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of depreciation was published in the Philosophical Transactions of the year 1798, could not possibly have taken into view the accelerated progress of depreciation which has been produced by the stoppage of the Bank in 1797, and by the several laws which have, since that time, been passed to screen the Bank from paying its notes in specie, in virtue of which laws the Bank of Eng land paper has become a legal tender. That the value of currency bears an inverse proportion to its quantity, compared to the quantity of commodities, is a principle that no one will dispute; and, when we consider, that, since Sir George Schuckburgh made his calculations, the notes of the Bank of England, to say nothing of the private bank paper, have increased in amount from twelve to eighteen millions, it will hardly be contended that the depreciation is not become much greater than what Mr. Wheatley has taken as the basis of his argument. You yourself, Sir, have declared that the depreciation has been in the degree of 60 per centum during the last eighteen years; and, I imagine that few persons will doubt, that the last six years have produced a greater degree of depreciation than the twelve preceding. Let this progress continue, then, for only eighteen years longer, and the stock-holder of the present day, though he may have a high sounding fortune in the funds, will be reduced to beg in the streets. And, Sir, can you afford us any hope, that the depreciation will be arrested in its progress? Was there ever yet an instance of the kind in the world? Is there not, on the contrary, an ever-active cause, which im. pels it forward? Does not depreciation produce depreciation, as interest produces interest? "The progress in any considerable "period, is what, at first view, would ap

pear incredible. Great as have been the "effects of this cause already, they must be

greater in future; for its powers are aug"mented in proportion as they are exerted. "It acts with a velocity continually accele"rated, with a force continually increased.

"Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo." And may not this eloquent description, which, in 1792, you applied to the faculties of the Sinking Fund, be with much more justice applied to those of depreciation ?

-But, Sir, what is called public credit will not long resist the powerful exertion of these faculties upon this scale of accelerated velocity. The gradual depreciation which money had been undergoing for centuries was not much felt, because during the whole of the reflecting part of a man's life it pro

duced a falling off of no more, perhaps, than 30 per centum; but, of late years, and particularly since the protecting law has enabled the Bank to inundate the country with a fictitions currency, the fall has been so sensibly felt, that men have begun seriously to inquire into the cause, and to look forward to the ultimate consequences. Their apprehensions once awakened, the conti nual increase of prices will not fail to keep them so; and, you may be assured, Sir, that the last stage of public bankruptcy will come, long before bread will fetch a shilling a pound. Men differ in opinion as to this latter point only because they have not settled amongst themselves the meaning of the words national bankruptcy. The vulgar notion is that no injury to the creditor will take place till the government or the bank shall stop payment all at once; that the stock-holders will then receive no more interest for their stock, and will, of course, be ruined. These good people do not seem to be at all aware, that, by the effects of an over issue of paper, and a consequent accelerated depreciation, the go vernment or the bank (for they are in this respect one and the same) has already stopped payment in part; that it has, since 1786, stopped, according to your calculation, at the rate of 60 per centum ; that the stock. holders receive only a part of their former interest; and that, they are daily going on to ruin; that ruin which they dread like the grave, and which, like the grave, they flatter themselves is yet a distance far, very far, removed! Amongst private individuals bankruptcy means a complete stoppage of payment for a time, till the effects of the bankrupt can be sold and their proceeds applied to the discharge of his debts: then come the dividends. But, when a nation becomes bankrupt the stoppage is by degrees like the private debtor, it pays a part of what it owes; but its dividends are before instead of after its final stoppage: other words, its failure consists in its not being able to pay the interest of its loans in currency of the same value as that in which those loans were made; for, as to an abun dance, and even a very great surplus, of currency of some kind or other, what nation ever need be without it, while it has paper and a printing-press at its command? We have yet before our eyes the bankruptcies of America and of France. Did they take place all at once? Did their money retain its original value till the moment when they finally stopped? No: their " public se "curities (for so they too were called,) their Congress paper and their Assignals

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lost their value by degrees; and when they had lost all their value, the bankruptcy was completed. In short, Sir, a nation cannot well forfeit its engagements with its creditors in any other way than by a depreciation in its currency. However empty its exchequer, however much drained its resources, and however great its debt, it cannot flatly refuse to pay its creditors. Its financiers, always desirous of avoiding the necessity of such refusal, have, therefore, recourse to paymeats in fictitious money, some of them, amongst whom I include yourself, being sincerely persuaded that such payments are not injurious to the creditor.

