CHAP. III.] THE MINISTER'S BUDGET. 293 Mr. Peel. the King's mouth felicitations on the destruction of the docks and arsenals at Flushing,1 as a result of the Walcheren expedition. Such words, uttered at a moment when our soldiers were dying by thousands, and our money had been spent by millions, were too impudent (for that is the right word) for endurance; and the amendments moved by Lord St. Vincent and Lord Grenville, on the discussion of the Address, were strong in proportion. The most interesting circumstance to us now in the opening of this session is, that it was the young Mr. Peel's first occasion of appearing in any sort of connection with the government. He seconded the Address in the Commons, enlarging chiefly on the necessity of unanimity in parliament, as essential to due resistance to Napoleon, and to our doing our duty by those who were struggling against his usurpations. One observation strikes the eye as remarkable, in connection with events at home soon to happen: "With regard to our internal condition," he said, "while France had been stripped of the flower of her youth, England had continued flourishing, and the only alteration had been the substitution of machinery for manual labor." The time was at hand which should afford some remarkable illustrations, both as to the prosperity and the machinery. It took many long years to illustrate the mind and character of the young member whose "animated speech" now interested the House, and made the ministers agree that they had made an acquisition in young Mr. Robert Peel. Before the end of the. year, he was Under-Secretary for the Colonies. 3 ment. Mr. Perceval's statement of the national prosperity was offered in an exulting mood. Great public works roads, The miniscanals, and docks - were proceeding, as if in a time ter's stateof settled peace; and the manufactures and commerce of the country were still rising, while Napoleon, who had some time since wanted only ships, colonies, and commerce, had lost the colonies and commerce of France, and could make no use of his remaining ships, which were pent up in their ports, from fear of our navy. The returns from the property tax, which had, as regarded trades and professions, sunk during two former years, were again on the increase. If there had been stagnation in some of our manufacturing and trading districts, from our position with regard to America as well as the continent, new channels were opened, and, in one direction or another, we found our industry in request. This was true. It could not be told in parliament what new channels were opened; but it was known by all who could use the information, that, during the preceding year, the island of Heligoland, in the Baltic, had been fortified, and made a commercial depot for the purpose of smuggling Brit1 Hansard, xv. p. 1. 2 Ibid. p. 43. 3 Ibid. xvi. pp. 1044–1057. 294 ADVERSITY. — COMMERCIAL CRASH. [Book II ish goods into Denmark, and also into Germany by the Elbe and the Weser. In this year, the small Danish island of Anholt in the Categat was strengthened and employed for the same purpose. It was in May that the flourishing statements of the Chancellor of the Exchequer were made, at a moment when his spirits were raised by the knowledge that the American Congress was then engaged in opening our trade with the United States. He overlooked, however, some portentous facts which ought to have changed the whole aspect of his representations. The great public works spoken of by Mr. Perceval were entered upon at the same time (many of them in 1808) with the wild speculations ventured upon by our merchants in consequence of the expedition to Buenos Ayres, and other supposed openings to an unlimited commerce. Waterloo Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge were planned and subscribed for in 1808; and the great issue of paper money then, and for some time after, raised both wages and prices, and caused a false exhilaration and a fictitious prosperity, the retribution for which had hardly begun, or was not apparent to government, at the date of Mr. Perceval's exhibition of his budget in 1810. There had been a warning, however, at the close of 1809, such as would have changed Adversity. the tone of a minister of the present day. The heavy rains in the autumn had so far impaired the prospect of the harvest as that in December the average for wheat had reached 102s. 6d.; and the grain imported during the year cost nearly 3,000,000l. The spring of 1810 was cold and wet; large importations of grain, even to the value of 7,000,000l. took place; and the price of wheat was rising while Mr. Perceval was speaking; and in August it had reached an average of 116s. A period of fine weather reduced it to 94s. 7d., and ruined the corn-dealers. Just at the same time, the British commodities in the Baltic were confiscated, ruining many merchants; and the accounts came in from South America, exhibiting such desperate losses as ruined many more. Within a few months after Mr. Perceval's boastful declarations, the collapse of credit1 was more tremendous than had ever before been known in so short a space of time. crash began in July, with the failure of some great commercial houses. In August, a London bank stopped; and several country banks were brought down by its fall. Wild fluctuations in Commercial prices followed; and in November the number of bankcrash. ruptcies in England, which had usually been under 100, had risen to 273, "besides stoppages and compositions," as the Commercial Report 2 declared, “equal in number to half the traders in the kingdom." Manufacturers no longer trusted the merchants, nor employed the operatives. In Manchester, houses 1 Tooke's Prices, i. p. 303. 2 For December, 1810.. The CHAP. III.] EFFORTS AT REFORMS. 295 were stopping "not only every day, but every hour." The commissions of bankruptcy for the year now amounted to 2314, of which 26 were against bankers. The hunger of the operative classes, and the outcry against machinery as the main cause, prepared the events of the succeeding dark years. 