the prices at which things should be sold. " and he could only call it a whim, to have that is to say, the paper-money, or Bank"gold in preference to any other circulat- notes, of France; for, let not any one lay "ing medium. This desire to have gold to his soul the flattering unction, that there "was founded in ignorance, as there might is any inherent difference between Bank"be a circulating medium without gold notes and assignat; let ro one suppose, that "perfectly adequate to all the exigencies there is any difference in their nature; let "of the country, and which might be ef no one suppose, that there is any thing in "fected by the branches of the Bank of the mere name that makes a difference in "England, and the entries in the Bank- the thing. -----Well ; but, did Robespierre's "books to which he had alluded on a for- plan succeed? Oh, yes! to admiration. "mer night. Gold was only the measure Nobody violated his law, for it was written "of other things, and was not necessary in blood; but, those who had any thing to to circulation.The Bill was read a sell took care to ask two or three times the "first time, and ordered to be printed. former price for it, and, as this rise in THE EARL OF LIVERPOOL wished prices would naturally go on, the Conventhe second reading to be mared to-mor tion were soon obliged to pass the law of row, when he intended to move to post-Maximum, that is to say, a law prescribing "pone it for three months.EARL STAN"HOPE declined hurrying the Bill with "such rapidity, and thought it possible "that the Noble Secretary of State might "have a wiser opinion respecting it by "Monday.EARL GROSVENOR having "wished to be informed, whether any mo"tion on the Bill was to be made to-mor"row, THE EARL OF LIVERPOOL Said "he would not do so unusual a thing as to "move to postpone the Bill for three "months to-morrow, the Noble Earl (Stanhope) having declined to move then the "second reading."--Well, reader, what think you of that? Do you think that the end is not now approaching? I should suppose that even Grizzle Greenhorn sees it as plainly as she can see the nose upon her lover's face. My Lord STANHOPE says, that he went to Bankers and to men learned in the Law, and they all approved of his remedy, which, he said, was very simple. Indeed it is; but his lordship need not have gone to Bankers and Law. yers for advice, having so perfect a prece-ready; and, if this law were passed, even dent before him in the Robespierrean Code. the brass halfpence would be hoarded.— It is precisely what was done in France in The effect of that would be a rise in all the time of Robespierre; precisely Robes- prices, and that so rapid as to destroy virpierre's first measure of finance. The tually every contract existing between Convention finding that their assignatsman and man.Well, but what is to be would become good for nothing in a very short time, unless they compelled people to take them at par with gold and silver, passed a law making it a crime for any one to give more for gold than its nominal value and to take or pass assignats for less than their nominal value. No sooner was this law passed than the whole of the gold" and silver disappeared; totally disappear ed; and was, in quick time, followed even by the copper sous, though of the basest metal; for, base as they might be, they were still superior in value to assignals; done? Aye, that is a question often put to me, and I always answer: "Go to your ministers ! They are paid for taking care of the affairs of the nation. "You give them a great deal of money "for thinking for you. They are the people for you to look to in your trou bles."--For my part, though I know what ought to be done immediately, and what will be done at last; though I could now point out the way in which the deliverance of England might be secured, and` which I deem of much more importance 68 ner; the price of Gold in 1802, the "year of your agreement, was £.4 an "ounce. The present market price is "L.4 14s. arising from the diminished "value of Paper; in that proportion an " addition of £.17 10s. per cent. in Paper -Such is the notification of their landowner's intention; and, I am fully persuaded, that the thing is of more importance to England than could be 50 battles fought with Buonaparte. The fate of Spain and Portugal and the Baltic and Sicily; what is it to compare to this, which marks out to the government of England what is going to happen, what must arrive soon or late, and what will affect the interests and the very existence of every man in England?—The author of this notification is, in the report of the debate, said to have been actuated by black malignity, and, in another part of it, it is said that ignorance alone can induce a man to prefer gold to paper. Now, if this be so, I must confess myself chargeable with black malignity and with ignorance, seeing that, I only want the means, having the will, to do precisely what this nobleman has done, except, perhaps, that I should have gone farther, and insisted upon my rents in guineas, and guineas only; and, in so doing, I should have thought myself acting, not only a just, but a patriotic part, and should have consoled myself, under present censure, with the certainty of receiving, in a short time, the thanks of all that part of the nation, whose gains do not wholly proceed from the system of paper. than the deliverance of Europe; though" Paper-money is estimated in this manI could do this, I will not do it, and the reason I will not is, that I dare not, though what I should recommend would secure both the crown and the people from danger; and though it would be the