of the multitude of causes which come annually before such judicatures, to select but a very few in which there was the slightest appearance of blame. He pronounced a strong censure on the severity of the punishments inflicted in cases of defamation; and he called for an enquiry of such a nature, that, while it must have brought universal suspicion upon the ecclesiastical courts, would, in its progress, have subjected many persons to intolerable and unne cessary hardships. He was ably answered, however, by Sir William Scott, who, while he vindicated the general character of the courts, and resisted the expensive and useless proceedings which the house was advised to adopt, yet did not hesitate to concur in reprobating the punishment of excommunication. It was immediately suggested, that this eminent judge should bring in a bill for the purpose of abolishing this punishment; and, on the understanding that this would be done, Lord Folkestone withdrew his motion. Sir William Scott, on moving for leave to bring in his bill, thus explained the objects which he had endeavoured to accomplish. "In the first place, he had provided, that the process of excommunication should be discontinued, and in its place he had substituted the process de contumaci capiendo. He had next abolished excommunication generally, excepting in cases of great enormity. He had not thought fit to destroy it altogether, since, as every other establishment possessed the power of expelling its unworthy members, he did not think that the church of England should be placed in an inferior situation. The next provision was, that the civil consequences attendant upon excommunication should be removed, except in cases of incest and some others. The object he had next contemplated, was the abolition of a number of minor ec

clesiastical courts, on the máxim, that improvement in jurisprudence is promoted by extension of jurisdiction. A number of clauses had been inserted for the purpose of removing the proceedings of the inferior tribunals into the diocesan courts. The qualification of the judges had then occupied his attention, and the remainder of the bill was occupied in making provisions relative to church rates and tithes. He had omitted, in this measure, two matters that some gentlemen might have wished inserted; his bill was silent on the subject of defamation; because, if the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts were taken away in matters of slander on the church, they would not be cognizable in our courts of law. All provisions regarding Ireland were also omitted, Sir William Scott professing himself not sufficiently acquainted with the constitution of the consistorial courts there. Under many circumstances of disadvantage, he had discharged the task imposed upon him by the house, with great diffidence, well aware of the magnitude and importance of the subject. If the house should adopt his bill, he should feel much pleasure; but if it disapproved of it, he would take leave of it without regret." It is hardly necessary to add, that the bill prepared and brought in by Sir William Scott received the sanction of the legisla ture. A very considerable improvement was thus effected in an important branch of the jurisprudence of the country.

The state of the currency had occupied the attention of parliament for some years. The disappearance of gold from the circulation had, in the first instance, induced Mr Pitt, with that daring spirit for which his measures were so remarkable, to suspend the cash payments of the Bank of England; and whatever speculative

opinions may be entertained as to the causes of the disappearance of the precious metals, few will now be disposed to doubt, that, in the actual circumstances of the country, this decisive measure had become indispensable. From the moment, however, that it was adopted, the footing on which the currency of the country hitherto stood was entirely changed; and as bank-notes were no longer, as formerly, convertible into gold, their value could not be regulated by the value of the precious metals, nor could the amount of issues issued by the bank be regulated precisely by the wants of the circulation. The immediate convertibility of the notes into gold, was that circumstance by which alone a real equality of value could, with certainty, be maintained, and the power formerly possessed by the holders of notes to demand payment of them in cash, was the only effectual check by which the directors of the Bank of England could be apprised of the over-issue and consequent depreciation of their notes. It was quite possible, therefore, and not by any means improbable, that after the restriction was imposed, an over-issue and consequent depreciation might occur; and when it was proved by a reference to the market price of bullion, and the state of the foreign exchanges, that a note of the Bank of England could no longer purchase the same amount of coin which it nominally represented, the evidence of this deficiency was complete. The evils arising out of this state of things were not less certain than the fact of the entire revolution which had been effected in the system of the currency; but, as often happens in cases of this kind, it was much easier to enlarge upon the grievance than to point out the remedy. A committee of the House of Commons had, in