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they are not, but very soon they are attacked by the canker-worm of depreciation, a worn that dies not but with the master on which it feeds.- Many are the objects, the public and political objects, which present themselves when we come to contemplate the effects of this destructive principle, the ra vages of which are already but too visible in the decay of the minor gentry. whose ancestors were so improvident as to exchange the state of land-holder for that of stateannuitant; in the decline of the land-holders themselves, whose rents being fixed for long terms sink the land-lord, in many instances, to a level with the tenant; in the daily and fearfully increasing poverty of the church and collegiate establishments, which, bound down, in most cases, by fixed rents or compositions, are utterly incapacitated for keeping pace, by renewals or fines, with the swift foot of depreciation in the currency, insomuch that there are not wanting instances of livings which formerly afforded the incumbent a decent main tenance and which now scarcely yield him bread, and of charitable foundations where the members formerly were upon a footing, in point of clear income, with respectable farmers and tradesmen, and where they are now actually compelled to resort to parish rates in aid of their depreciated pittance. The pensioners of the crown are in a similar situation: the Royal munificence of former reigns, and even of the present reign, is become, in too many instances, hardly sufficient in amount to keep alive the remembrance of the donor; and the Sovereign and his family are, by the operation of this pernicious principle, compelled, year after year, to ask parliament, or, which is much worse, the minister for relief. Of

lar, remind you; nor do you, I trust, need any observation of mine to make you la'ment, that the crown is thus become the ever-needy dependent of its own servants, while, in the eyes of the unthinking part of the people, it appears in the character either of a miser who hoards, or of a prodigal who spends, that which it obtains from the bounty of parliament, which in its turn, is accused of generously giving that which is not its own. -Such, Sir, are a few, and only a few of the evils of the depreciation of money and of the system by which it has been produced. It is not in the compass of a letter, or of a sheet, like this that a tenth part of those evils can be described, or even barely enum-rated. They pervade every part of the empire they affect every department of the state; they weigh down the spirit, they benumn all the better faculties of the nation; and, if a remedy be not found, and that speedily too, they will lay her prostrate at the feet of her enemy, thereby fulfilling the prediction of that profound politician, who, in his description of "the "violent death of public credit," has, I greatly fear, but too accurately described her fate. With an anxious wish that you may seriously think of these things while there is yet time to save us from the horrors of revolution, and with a sincere expression of my conviction that you never apprehended the dangers which your measures have brought upon your Sovereign and your couniry, I remain, your, &c. &c. &c.

WM. COBBETT.

P. S. Below you will find, Sir, a letter from a second correspondent, remarking on my letter to you of the 28th ultimo. It will serve to sitew, that the object of your statement in the 13th resolution was understood in ways precisely different by different persons, and those persons its approvers. But, this is not the reason for which it is inserted. I am desirous that my readers should form conect opinions upon these most important subjects; and, am, therefore, resolved to lay before them the remarks of all my opponents, unless those remarks are, for some obvious reason, unfit for publication.

PRODUCE OF TAXES.

SIR,The very high estimation in which I hold your writings, and the confi dence which I teel in the excellence of the motives which prompt your public con uct, induce me to aadress a few lines to you, n consequence of your letter, in last Saturd's Register to Mr. Patt. The inference inte ded by him to be drawn, from the statement

one of the political consequences of this last mentioned effect, of the unmerited odium which it is calculated to bring upon those whom we ought most to love and venerate, I am sure I need not, at this time in particu-in the 13th resolution of the House of Com

