298 REPORT OF BULLION COMMITTEE. [BOOK II. than doubled: affording a prospect of perpetual alternations of floods and dearth of money of exultation and panic; unless indeed such consequences should be intercepted by a national bankruptcy. Those of us who were children in those days can never forget the incessant talk by the fireside about a probable national bankruptcy. It seemed, by the gravity of parents' faces, to be something very terrible that was expected; but children could not help thinking that there would be something very amusing in having no money, and everybody being brought to a state of barter, and all, except land-owners, having to begin the world again, and start fair. And then, there were speculations all abroad as to whether government would allow the Bank to resume cash payments; and whether the Bank could and would pay in cash. And Cobbett, then in the full flow of his political writing, announced that he would give himself up to be broiled upon a gridiron whenever the Bank should resume cash payments. Probably many hundreds of living men and women are conscious to this day of some association between a gridiron and paper and gold money so familiar as they once were with the picture of Cobbett's gridiron as the heading of his Political Register. The Report of the Bullion Committee was not in the hands of members till the middle of August, on account of the number of tables contained in the appendix; but enough of its contents got abroad, to afford some ground of hope to the sufferers under the commercial disasters of the summer.1 Its chief recommendation was to repeal the Restriction Act, and compel the Bank to return to cash payments, at the desire of the holder of notes, as soon as a due caution would permit. The circulation of notes of any kind under the value of 20s. had been prohibited in 1808; and it was now proposed that no notes under the value of 51. should be permitted to circulate, after the use of gold and silver coin should have been completely reëstablished. Two years were thought by the Committee time enough to prepare the Bank, and the public, for the change; and this was the period recommended. The alarm among the bankers and great merchants, excited by this recommendation, was such as sadly to increase the mischiefs of the existing panic; and, as we shall see, the resumption of cash payments did not take place in two years. At the end of four years, there were many who would have been thankful indeed if it could have been done; but the fluctuations, already so disastrous, were to become worse yet, till one should be so calamitous as to compel, and render comparatively easy, a return to cash payments in 1819. Whenever such a return should be attempted, the fearful penalty would remain of our hav1 Hansard, xvii. App. cclviii-cclxiii. CHAP. III.] DEBATES ON CURRENCY QUESTION. 299 ing to pay in restored money the debts incurred in a depreciated currency; and how such a responsibility was to be met was a subject of anxiety, not only to the government, but to every thoughtful citizen. The lapse of time, however, would not mend the matter, but make it worse. 1 2 The subject was talked over everywhere, till the time came for its discussion in parliament in the next May. On Debates. the 6th, Mr. Horner made his long-expected speech,1 and moved his sixteen resolutions, well knowing that they would be put down by a large government majority, but aware of the importance of distinctly impressing his views upon the House. Even he, who so well knew the interest of the subject, was surprised at the quiet and close attention paid by the House, not only to his speech, but to two very long debates, which occupied several nights. "Nothing, perhaps," he wrote to his father," "could prove more strongly that, however the votes have gone, from timidity, as well as from the usual motives that make majorities, there is a general persuasion that something of importance to every man's own private concerns, as well as the public interests, was involved in the question." The first debate lasted four nights, when his resolutions were lost by a majority of 76, in a house of 226 members. A division was taken, against the wishes of some of Mr. Horner's friends, on the last resolution, which proposed a return to cash payments in two years, rather than (as at present arranged) in six months from the conclusion of a peace. Forty-five voted in favor of the resolution; and it was thought to be so much gained, that forty-five stood pledged to the most extreme proposal of the report. Four days afterwards, the government, by the mouth of Mr. Vansittart, moved seventeen counter-resolutions, the third of which has since been, and will ever be, celebrated for its absurdity - that bank-notes “have hitherto been, and are at this time, held in public estimation to be equivalent to the legal coin of the realm, and generally accepted as such, in all pecuniary transactions to which such coin is lawfully applicable." It will never be forgotten that an English House of Commons voted bank-notes to be equal to gold when a hundred pounds of them would purchase only 867. 