the year 1811, been appointed to enquire into the proofs of the depreciation, and to report their opinion as to the most suitable means of relief. They accomplished the first object of their labours, but failed entirely in the second and most important. In the state of the world at that eventful period, when all Europe was combined against England-when a war was declared upon her commerce, and the sources of her prosperity were seriously threatened when it was doubtful whether she would, for many years, have that balance of trade in her favour, by which alone the precious metals could be restored, and when it seemed uncertain whether she should be able longer to carry on foreign commerce at all, it would have been no less unjust than absurd, to have compelled the Bank of England to resume its payments in cash. By the policy which government found it necessary to pursue, the bank had, in the first instance, been deprived of the means of paying in cash, and it was both a wise and an equitable measure, in such circumstances, to relieve it for a time of this obligation. A steady perseverance in the same system of policy still deprived the bank of all chance of obtaining the means by which alone cash payments could be resumed; and the legislature, therefore, could not, without the grossest injustice, have acceded to the proposal of the committee of 1811, to take off the restriction. off the restriction. But if it was necessary, in the circumstances in which the country was placed, to protect the bank against demands which it was now no longer in a condition to answer, another duty, not less important, was incumbent on the legisla ture-that of protecting the people against claims for payment in cash, with which the bank could no longer supply the holders of its notes.

So

long as bank-notes were to form the only medium of circulation which the people could possess, it became indispensable that they should have the sanction of the legislature for applying these notes to the great use for which money is destined the satisfaction of the demands made upon them by their creditors. For this purpose, a temporary act had been passed in the course of the last year, for making banknotes in certain cases a legal tender; and it was now proposed by Mr Perceval, that the above act, with certain amendments, should be continued, and that its provisions should be extended to Ireland.

In support of this measure, it was said that the bill offered to parliament was merely an extension of the system which had received the sanction of the legislature last year-that no alteration was intended, except that payments of bank-notes, whether in or out of court, should be declared legal payments, to the effect of staying an arrest; and that the provisions of the statute should be extended to Ireland: That, since the passing of the former act, only three cases had occurred in the courts of justice, in which the legality of the tender was disputed; one of these was the case of Lord King, who had evidently brought the action for the purpose of trying the general question; that as the provisions of the former bill were not such as to have prevented any person from disputing the point, if he had not been disposed to acquiesce in the arrangements suggested by the legisla ture, the circumstance of so slender a resistance on the part of the people, shewed that they were in general disposed to concur in the measures which government had found it necessary to adopt.-That the only reason for not extending the provisions of the former act to Ireland was, that many Irish members were absent

VOL. V. PART I.

when the measure was brought forward; no doubt could have been entertained, however, by the framers of the law, that the circumstances of Ireland, equally with those of the sister kingdom, called for this remedy.That although, in some districts of Ireland, a distinction was made by persons entering into contracts betwixt payments in gold and payments in bank-notes, yet such a practice was Hot general; but if any reason, such as this, were urged against extending the measure to Ireland, there would be the same ground for objecting to it in the case of England, where it was notorious that guineas were sold for a much larger sum than their nominal value. That even in Ireland, the distinction alluded to had scarcely obtained for the last seven or eight years, except in the case of rents; and, with reference to this particular case, parliament would be called upon, should the act pass, to devise some remedy.— That by the measures which had already been sanctioned in parliament, tenants were placed in a very embarrassing situation; for although, by their contracts, they had bound them. selves to make their payments in gold, they could never have had it in view that they might be under the necessity of purchasing gold at a premium of 25 per cent. which was its price at this time. That there could be no reasoning from an enlarged experience as to the present money system of England; that no parallel case had ever existed in the history of the world; and so far as a short and limited ex perience, from the year 1797 downwards, could be the groundwork of any sound argument, an inference was fairly deducible in favour of that system which had been so strongly reprobated by some members of oppo, sition. That there was no reason to fear an inundation of bank-notes, from the imprudence or avarice of the di

C

rectors of the bank; for during the last year, so far from an increase, a diminution in the circulation had actually taken place. That the encouragement offered to forgery had been stated to be one of the great evils of a paper circulation; yet, in the course of a year, the amount of forged notes had not exceeded 10,0001. on a circulation of 23,000,0001.-a proportion not greater than that of the frauds which would probably have been committed on a circulation of gold coin to the same amount.-That if the present money system of the country had a tendency to bring on the ruin which had been anticipated, it ought, to a certain extent, to have already occasioned distress and confusion; yet it would not be disputed, that during the last year, in which the measure now to be prolonged had been nearly in full operation, the foreign exchanges had improved the amount of the public revenue had increased- and, in short, the commercial and financial affairs of the country had assumed a very favourable aspect: And, finally, it was urged that some measure of this kind was imperiously demanded, in justice to persons who might otherwise be called upon to make payments in a medium which they could not command, and which, even if they could procure it on any terms, must be purchased at a very great and unreasonable expense.