greatest blessing the nation could experience. For publishing my proposition," money will be required as the equivaI might be called a seditious libeller, per"lent, for the payment of rent in paper.' haps, and dealt with accordingly. Therefore, I will not say what I think ought to be done. I have had no hand in producing the danger, and I shall not, therefore, be amongst the first to run any risk for the sake of warding it off. I have foretold it, and I have been abused and persecuted for foretelling it. The danger is now at the door; and let those who abused and persecuted me find out the remedy.We will now take a look at the PARTICULAR ACT, which called forth the proposition of Lord STANHOPE. There is, it seems, some land-owner, who has notified to his tenants, that, in future, they shall pay in gold, or, if not, he will not take bank notes except at their present value compared with gold. I happen to be possessed, I believe, of a copy of this notification, which I understand to come from one of the tenants. It was brought me last Sunday; and I have no doubt of its being genuine.It is as follows: "By Lease, dated 1802" (mark the period) "you "have contracted to pay the annual rent "of £.47 5s. in good and lawful money "of Great Britain. In consequence of "the late great depreciation of paper "money, I can no longer accept any "Bank-notes, at their nominal value, in "payment or satisfaction of an old con"tract. I must therefore desire you to "provide for the payment of your rent in "the legal gold coin of the realm. At "the same time, having no other object "than to secure payment of the real in"trinsic value of the sum stipulated by "agreement, and being desirous to avoid giving you any unnecessary trouble, I "shall be willing to receive payment in "either of the manners following according to your option.-1st, By payment "in Guineas; 2nd, if Guineas cannot "be procured, by a payment in Portugal "Gold coin, equal in weight to the num"bers of Guineas requisite to discharge "the rent ;-3rd, by a payment in Bankpaper of a sum sufficient to purchase (at "the present market price) the weight of "standard Gold requisite to discharge the "rent. The alteration of the value of the This land-owner, who, I believe, is LORD KING, and, if I am in error, I am quite sure his lordship will pardon me, and have the goodness to enable me to correct my error next week; this landowner, or, to use the name, LORD KING, let his farms, or, at least, the particular farm alluded to in the notification, in the year 1802, when four one pound bank notes would buy an ounce of gold; but now the bank notes are become so much less valuable than they were then, that it requires four one pound notes and fourteen shillings to get an ounce of gold; and, consequently, unless Lord King gets a greater quantity of Bank notes for the same amount of rent than he used to take in 1802, he will lose 14s. in every £.4, which is 3s. 6d. in the pound, or £. 17 10s. in every hundred pounds.—Is it right, that he should suffer this loss? What reason is there for it? Is it right that the Directors and Company of the Bank should be protected against the demands of their creditors, issue out as much paper as they please, and pocket the profits, and that LORD KING should be losing his income daily from that cause?--Oh, no! says the Lord Chancellor, he is not losing any income; for, he gives the £. 100 to his coach-maker, just in the same notes that he takes from his tenant. The hundred pounds is still a hundred pounds: and, if it will go for a hundred, what does LORD KING lose in taking it for a hundred? " dividual alluded to, would find any body to follow his example, or would persevere in what he had begun.If Lord Liverpool saw this matter in the light in which I see it, he would startle at these words having been promulgated. They convey the idea, that the example was bad, and that the person who had begun the thing would not dare to go on. And, my Lord STANHOPE by way of enforcing his arguments in favour of his Bill, reminded the House of the recent opposition to the Dissenters' Bill, and having asked, why the Dissenters made such ef fectual opposition, he said :-" Because they were in the habit of meeting together statedly; and the alarm flew "through them all like a shock of electricity! The Farmers likewise met stat"edly at every market-town in the king"dom; and if they felt such injuries as he contemplated, the same spirit would be "shewn, and they would express strongly and boldly what they felt severely. He "considered his remedy as easy as the "evil was alarming. He concluded by "presenting his Bill."- -Really, I am quite thunderstruck at reading this, and especially at seeing the notion adopted. I have been called a Jacobin and a Leveller, and I have much less veneration for title and family than many other people have ; but, I should have hesitated very long be But, my good Lord ELDON, do you suppose, that the coachmaker will not raise his price to meet the depreciation of money?" This was asked, it seems, by Lord LAUDERDALE; and the Lord Chancellor answered, that he supposed the case of a coachmaker under contract to furnish carriages and work at a fixed price! Very good!" Very good! Quite conclusive. But, how did any one know, that Lord King had a contract with his coachmaker and that it was made so long ago as 1802? For, to make the supposition worth any thing, even as a mere supposition, the contract must have been made at the same time that the Leases were made.