10s. 6d. of gold. Out of the government of that day, however, came a man who, within ten years, restored us to a cash currency, and thereby made paper really of equal value with gold. 3 Those were days when the perils which hung over Europe, and threatened the national existence of the few unconquered foes of Napoleon, seemed to thrust aside all projects for the ame2 Memoirs, ii. p. 86. 1 Hansard, xix. pp. 799-830. 8 Hansard, xx. p. 69. 300 Penal law reform. PENAL LAW REFORM. [Book II. lioration of society at home, which could be deferred to a time of peace. But some evils were becoming so flagrant that they would not wait. The increase of housebreaking was one of these; and of theft of every kind. Wise men saw that much of the evil was owing to the non-execution of the laws, and that the reason why the laws were not executed was the excessive severity of some of them. In the words of Romilly, crimes had become more frequent, offenders more daring and desperate, public morals more outraged, and the laws more despised, from year to year. Romilly brought in a Bill to repeal the barbarous Act which made it a capital offence to steal to the amount of 40s. in a dwelling-house. In a very thin House, 31 voted in favor of the Bill; and it was lost by a majority of two.1 Of the 33 who voted against it, 22 were men in office. When a Bill to abolish capital punishment for the offence of stealing to the value of 5s. in a shop was brought forward, in the Upper House, by Lord Holland, it was thrown out by a majority of 31 to 11; 2 and the majority (anxiously summoned by Ministers to the division) included seven prelates: a fact memorable in the history of a Christian country. The repeal of a law, whose existence even now seems scarcely to be credible, was pronounced, by the teachers of the gospel of Christ, "too speculative to be safe." In the next session, the 40s. Bill passed the Commons, and with it some others repealing capital punishments in cases of small thefts vigorous as was the opposition of the Prime Minister; but they were thrown out in the Lords. The seven prelates, and the hereditary legislators among whom they sat, were still deaf to the outcry of humanity, and blind to the evidences of social policy; so that pilferers were still hanged in long rows; the most hardy and dexterous villains were still abroad; and the shopkeepers and humble housekeepers of the kingdom continued to be victims, because they could not find in their hearts to get men hanged for stealing gown-pieces, and coals from a wherry, and the contents of the larder. A beginning had been made, however, in 1808, when Sir S. Romilly obtained the repeal of the capital punishment for stealing from the person to the value of 5s. And in 1811, the Lords abolished the death-penalty for stealing in bleaching-grounds,3 in consequence of the earnest petition of a large body of proprietors of bleaching-grounds. The argument of the petitioners was, that "of late such offences had greatly increased;" and this was precisely the argument used by the Lords for rejecting three out of four of Sir Samuel Romilly's Acts of amelioration. During this period of increasing crime, we observe symptoms 2 Ibid. xvii. p. 200* 1 Hansard, xvi. p. 780. 8 Memoirs of Romilly, ii. p. 366. CHAP. III.] CONDITION OF THE CLERGY. 301 of awakening to the condition of the Church. The wretched fortune of poor curates was mentioned in parliament; and Condition of once mentioned, it was not likely to be forgotten. No the clergy. one could consider it defensible that rich livings should be held by absentee clergymen, while the curates who did the duty were paid too little to afford them bread. The most selfish of the aristocracy had of late · since the breaking out of the French Revolution seen and avowed the importance of countenancing the religion of the country,' and rendering the clergy respectable in the eyes of the people, as the best kind of political police. Higher-minded men saw better reasons for abating the scandal of the juxtaposition of wealthy livings and a starving clergy; and by the great body of the people, the working clergy, who were their helpers and friends, were more regarded than the great men of the church, who were too far above them, or lived too far