It was contended, on the other side, that the bill would prove fatal to the credit of the country. That the act of last year had been proposed as a mere temporary measure; that parliament had been induced hastily to accede to it from an exaggerated representation of the difficulties of the country; but that it was now called upon, without enquiry or deliberation, to adopt a measure of the most serious importance; to do nothing less, in fact,

than to declare the notes of à mercantile company to be a legal tender. That one of the chief reasons urged in support of the bill passed last session, was, the rapidly increasing price of gold; it was now confessed, however, even by the supporters of the measure, that gold had since declined in price. That the bill, besides producing the most serious mischiefs, had failed entirely in attaining the only object proposed by it, viz. that of preventing gold coin from being sold at a premi. um; as a proof of this, it was men. tioned that but one conviction had ta ken place since the passing of the act, and that too in a case in which the offender had been seduced into the transaction by a police officer employ. ed for the purpose.-That the extension of the measure to Ireland was a bold invasion of the rights of the landed gentlemen of that country, who had in most cases specially stipulated for payment of their rents in gold, and were now to be violently deprived, without any fault on their part, of a fifth of their incomes.-That a measure by which the people were to be compelled to take in payment bank notes, the value of which could not be ascertained, amounted to a direct fraud upon them; and that the circulation of this country was now to be forced to a more alarming degree than that of the French assignats, which had always been supported by some sort of pledge on the national domains and the property of the state. That there once was a time when the corporate interest of the bank coincided with the commercial and financial interests of the country; but they had now be come perfectly distinct, and no securi. ty of course remained for the public, but in the forbearance of the bank. That the bank had become too strong for the government and the country; and the legislature, before sanctioning the measure now proposed, ought

to compel the directors to disclose what they had hitherto most anxiously concealed, the amount of the profits which had been divided among the proprietors since the date of the re strictions. That the system of a paper circulation was not new, but had, at one period or other, been introduced into most of the nations of Europe. Its invariable consequence had been to entail bankruptcy upon the government, and ruin and misery on thousands of innocent individuals.-That the temptations to forgery, created by such a system, formed, of themselves, an evil of an enormous magnitude, against which the bill made no adequate provision. That although the bank directors might be incapable of abusing the trust reposed in them, yet the powers with which they were vested, were too great for them to wield, since they had no sufficient means of restraining the issue of their paper within due bounds. That the only remedy for the present evils seemed to be an artificial rise on the nominal price of the gold coin, in the same proportion as bank notes had been depreciated; that this measure was not so novel as

might be supposed, for, in fact, the price of coin had already been raised by the issue of tokens, at a rate above their intrinsic value, at which, however, they were received in exchange of those notes which were to be made legal tenders, and accepted in payment by creditors.-That by extending the measure to Ireland, go

vernment could have no other view than to destroy altogether the standard by which people are enabled to judge of the depreciation of paper; which standard, was, in some degree, maintained by the general circulation of gold coin in the sister kingdom. That it was not fair to say, that the predictions of those who had expected much evil from the restriction of 1797, had not been fulfilled; for, although

that utter ruin, which had been announced in the heat of debate, had not overtaken the country, yet, in so far as the system was calculated to produce immediate mischiefs, these mischiefs had already occurred. It was one of the predictions of those who opposed the measure of 1797, that the bank, so long as the retrictions existed, would never of itself return to cash payments; a prediction which had been fulfilled.That the measure now proposed would convert the notes of the bank into a forced government paper, the very worst species of currency with which a country could be inundated.-A par ticular objection was strongly urged by some Irish members against extending the bill to that country. It was said, that leases were not granted in Ireland in the same manner as in England; that, in the latter country, they were usually granted for a short period, and the landlord of course had it in his power, after short intervals, to compensate himself, by raising the rents, for a depreciation of the currency; but that in Ireland, leases were seldom granted for a shorter period than two lives, and were very often of much greater endurance. The Irish proprietors, therefore, had not the same remedy with the English landlord, and it was unjust to extend to his case a measure, which, in other circumstances, might not be exceptionable,These arguments, although urged with great zeal, proved ineffectual; a strong conviction prevailed, of the absolute necessity of the measure; and, although it was admitted on all hands, that inconveniences would arise, it seemed to be the general opinion, that the mischief was imputable, not to the measure now under consideration, but to a state of things over which parliament had no controul. It became necessary, however, to protect the people from the oppressions to which they might have been exposed, without