-Well; but what is the coachmaker? LORD KING must eat, drink, and dress, and is it to be sup-fore I adopted notions like these; which, posed, that he is supplied by contract with the eatables and drinkables and wearing apparel for his family? Is it supposed that he has his servants by contract, his men and his maidens by contract? And, observe, the contracts must have been made, too, in 1802. He gets the same nominal sum from his tenant NOKES, for instance, as he got from him in 1802; but this same sum will not now buy him so much bread or meat or wine or wages as it would buy him in 1802. So that Lord KING does, in fact, daily become poorer and poorer, and farmer NOKES becomes daily richer and richer; and, of this those who reprobate the conduct of Lord KING may be well assured, that, if his example is not followed, the farms will in a very little time, change owners, if he may be called the owner who receives all the benefit of the thing. The House of Lords will, I think, reflect a little upon the consequences, to which the doctrine of the 27th of June may lead. I think they will have good reason to reflect on and long to remember that doctrine. Lord LIVER POOL said, that he did not believe the in paper as I said before, do really seem to have been generally adopted. What! are the farmers to come boldly forward and complain of their landlords for demanding their rent? Are the landlords, let the paper depreciate to whatever degree it may, still to be compelled to take the nominal sum that they now take? Is Lord KING still to take the same nominal sum from farmer NOKES, when the shall have fallen to 10s. in the pound? Aye, when to 5s. in the pound, or 6d. in the pound? If so, the land may change masters in the quietest manner possible. We have heard a great deal about revolutions, and about the horrors of revolution; but what thinks the reader of this sort of revolution? And, if landlords are to be stigmatized as cruel for demanding their rents in the standard existing at the date of the contract, what landlord will have the courage to do it? Thus, then, the thing will go on, as far as leases now exist; for, as to stopping with this doctrine in his face, what landlord will do that? There is no stopping, unless you stop now; and, if any man has now twenty thousand pounds a year arising out of leases from two to ten years old, he may see himself in the receipt of what will buy him a twentieth part of what he now annually spends or lays by, which must be a great comfort to him, and more especially to his children, whose fortunes will have all passed away to the is adopting; but, wholly prevented they cannot be. If LORD KING'S example were to be followed, tenants might quietly fall into the measure now; it might become a general custom to make up in additional nominal sum what had been lost by depreciation, and thus the contract might be kept on both sides. If this were once customary, the paper might go on depreciating without producing any very sensible injury; or, at least, without a shock; but, if it do go on depreciating, it is very clear, that landlords inust make a stand sooner or later, or give all quietly up; and, if they make a stand at all, certainly the sooner it is done the better, because every year will add strength to the tenant's motives for objecting to pay in the standard of the contract. His lordship has, in fact, made an effort to preserve the estates of the nobility from being wholly swallowed up, and he must, for this effort, expect to be called a Jacobin and a Leveller, and to have all sorts of malignant motives imputed to him by the whole tribe of venal writers, who though they know no more of the matter than the quills with which they write, will not fail to express, with great gravity, their regret that so amiable and excellent a young nobleman should have been induced to do an act so injurious to the credit of the country. children of his tenants. What are "the injuries" of which Lord STANHOPE seems to think the farmers would have to complain, if Landlords acted upon the rule of Lord KING? All that Lord KING wants of bis tenants is to pay him as much now as they agreed to pay him when they took their farms. And, can this be called an injury? If I had a tenant, who had but a year to continue in his farm I would make him pay in guineas, or I would have the worth of those guineas, taking be gold a £.3. 178. 104. an ounce; this I should think perfectly just; and should not be at all airaid to meet the charge of having done an injury to my tenant If Lord KING persevere, others will follow his example, and an equitable | and peaceable arrangement between landlord and tenant may become general through the country; but, if Lord KING do not persevere; if he give way in consequence of what has been said against his conduct, it requires no conjuration to foresee the consequences. It is a matter of much too general and deep interest to -There is one expression of LORD pass unnoticed. There is not a farmer STANHOPE that I must yet notice; nor any temat of any sort, who will not namely, that the Bank was the bottom notice what has now passed in the House plank of the Ship England. I have been of Lords, where, from the whole tenor of on board of ship; and when I bring the debate, it appears, that the general my mind back to the scene; imagine impression was, that the conduct of LORD myself looking over the side and seeKING was deserving of censure. The peo-ing the moon and stars at apparently ten pe will keep their eyes fixed upon him. Every tenant in the kingdom will have his eye upon LORD KING, in whose single person the fate of all landlords will be decided. But," some of your hoping gentry will say, "why did he stir the thing?" Why tell your friend that he has a mortification begun in his finger point? Why not let it go on; why not disguise the disagreeable truth from him, till the destructive principle reach his armpit and descend to his heart? The paper money is under an impulse as regular as that of a mortification. The progress of depreciation may be accelerated; but, no earthly power can stop it; and, the main consequences of it must finally be what they always have been in similar cases. They may be mitigated; and they would be by measures such as LORD KING thousand miles down in the water; when I take this awful object into my mind, and suppose that the bottom plank is to the real ship what I look upon the Bank to be to the Ship England; when I thus fancy myself, I can scarcely help exclaiming: "God preserve my poor Widow and Chil dren."