And, in fact, it must be remembered, that for a great part of 1816-17 the note had been within a few pence of par, and had not varied more than about 5 per cent. from par since that time 4. The spring of 1820 had been unpropitious, and vegetation backward, until the 18th of June, when some warm and very brilliant weather occurred just at the critical period of the blooming of the wheat. In July some wet weather excited fears for the crop, and the prices advanced to 72s., but the weather became very fine in the beginning of August, and thenceforth continued most propitious during the ripening and gathering of the harvest. The result was a harvest of most extraordinary abundance, and excellent quality. And even its unprecedented exuberance did not become fully known till two or three years afterwards, when it was not yet exhausted. The best authorities calculated that the quantity of the crop of 1820 was one third above the average. In July, 1821, wheat had fallen to 518. from 728. in August, 1819. May, June, and July, 1821, were cold and wet, and the harvest very late; wheat rose to 62s. in September, but the quantity produced was extremely large, and the quality very bad. In consequence of the enormous unexhausted stock of 1820, wheat fell to 50s. at the end of 1821, and to 42s. in August, 1822. The harvest of 1822 was remarkably good both in quantity and quality, and was got in early, long before the preceding crops had been consumed. In addition to this, the importations from Ireland were on an unprecedented scale. In 1817 corn was obliged to be exported to Ireland; in 1820 and 1821 Ireland exported to England upwards of 4,000,000 quarters of grain of all sorts. The natural and inevitable consequence of this was an immense and ruinous fall in the prices of all agricultural produce. Wheat fell to 388. at the end of 1822 5. The accumulation of treasure became so rapid in the vaults of the Bank in 1820, that early in 1821 the directors felt themselves in a position to resume cash payments, and an Act was passed to permit them to do so on the 1st May, 1821, instead of in 1823. By this time the Government had repaid £10,000,000 of the debt it owed to the Bank, which all the witnesses agreed was a necessary preliminary to enable the directors to contract their own issues. The Statute 1821, c. 26, enacted that the Bank might resume payments in gold coin on the 21st May, 1821. That persons offered to be paid in coin should not have the right to demand ingots. That if the Bank did not offer to pay in coin, the right to demand ingots should continue. The last impediments to the export of bullion were swept away. The Bank was bound to exchange their larger notes for any one who demanded it, for £1 notes or gold coin, but they had the option of payment in gold or notes 6. The extravagant height to which the combined effects of an unusual and long-continued scarcity and the greatly depreciated currency, in which payments were made in 1811 and 1812, had produced the most extravagant speculations in farming. Barren wastes were reclaimed at an enormous expense, which never could have been repaid, except by maintaining corn at famine prices. Rents and debts had advanced in a similar proportion, and all classes of agriculturists, farmers, and landlords had adjusted their expenditure according to the new scale of prices which they expected would endure. Family settlements and encumbrances were calculated on the same basis. Immediately after the peace, the great fall in the price of all sorts of agricultural produce, both from greater abundance and the destruction of the rotten country paper currency, threatened all persons connected with the "landed interest" with general ruin, and, after a considerable struggle, the Corn Bill of 1815 was passed, the intended and expected effect of which was to prevent wheat ever falling below 80s. a quarter. The "landed interest " calculated that, with the "cost of production" of which they considered "rent" as a necessary element, wheat could not be grown with a profit at less than 80s. a quarter, and the intention of that Act was to secure that price to agriculturists. Buoyed up with delusive hopes, and firmly believing that the Act had for ever nailed up wheat to 80s. a quarter, the farmers received a fresh stimulus to speculation, and vast sums were laid out in further extending the cultivation of barren wastes. However, the circumstances we have already detailed disappointed all these calculations, and wheat stood at 38s. at the end of 1882 in defiance of the Act which said it ought to be at 80s. 7. The advocates of a national bankruptcy had been in such a small minority in 1819, that they scarcely uttered a word in Parliament, much less attempted a division. When the distress caused by the fall in prices began to pinch some classes in the country, they began to gather strength again, and commenced an attack on the Currency Law on April 9, 1821. This attack proved a complete failure, being rejected by a majority of 141 to 27. As prices continued to fall during that year, the distress continued to increase, and early in 1822 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to report upon the subject. They presented their report on the 1st of April; but it did not contain a word imputing the low state of prices to anything connected with the currency. They attributed it to the unprecedented abundance of agricultural produce, and proposed plans for affording the farmers and others relief by temporary advances of Exchequer bills, until the glut in the market had diminished. They recommended that the limit of 80s. should be reduced to 70s., as 80s. represented a higher value at that time than in 1815. In the debate that followed, the