away, to command their sympathies. In 1808, the House of Lords decided in favor of an inquiry into the number of livings which exceeded 400l. a year, distinguishing those which were served by curates from those on which the incumbent was resident. And again, they addressed the King, to pray him to cause to be furnished an account of the number of livings under 150l. a year. The subject was still afloat when, in June of this year, 1810, Lord Holland objected to the grant of 100,0007.2 from the public money, for the relief of the poorer clergy, under the name of Queen Anne's Bounty. The relief proposed was a mere temporary almsgiving, on account of the excessive need of an impoverished clergy; and he thought it a scandal, tending much to the increase of dissent, that money should be taken out of the common purse, in a season of heavy taxation, while the spectacle was before the people's eyes of rich benefices, untouched, where even no service was done. The objection, though unavailing in regard to the grant, brought out some honest opinions and manly avowals, as to the objectionable distribution of church property, affording hope of a reform at a future time. A curious incident occurred the next evening, when Lord Sidmouth, impressed with the rapid increase of dissent, and attributing much of it to a paucity of churches, moved for a return (which was granted) of the numbers and capacity of churches and dissenting chapels in parishes containing a population of 1000 and upwards. His speech brought out, from Lord Holland, a remark about the luxury of the Church; and Lord Sidmouth's reply was that a church could not be called luxurious, which had 10,000 livings, out of which no less than 4000 were under 150l. a year. It did not occur to him, well as he knew how great was the aggregate 2 Hansard, xvii. p. 751. 3 1 Annual Register, 1808, p. 119. 8 Ibid. p. 771. 302 DISSENTERS' LICENSES BILL. [Book II. wealth of the Church, that if so many as 4000 livings were too poor, many must be much too rich. Dissenters' Bill. Lord Sidmouth was at this time busy about his well-intended and unfortunate Bill to regulate the issue of preaching licenses to Dissenting Ministers, which created a prodigious ferment the next year. There were omissions in the Toleration Act through which any person complying with certain forms could preach anywhere, whether he was of age or a minor, and however grossly ignorant. In the record of licenses kept for the county of Middlesex, the words "preacher," "gospel," ‚" 1 and so on, were found misspelled in every conceivable way by applicants; in Staffordshire journeymen potters applied for licenses to preach, owning themselves no otherwise prepared for preaching than as they were instructed "by God and the Holy Ghost." Their application was refused; but the refusal was found to be illegal. For many months, Lord Sidmouth was aided and upheld in his work of preparation by the leading dissenting ministers of the kingdom, who felt as strongly as any churchman could do the evil of the work of religious instruction, and the guidance of religious worship, being allowed to pass into the hands of the ignorant, who were sure to be, in that case, also the presumptuous. But difficulties arose. The Methodists took the alarm first. They declared themselves not dissenters, and gave notice that they would not recognize the measure; which yet, however, was framed chiefly with a view to them. The most unreasonable fears arose and spread. It was feared that the measure would contract the Toleration Act, which it was intended to expand and confirm. It was feared that a revival of the Conventicle Act would follow upon it. Mr. Wilberforce and his sect dreaded interference with religious meetings in private houses. By the spring of 1811, the ferment had become wholly unmanageable. Nothing could have been finer than the demonstration made, if it had been in defence of religious liberty against any real danger; but the movement was characterized by one of the most eminent dissenting ministers of the time, Mr. Belsham, as one of "morbid sensibility." The Premier wrote to Lord Sidmouth 2 that he owned himself "seriously alarmed." Lord Liverpool wrote an entreaty to him to let the Dissenters alone while they kept themselves quiet, or it would occasion new trouble with the Catholics. But Lord Sidmouth would not give way. He brought forward his Bill on the 9th of May, 1811; when Lord Holland objected to it. He complained of the insolence of declaring persons to be unfit to preach religion because they were in an humble station in life; because they might, as 2 Ibid. pp. 61, 62. 1 Life of Lord Sidmouth, iii. pp. 41, 43. 3 8 Hansard, xiv. p. 1132. 3 |