-The bottom plank, my lord! The bottom plank of England! What! that Bank that stopped paying gold and silver, and was propped by an act of indemnity; and which has never paid in gold and silver since that time.-But, enough for the present. There will, doubtless, be more said upon the subject, and, of course, it will be necessary for me to return to it. State Prison, Newgate, WM. COBBETT. TO THE MARQUIS OF TAVISTOCK. Letter II. June 22, 1811. My Lord; In the eyes of some, it will be an ill omen, that a correction of the borough system should be taken up by the heir to borough property; by the next in succession to a note house that hath a direct interest in that ystem; and when they observe the mode he has chalked out to himself, their forebodings may receive a strong confirmation. Where talent and virtue are combined with youth, we may expect ardour of inquiry, an ingenious love of truth, a quick discernment of what is right and honest, and such an inflexible adherence to the public interest, when once discovered, as shall become the descendant of patriot ancestors. If, then, such a young nobleman-if a RUSSELL of this description, while standing forward as a Parliamentary Reformer, shall be conscious of having a personal interest in that borough system which is "the "source of our evils," we know the rigid justice which his high sense of honour will dictate-we know the unsparing seve off" that "source of our evils;” —we know that rather than incur the suspicion of a base action, rather than be thought to play off any manoeuvre for baffling "substantial and radical reform," he would be led to the scaffold, and there pour out the blood he derives from one who died for his country! But, my Lord, I feel strong in hope; and from three considerations. That person is young; he has the reputation of talent and a virtuous disposition; and herity with which he will be ready to "cut is a RUSSELL. He is, indeed, the son of a nobleman, who, only six years ago, wrote to me as follows:-" I should be ashamed to give support to any set of ✰ men who did not feel the necessity of a "radical amendment in the whole system of government. The source of our "evils is an inadequate, defective repre"sentation of the people in parliament, "and until that source is cut off, in my “humble judgment, abuse and corruption "will never cease to flow in a thousand "different channels. " our "I hope and trust the day is not far "distant, when that most desirable event, "a substantial and radical reform in the "representation of the people may be brought to bear: In the mean time, let "them see the extent of their grievances, "let them know whence they arise, and "let them coolly and dispassionately form "their own judgments upon the best and "surest remedy: It is at hand, simple, and "of easy attainment.” With these words engraven on the heart of the son, he will doubtless enter on a comparison of remedies; and of course prefer that which is "best and surest;" "simple, and of easy attainment." In stating the youth of this person as one ground of my hope, I am well satisfied; since the error, as I esteem it, of a first intimation, is in a young man very excusable, when that error is even sanctioned by the grave opinions of much older persons, who, in leaning rather to partial and progressive reform, than to that which is to be at once achieved, ought not to be suspected of any sinister design. But as all error, where there is free discussion, must, in time, yield to the force of truth, we need be in no pain for what will ultimately be the public opinion. My Lord! a young man of your rank and expectations, unless he make himself an austere recluse, must be continually coming in contact with sycophants, beardless and hoary, who, for some sordid interest of their own, through ignorance or want of principle, or from that natural desire of the base to bring down to their own level all superiority of character, will be for ever striving to undermine his virtue, to warp him from rectitude, and to poison his mind in favour of prevalent corruptions. It has, I presume, been from some such quarter, that you were counselled to announce to us another statute, in addition to the useless lumber already on our shelves," for preventing the expence of "elections;" but, at the same time, to be silent on that prominent feature of oligarchical usurpation, he close borough, "in "the quiet possession of a single great "family" Fall not, my Lord, into this share. Give to this suspicious counsel a serious reconsideration. Ere you meddle with the vital question, study, my Lord, in all its parts, the beautiful, the interesting science of representation. Make not, in a first adventure, shipwreck of your youthful fame. Let no counsel induce you to trifle with public opinion. Shun, as you would shun a pestilence, the fatal error of The Comparison, 36. |