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mons on finance. still appears to me to be legitimate: and, I think your objection to it arises, from confounding the action of the depreciation of money on price, with its action on taxes. When the amount of the same taxes is advanced, as an evidence to the condition of the country, it should not be forgotten, that four-fifths at least of them, are taxes on quantity, and that only those taxes which are ad valorem are liable to the objection urged by you in your letter, and that in the enteries at the Custom-House, prices have not advanced in any degree upon a par with the real prices at market. If, then, you were, (allowing for the argument, your estimate of one-third depreciation to be correct), to consider Custom House depreciation at one-sixth, and cast this on the taxes gathered ad valorem, you would arrive at the full strength which can be allowed your objection. It would be a tedious calculation, (nor do I at present recollect any paper on the table of the House of Commons, that would enable me to frame one for 1803), to correctly cast out the proportion of ad valorem articles; they are, I know of very small amount, and are greatly overrated at one-fifth; taking them, however, at this proportion, the permanent taxes for 1792 were 14,284,000, and those for 1803 casts thus were 14,404,300.-From this comparison the obvious conclusion is, that the consumption of the various articles which are subjected to duties, has not lessened in the last ten years, that on the contrary, it has rather increased, and that for once in the revenue arithmetic two and two do make four.I am, Sir, with respect, your very devoted humble servant. D. W.

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persisted that he had written his real name, and that having no fixed place of residence, he thought the place where he then was the fittest to be described as his residence. The clerk, however, not at all satisfied with this explanation, and supposing, or pretending to suppose, that the gentleman had possessed himself of the note in an improper manner, immediately ordered him into the custody of a constable, by whom he was taken to the Mansion House, where he was examined by the Lord Mayor, in the presence of the Bank Solicitor and others of their officers; but, still continuing to assert that he had written his real name, and making, as it is said, some ingenious observations with respect to his place and residence, he was discharged, and the money which had been taken from him restored. Thus ended the transaction.-That the above was, indeed, a curious occurrence, in more than one point of view, I believe none will deny, and more especially yourself, Mr. Editor. It was curious from the coincidence of names, and still more curious and important from the measures thought proper to be adopted on the occasion by the officers of the Bank of England. By perusing any one of the notes issued by the Bank, it will be seen, that they promise to pay to the bearer on demand the sum of money inentioned therein without any stipulation, condition, or reservation whatever. The words purport, as clearly as words can do, that, upon the presentation and giving up of the piece of paper on which they are written, the person so presenting and giving it up shall be entitled to receive, and shall receive, the value expressed in it in the current coin of the realm. But, though the words and their meaning still remain the same, it is known, that by various Acts of Parliament, to any of which it is quite unnecessary par ticularly to refer, the Bank of England is now authorized and required to pay the amount in its own coin, in such manner as the bearer shall require. These acts, however, interfere no further; their object was and is merely as I have stated it. It becomes, then, a question of importance to de termine, by what right the officers of the Bank require the person who presents a note for payment to inform them of his name and place of abode? Is it not suffi cient for them that the note is delivered into their hands previous to its being paid, and that they have a full and fair opportunity to ascertain whether it has been bond fide issued or is forged? Can we for a moment suppose, that these officers are ignorant of the signs and marks by which their notes are identi fied? If they are not ignorant, of what con

consequence is it to them by whom they are presented or to whom paid? It is impossible for them to sustain any injury, inasmuch as they receive a full equivalent for that which they give. And if they are ignorant, who is so proper to suffer as themselves? We shall be told, perhaps, that it is one of the rules of their office: but, I would ask, if it be indeed true that the Bank is vested with the power of making laws, and of enforcing their observance by imprisonment and otherquise? Whether this imperium in imperio be really acknowledged? All bankers, it is true, have some regulations by which their own private transactions are governed, but I have yet to learn an instance in which these regulations have been attempted to be set up as public laws. We are aware, for instance,