4 8 There was some foresight, however, among the more clearheaded members of both Houses of Parliament.1 Lord Efforts at Grey delivered a long speech, introducing some resolu- reforms. tions, called by the sanguine very gloomy, on the state of the nation; and many joined him in the demand for inquiry into the expenditure of government, and into some gross abuses and corruptions. A member of the Commons, Mr. Joseph Hunt,2 was expelled the House, by an unanimous vote, for having drawn 10,000l. from the Bank without accounting for the sum; and the Embezzlement Bill, brought in by Sir John Newport, was passed in the face of some protests from government officials, who asked what "gentlemen of respectability" would venture upon office, if the punishment of transportation hung over them. Motions for retrenchment met with less favor, Mr. Perceval seeing "not the least occasion" for such proposals, after the government had promised to conduct the national affairs in an economical manner. A protest against sinecures was carried in opposition to the government; but, of course, it could not immediately become available for any public relief. These proceedings, however, impelled Mr. Perceval to some show of action on the right side. His father, while First Lord of the Admiralty, had granted to his eldest son, and in reversion to Mr. Perceval himself, the lucrative office of Registrar of the Admiralty and Prize Courts. Mr. Perceval now proposed some "regulations" of this office, which, however, were not to take effect till after his tenure of it had expired; and the fees contemplated were not to be saved to the suitors, but in part paid over to the Consolidated Fund.5 Romilly objected to such an abuse; but his objection was not even noticed; and when he further observed that the holder of the office was still allowed to make a profit by the use of the suitors' money at interest, he was told that this was a practice allowed in other offices, and not objected to there. Such was the way in which the public business was conducted in those days ! The propositions thus made by liberal members, and contested by government, however good as far as they went, were not the large and generous measures of reform which the best men, in and out of parliament, wished to see at least introduced, and 1 Hansard, xvii. pp. 533–574. 3 Ibid. xv. p. 434. 5 Memoirs of Romilly, ii. p. 336. 2 Ibid. p. 171. 296 BULLION COMMITTEE. - HORNER. [Book II. treated as worthy of discussion, while the popular uneasiness and discontent were growing from day to day. The members of the government, while boasting of national prosperity, and prob ably sincere in their boast, regarded such discontent as so much pure vice, and called it Jacobinism. We find one of them, a member of the Admiralty Board, complaining 1 that "the country gentlemen, if not Jacobins, are at least reformers, and Utopian reformers;" while scarcely any of the public men of the time gave "the smallest weight to the Jacobinical spirit which was raging unrepressed." "There is scarcely a paper," he says, "in any little tradesman or laborer's hands of a Sunday that is not big with sedition." Bullion 1 a Meanwhile, something effectual was doing in a quiet way. While "Jacobins were muttering or railing, and Committee. small improvements were talked over at great length in parliament, and expositions of the national condition were spread abroad in the newspapers, a knot of thoughtful men philosopher or two, some experienced merchants, and some clearheaded politicians were sitting for 31 days between February and June, examining 29 witnesses, and consulting on the evidence procured about the monetary condition of the country, and its influence upon other conditions. This was the year of the celebrated Bullion Committee. At the head of the philosophers Francis concerned was Francis Horner, a lawyer who was not supposed a likely man to know or care much about currency matters. He cared much, because he had some notion that the obscurity and unsettledness of the national fortunes were connected with monetary mismanagement; and as for knowing he had the great advantage of being aware that, as yet, he knew nothing of the practical workings of the relation between the Bank and the nation. He came to the inquiry unprejudiced; while those who took their seats with minds full of notions knew in reality no more than he, as was presently proved to themselves by the evidence which came before them. Hitherto, "2 wrote Horner to Lord Grenville, at this time, "I have abstained from forming any conclusion, even in my own mind, respecting the causes of the present state of money prices; nor am I sure that I have yet gained a clear and exact notion of that change, whether depreciation or not, of which the cause remains to be ascertained." In this "suspense of opinion," he moved, on the 1st of February, for a variety of papers respecting the existing state of the circulating medium and the bullion trade. On the 19th of February, his Committee was appointed. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was a member of it, of course; and we find besides, Mr. Huskisson, Sir Henry Parnell, Mr. Tierney, 1 Ward's Memoirs, i. p. 254. 2 Memoirs, ii. p. 34. CHAP. III.] THE PAPER CURRENCY. 297 and Mr. Abercromby; Mr. Baring, the merchant, and Mr. Thornton, the Bank Director. The conclusions arrived at by these gentlemen were pronounced by themselves, in their private correspondence, very old; but they were as unacceptable to the government and to the Bank as any new theory could have been; so that we even find attempts made, a year after, to sound parliament about making bank-notes a legal tender, in order to avoid the necessity of the Bank being brought back to cash payments. Mr. Horner and his comrades had, however, too deeply impressed parliament and the nation with the sense and knowledge of our monetary system being at that time essentially vicious to allow of any such fatal mistake being made; and if their compass of the subject was not entire, and if mischief has happened again, since the resumption of cash payments, we owe it to them that we have been in a condition to suffer occasionally, that we have had anything to lose, that a national bankruptcy did not follow within a quarter of a century of the financial enterprises and expedients of Mr. Pitt. "The several successive steps," " wrote Horner to Lord Grenville after the discussion of the Report, "which have been observed in every country that allowed its currency to fall into a state of depreciation, are coming upon us faster than was to have been expected in this country; and, as there will be no recovery after bank-notes are made a legal tender, the discussions which precede such a measure are evidently of the last importance." 1 The evils attending on an inconvertible paper currency were indeed coming upon the country faster than anybody had expected. At the time when this Committee was sitting, a hundred pounds of paper would purchase only 867. 10s. 6d. of gold. The restriction laid on the Bank by government in 1797, forbidding it to make its payments in gold, was indisputably necessary at the time; and the continuance of the restriction through several subsequent years was excused by the extraordinary circumstance that invasion was expected from year to year. Now, at the end of thirteen years from the laying on of the restriction, the expectation of invasion had become a less evil than the operation of an inconvertible paper currency; and the present year particularly was so threatening, that the continuance of the restriction began to be freely canvassed elsewhere than in the Bullion Committee. Suddenly, on the calamitous fall of prices, and the check to speculation now occurring, the value of paper money sank from a previous steady depreciation of 21. 13s. 2d. per cent. to that of 137. 9s. 6d. per cent. The number of country banks had been 280 when the restriction was laid on; and now it was more 1 Memoirs, ii. p. 93. |