occasioned by a forced reduction of that circulation. In the first period, we relaxed our efforts to render the fictitious prices, taxes, and debts of the war, convertible into undepreciated metallic money; and in the second we renewed them. The consequence of these general actions upon the measure of value, was in each instance a general effect. If the rise of prices, which took place in 1817 and summer of 1818, had been partial and local; if it had happened upon agricultural produce and nothing else, it might have been contended, that some scarcity of agricultural produce had occasioned it; but the rise of prices was general and equal upon all articles, whether agricultural, manufacturing, or commercial; therefore, since the effect was general, it must have been produced by a general cause. Now that general cause must have been either an increase of the quantity of money in circulation, or a diminution of the quantity of commodities in the markets, for nothing else could have acted in raising prices. The increase of money, I have proved, did positively take place by the positive act of the Government; but the diminution of commodities, every one knows, did not take place; for the population in 1818 were better employed than they were in 1816.

So again in the fall of prices which took place in the autumn of 1818 and 1819, and which still continues and increases. If such fall had been local and particular, it might have been thought to have arisen from a local cause; such as the foreign importations, or the fair average harvest of 1818. But it is well known that the present fall of prices has been universal, and has taken effect quite as much in all articles of manufactured or commercial produce, as it has in all articles of agricultural produce. If the Almighty blessed us with a double harvest, as some political economists contend, he could not also (as Mr. Cobbett remarks) have blessed us with a double crop of pigs and sheep, and of every living and dead thing upon the face of the earth, and yet a similar fall of prices has taken place upon all things: therefore,

this general fall of prices must also have had a general cause, and that general cause must have been the positive reduction of the general currency of the country, which it is well known, did take place in 1818, 1819, and 1820: and not the positive increase of all commodities in existence, which, it is well known, did not take place.

Nothing can, in fact, be more absurd than to imagine, that the present general depression of prices can possibly arise from any other cause than a general contraction of the currency. If it is possible that it can arise from "any superabundance of all things," from any extraordinary beneficence of Nature, doubling the productive power of human industry throughout every channel through which that industry is directed, from what then did the general rise of prices: in 1817 and 1818 proceed? Why did iron, and copper, and cottons, and woollens, and colonial produce, and agricultural produce, all then experience one general and equal advance of prices? Is it possible to believe that Nature can be so capricious and frolicksome in her bounties, as at one period to halve our productive power, and at another period to double it? No, no; it is the measures of man which are capricious. Nature, continuing the grand indifference of her operations, dispenses her bounties equally and largely upon all periods. But man, "Playing such fantastic tricks before high heaven, "As make the angels weep,"

renders vain the beneficence of Nature at one period, and converts her very bounties. into curses at another.

To sum up the whole history of the currency in a few words, it is as follows:For 200 years prior to the late war, the currency of England was the same as on the continent; and therefore, during that period, the prices of property and labour in England were kept down at about the continental level.

In 1793, we increased our paper circulation largely, the Bank of England then, for the first time, issuing £5 notes; and afterwards, in 1797, we released our currency

from the metallic standard, and adopted, for 22 years, a purely mathematical or artificial currency, which doubled all our prices permanently.

The whole property of the British empire, calculated in this artificial currency, and in these doubled prices, at 12s. to the bushel of wheat, and all other things in proportion, was estimated by Dr. Colquhoun, in the year 1812, at about 3,800 millions sterling. In 1815 and 1816, we made an attempt to render all this prodigious mass of fictitious valuation convertible into real values, by subjecting it to be reducible into gold at the ancient standard of one ounce of gold to every £3 17s. 10td. of price; and the consequence of this was, that extreme depression of prices which astonished and depressed the nation at that period.-(See Lords' Bank Report, Appendix, A 7, et passim.)

In 1817 and 1818, we thought it prudent to discontinue our exertions for this object, and to increase the circulation of legal tenders, by enabling and inducing the Bank of England to issue additional quantities of Bank-notes in their purchases of the national debt; and the consequence of this was, that extreme advance on all prices which immediately relieved the nation. (See Lords' Bank Reports, Appendix, A. 7.) In the autumn of 1818, and during the years 1819, 1820, and 1821, we have been making another attempt to accomplish this great object; and the consequence is, the extreme depression of prices which we now see. In adopting the continental standard, we find our prices gradually but surely falling again to the continental level.

This is the whole history of the fluctuations in the currency, which are now so generally deprecated, and (till lately) so little understood.

Now, this great depression of monied prices would naturally alarm and surprise the community, even if no monied obligations had been fastened upon them.