first symptoms were manifested of the determination to make an onslaught on the Currency Act of 1819. But Lord Londonderry ridiculed the idea that the currency had anything to do with the question, and said Members had only wasted precious time in bringing it forward. But he declared that he entered his most solemn protest against the purpose of these Members to induce Parliament to commit the most flagrant deviation from sound policy and common honestya breach of faith towards the public creditor. Could a British House of Commons sanction such a measure, it would relieve no class of the community; but it would overwhelm all classes with ruin. Were it possible for them to be dishonest and base enough to listen to a project of national bankruptcy, the result must be most calamitous. If a Parliament could be found so degenerate, and a people so destitute of honour and common honesty, as not to start at the idea of such an abandonment of principle, the most sordid calculation would forbid the adoption of such a measure 8. The £1 note issues of the country bankers in England had been suppressed by statute 1777, c. 30; but in 1797 they were again permitted, and, by various Acts of Parliament, this permission was continued till two years after the resumption of cash payments by the Bank of England. By the operation of these several Acts, they must have been withdrawn in 1825. The distress, however, which was attributed by so numerous and powerful a party to the contraction of the currency, was employed to induce Ministers to relax this restriction, and country bankers were permitted to continue their £1 notes till the expiry of the Bank Charter in 1833. (Statute 1822, c. 70.) In order to improve the quality of the country bank notes, the Government attempted to enter into negotiations with the Bank of England to permit joint stock banks to be formed at a distance of 65 miles from London. The Government was satisfied that if joint stock banks on the Scotch system could be formed, it would add much to the stability of public credit. Lord Londonderry pronounced a warm eulogy upon the Scotch banks, and said that it was the wish of the Ministry that a similar system should be introduced into England. The bribe to the Bank of England to consent to this arrangement was an extension of their Charter for ten years. But the negotiation failed 9. The attacks upon the Act of 1819, thrown out in the discussion of the Agricultural Distress Report, were merely preparatory to a formal onslaught on the Act itself. On the 11th of June, 1822, Mr. Western moved for a Committee to inquire into the effect of the Act upon the general interests of the empire. The burden of his speech was that all the distress the country was then suffering was due to the Act of 1819, and to that only, which, he said, had made a violent contraction in our currency at once. This assertion, which was the main pillar of his argument, is demolished by the simple fact that the great contraction of the currency, and the restoration of the note to par, took place in 1816. He moreover assumed that the currency had been depreciated ever since the restriction Act in 1797. Mr. Huskisson immediately followed in a speech demolishing the whole of Mr. Western's sophistries, one by one, and drawing a close parallel between the state of the currency in 1696 and at that time; and he concluded by moving the same resolution that Mr. Montague had done in 1696-"That this House will not alter the standard of gold or silver in fineness, weight, or denomination." After a debate of two nights, in which several members who supported the motion disavowed all intention of tampering with the standard, Mr. Western's motion was rejected by a majority of 194 to 30, and Mr. Huskisson's amendment agreed to 10. It was strongly alleged by one party that they were compelled to pay in the restored currency the debts they had contracted in a depreciated one, and they called for what they were pleased to term an "equitable adjustment of contracts." But the argument was futile, as they knew at the time they made their contracts that Parliament was pledged to return to cash payments within a very short period after the termination of the war. Moreover, they totally left out of consideration that they had been able to discharge an immense amount of mortgages, burdens, &c., in a depreciated currency, which had been contracted in a good currency. All the mortgages and annuities on landed property which were contracted before the great depreciation of the currency were paid for some years in a currency 25 per cent. less valuable than at the time of the contract. But while these debtors clamoured so loudly for an "equitable adjustment" of contracts grievous to themselves, they never uttered a whisper indicative of their wish to have an "equitable adjustment of those contracts where the change was favourable to themselves. The only instance recorded of any person making an "equitable adjustment" against himself, and paying his creditors according to the true value of the Bank note, was Lord King, who incurred so much resentment for his letter in 1811. It is quite evident that such a one-sided "equitable adjustment" as was proposed by this party was nothing else but robbery. Under the double stimulus of famine prices and a depreciated currency, the rents of land had tripled since the beginning of the war, so that properties which were mortgaged before it, might have been comparatively unincumbered at its close. But the unfortunate mortgagees and annuitants were paid in a fixed amount of depreciated currency, so that, when prices rose to meet the depreciation, they were clearly mulcted. But they had no powerful party to advocate an "equitable adjust |