive were the British dominions, that they soon would have arrived at the point of being independent of all the rest of the world. The materials for our fabrics, the food for our people, were to be had in abundance in the different parts of our own dominions. We had no reason to fear the hostility or the stopping of supplies from any foreign power. The trade of almost the whole globe was to Great Britain a home trade, and brought with it its blessings and its double return, at each end of the chain.

These great and magnificent objects, which are as clearly pointed out by Providence as the mission of the British nation-and which the peculiar character of the Anglo-Saxon race so evidently qualified it to discharge-as if it had been declared in thunders from Mount Sinai, were in a great degree attained, though in an indirect way, under the old constitution of England; and accordingly, while it lasted, and was undisturbed in its action by local influences in the heart of the empire, distress was comparatively unknown at home, and disaffection was unheard of in our distant settlements. The proof of this is decisive. The tables already given in the former part of this paper demonstrate when distress at home and sedition abroad seriously set in, when emigration-advanced with the steps of a giant, and crime began to increase ten times as fast as the numbers of the people-and the poor-rates, despite all attempts to check them by fresh laws, threatened to swallow all but the for

tunes of the millionaires in the kingdom. It was after 1819 that all this took place. Previous to this, or at least previous to 1816, when the approaching great monetary change of that year was intimated to the Bank, and the contraction of the currency really began, distress at home was comparatively unknown, and the most unbounded loyalty existed in our colonial settlements in every part of the world. But from that date our policy at home and abroad underwent a total change. Everything was changed with the change in the ruling influences in the state. The words of the Christian bishop who converted Clovis were acted upon to the letter-Brulez ce que vous avez adore; adorez ce que vous avez brule." The moneyed came to supplant the territorial aristocracy, the interests of realised capital to prevail over those of industry and wealth in the course of formation. The Reform Bill confirmed and perpetuated this change, by giving the moneyed class a decided majority of votes in the House of Commons, and the House of Commons the practical government of the country. From that moment suffering marked us for her own. Misery spread in the heart of the empire; many of its most flourishing settlements abroad went to ruin; and such disaffection prevailed in all, that Government, foreseeing the dissolution of the empire, has already taken steps to conceal the fall of the fabric by voluntarily taking it to pieces.

Without going into details, unhappily too well known to all to require any lengthened illustration, it may be sufficient to refer to three circumstances which have not only immensely aggravated the internal distress and external disaffection of the empire, but interrupted and neutralised the influence of all those causes of relief provided for us by nature, and which, under a just and equal policy, would have entirely averted them.

The first of these, and perhaps the most disastrous in its effects upon the internal prosperity of the empire, was the great contraction of the currency which took place by the bill of 1819. By that bill the bank and bankers' notes, which at the close of the war had amounted, in Great Britain and Ireland, to about £60,000,000 in round numbers, were suddenly reduced to £32,000,000, which was the limit formally imposed, by the acts of 1844 and 1845, on the circulation issuable on securities in the country. We know the effect of these changes: the Times has told us what it has been. It rendered the sovereign worth two sovereigns; the fortune of £500,000 worth £1,000,000: the debt of £800,000,000 worth £1,600,000,000; the taxes of £50,000,000 worth £100,000,000 annually. As a necessary consequence, it reduced the average price of wheat from 90s. to 40s.; and the entire wages of labor and remuneration of industry, throughout the country, to one-half of their former amount. The prodigious effect of this change upon the real amount of the national burdens, and the remuneration of the industry which was to sustain it, may be judged

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of by the invaluable table quoted on the next page, which is stated to be taken from Mr. Porter's valuable work on the Progress of the Nation, published in 1847, and furnished by that gentleman with his wonted courtesy to the Midland Counties Herald, to the end of 1850. Its import will be found to be correctly condensed in the following statement, by that able writer Gemini, contained in the the same paper of January 30:

"The average price of wheat from 1800 to the close of the

S. D.

...... 90 7

war, was......
The average price of wheat from the passage of the Corn
Law of 1815 to 1827, each inclusive,..
The average price of wheat from the passing of the Corn
Law of 1828 to 1841, each inclusive,.
The average price of wheat from the passing of the Corn
Law of 1842 to 1849, each inclusive,..
The average price of 1850,.....

67 2

... 58 10

53 6

40 2

"During the war the average quantity of wheat required to be sold to pay one million of taxation amounted to 220,791 quarters. The quantity required to be sold to pay one million of taxation according to the prices of 1850, amounts to 497,925 quarters, or 56,343 quarters more than double the quantity required to be sold during the war. The enormous increase in the burdensomeness of taxation may be thus clearly estimated."

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-Midland Counties Herald, January 31, 1851. The prices of wheat here given

are the average prices of the year.

Comment is unnecessary, illustration superfluous, on such a result.

In the next place, prodigious as was the addition which this great change made to the burdens, public and private, of the nation, the change was attended with an alteration at times still more hurtful, and, in the end, not less pernicious. This was the compelling the bank to pay all their notes in gold, the restraining them from issuing paper beyond £14.000,000 bond on securities, and compelling them to take all gold brought to them, whatever its market value was, at the fixed price of £3, 17s. 103d. the ounce. This at once aggravated speculation to a most fearful degree in periods of prosperity, for it left the bank no way of indemnifying itself for the purchase and retention of £15,000,000 or £16,000,000 worth of treasure but by pushing its business in all directions, and lowering its discounts so as to accomplish that object; and it led to a rapid and ruinous contraction of the currency the moment that exchanges became adverse, and a drain set in upon the bank, either from the necessities of foreign war in the neighboring states, the mutation of commerce, or the occurrence of a large importation of grain to supply the wants of our own country. Incalculable as the distress which those alternations of impulse and depression have brought upon this great manufacturing community, and immeasurable the multitudes whom they have sunk, never more to rise, into the lowest and most destitute classes of society, their effect has by no means been confined to the periods during which they actually lasted. Their baneful influence has extended to subsequent times, and produced a continuous and almost unbroken stream of distress; for, long ere the victims of one monetary crisis have sunk into the grave, or been driven into exile, another storm arises which precipitates fresh multitudes, especially in the manufacturing towns, into the abyss of ruin. The whole, or nearly the whole, of this terrific and continued suffering is to be ascribed to the monstrous principles adopted in our monetary system-that of compelling the banks to foster and encourage speculation in periods of prosperity, and suddenly contract their issues and starve the body politic, when a demand for the precious metals carries them in considerable quantities out of the country. A memorable instance of the working of that system is to be found in the Railway mania of 1845 and 1846, flowing directly from the Acts of 1844 and 1845, which landed the nation in an extra expenditure of nearly £300,000,000 on domestic undertakings, at a time when commerce of every kind was in a state of the highest activity, followed by the dreadful crash of October 1847, which, by suddenly contracting the currency and ruining credit, threw millions out of employment, and strained the real capital of the nation to the very uttermost, to complete a part only of the undertakings which the Currency Laws had given birth to. And the example of the years 1809 and 1810-when the whole metallic currency was

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