But it so happens, that between the years 1793 and 1819, and during the existence of the artificial currency, and of the doubled

prices which that currency occasioned, we actually contracted just one thousand and forty-seven millions sterling of the debt called national debt, and at least another one thousand millions sterling of private debts and obligations of many kinds, such as the wants and transactions of the community had occasioned.

Now all this prodigious mass of fictitious public and private obligation received the sanction of the law, and carried with it the power of the Sheriff's warrant to secure it.

Thus, in 1812, when Dr. Colquhoun estimated the whole value of the whole property of the British empire at about 3,800 millions sterling in monied price, the 2,000 millions of monied obligations of a hundred kinds, debts, rents, tithes, and taxes, amounted to rather more than one half of the whole property of the British empire!

Now it must be borne in mind, that in 1812, the whole of this valuation of the national property, at 3,800 millions sterling, was altogether fictitious or artificial; or, more properly speaking, mathematical or ideal. It did not command by law one single ounce of gold! But in 1819, the Government of this country thought proper to render it convertible, by law, into THIRTYSIX THOUSAND TONS OF SOLID GOLD! which, I suppose, is more gold than exists in nature, either under the earth or over the earth.

But in thus compelling all this prodigious mass of fictitious prices of property to be reducible into gold, at the rate of one ounce of gold to every £3 17s. 10ld of price; in thus rendering all the artificial prices of the nation convertible into gold at the old level, we have necessarily reduced those artificial prices to their old level also; and thus the 3,800 millions of fictitious price is necessarily reduced one half, or to about 1,900 millions sterling in the whole; but the 2,000 millions of fictitious legal obligations is not reduced at all! It is left to reduce itself, through the bankruptcy and ruin of all persons exposed to its pressure.

It is thus that the whole value of the

means is reduced below the whole value of the burthens. The fictitious obligations of the nation took one half the whole property of the nation to discharge them, prior to the passing of Mr. Peel's Bill, but now they take the whole !

The same process is visible with regard to the annual income or annual productions of the nation, as is visible with regard to its whole capital. The annual payments in monied rents, debts, tithes, and taxes, and obligations of many kinds, which required, during the war, one half of the whole annual productions of the nation to discharge them, now require the whole! They require annually two cargoes of Manchester goods, and two cargoes of Birmingham goods, and two loads of grain, where they formerly required one! They require annually just double the quantity of commodities to discharge them, which they required annually on the 20 years' average during the war; and this doubled quantity happens to be the whole !

This is the whole secret of the distress which attends the restoration of the currency. The farmer toils from year to year, and wonders where his profit is the merchant exerts doubled industry and care, and wonders where his capital is. The landowner, the manufacturer, the shopkeeper, all see their property gradually depreciating, or rather rapidly wasting away, but they know not whence their secret ruin comes. It is the change of the currency which causes the whole.

As yet we are merely in the beginning of this great change. It does but yet begin to show one twentieth part of its tremendous consequences. After a little while, the farmers and landowners will drop into the workhouse, as the dried leaves of autumn to the ground. Then will come the political convulsions, which it needs no gift of prophecy now to foresee; and then will follow famine, anarchy, and despair.

There are only two possible ways by which these terrible results can be prevented. We must either return to a depreciated cur

rency, or we must cut down our monied burthens in the same degree as we have cut down our monied means. In the former process, everything is yet safe, and just, and comparatively easy. There is no injury, or shadow of injury, which can reach us. We arrest the robberies of the drones; we lift up and encourage the exhausted bees; we restore the reward of industry and the profits of capital throughout all agriculture and all trade; we raise the prices of all commodities and of all labour. In short, we bring up our means to a level with our burthens at once, and almost without the change being felt or perceived; or if any slight injury should arise from contracts formed since 1819, it is easy to remedy it by legislative provisions. But in the latter process, all is darkness, and danger, and distress. In order to render justice to one half of the community, we are compelled to carry a sense of ideal injury through the other half. Fundowner, landowner, soldier, pensioner, mortgagee, will all think themselves injured, when, like the farmer and the manufacturer, they are brought to receive the same value, but only one half the same money, as they received during the war. Give them the same value, with the same quantity of money, and they will be content. Not one in a thousand of them will care a farthing whether their money consists of little guineas or of heavy guineas, or of coins, or tokens, or even of that very paper in which their credits and their claims were contracted. All that we have to do, is to take care that their money, whatever it may be, shall command for them the same value, the same quantity of the comforts and necessaries of life, as it commanded during the war, and as they have a just right to expect that it should command. To suppose that there can be any kind of injustice in reducing the size or quality of our coins, or in reducing, in any way, the intrinsic value of our instruments of money to this level, is too absurd to admit of a moment's hesitation, when it is considered that such reduction is effected for the purpose of discharging two thousand millions of fictitious