that it is one of their customs not to receive money after a certain hour for the payment of a Bill of Exchange, or on any other account; but, we are also aware, that the law does not notice the hours of bankers, and that if money be duly tendered in payment of a Bill of Exchange, at any hour within the day the bill becomes due, such tender may be effectually pleaded in bar of any action brought for the non-payment of such bill. Perhaps, it may be well that such private regulations exist, and when applied in a proper manner they will experience no opposition or blame from me, but when they clasp with the rights of the subject, when it is endeavoured to make them public rules, then they call forth my unqualified reprobation, my most determined enmity. Viewing them in this light, and considering the Bank of Engiand, in this respect, merely upon an equality with any other Bank, I cannot consider the case before stated without very considerable astonishment. Not knowing any real authority under which the Bank could so act, and believing that none does exist, yet satisfied that they have so acted, I feel that, either a very flagrant outrage has been committed, or that my opinions are strangely wrong. Either the officers of the Bank have acted agreeably to law, or not: if they have acted according to law, then all is well; but if they have not, then surely they are liable to some punishment, and ought to make some compensation to the injured person, and to the public for demanding of them as a right, that which they have no title to receive. Unless, indeed, they are justified in exercising "a vigour beyond the law," be cause they are men of "ardent minds." Clear it is that there was no just cause for the examination of this gentleman, inasmuch as he was discharged by the magistrate without either punishment or reprimand. For

myself, I have no doubt, that, in the whole of the transaction, they have been utterly wrong, and have acted rather with a view to the gratification of their pride, than a due regard to their own interest and the public good. I have been induced to extend my observations further upon this subject than may, perhaps, be deemed necessary by some, but considering that the Bank in various respects, and particularly in respect of the late and present issue of dollars, has become very intimately blended with the legislative power of the realm, it seems to me necessary to know the real extent of its power, and my object is equally to obtain that information, and to call the public attention to the real acts of its offices. At present I refrain from saying any thing further, and beg to subscribe myself, your most obedient servant,SCRUTA TOR.

SLAVE TRADE.

SIR,I have long perused your Weekly Register with an uncommon degree of attention and pleasure; and the more so, as your political opinions have almost invariably coincided with my own. It was, therefore, with extreme regret in the perusal of your stricture on the slave trade, as contained in page 933, &c. of the No. dated 16th June, 1804, that I observed our ideas of justice and humanity, did not tally in a similar manner. My regret was not so much excited by their discordance merely as relating to ourselves; for, it can scarce be expected that the sentiments of any two individuals should invariably agree: bat, when I think of the immense influence your Register deservedly has over a very great number of the inhabitants in the civilized world, and that the opinions you have promulgated in the passage alluded to, have in all probability prejudiced many members of the Upper, Ionse against it, and finally accomplished its postponement, or in all likelihood its entire ejection; and may have thereby not a little conduced to prolong the duration of a most grievous slavery to many thousands of our fellow creatures: I feel not only regret, but the most poignant grief. I should have troubled you with a few remarks on the subject ere now, but from an expectation that some one better qualified to send home conviction than I am, would have undertaken the task. Since no one has, however, I hoje you will accept that as a sufficient apology for my troubling you at present. You begin then, with a criticism on the preamble of the truly philanthropic Mr. Wilberforce's bill which states that, "the slave trade is con trary to the principles of justice and bu

"manity." You observe, that it is very short and pithy! Doubtless it is, and I moreover, agree with you, in thinking Mr. W. would have done wiser in using a little more ceremony in his preamble. That I grant then, it being merely a matter of ceremony, for you do not seem to wish so much that the accusation had not been preferred, as that a little more ceremony had been used in so doing. But in regard to the substance of the preamble, I must confess myself at a loss to conceive on what grounds you could persuade yourself, that a traffic so unnatural does not violate every principle of justice and humanity. Does justice consist in catching them as you term it, for the express purpose of dooming their bodies to endless slavery on this side the grave? Shall he who hunts or shoots them as we in this country would do foxes and hares, be termed unjust and inhuman? Does justice consist in our purchasing African prisoners of war for slaves from their fellow countrymen, when we know that by doing so we clandestinely promote and encourage an eternal civil war amongst themselves? Is there either justice or hunianity in the shame-.-. ful manner in which they ate huddled together, and their barbarous usage in the iniddle passage? a description of which would melt a heart of adamant. Does justice consist in selling them to West-Indian planters? In these planters overworking them; in whipping them for no cause whatever but the gratification of their own flagitious humour, and then starving them to the bargain; thereby rendering them obnoxious to the threefold pains of flagellation, hunger, and despair? Despair, I may well add, for they need never more expect (when they have once crossed the Atlantic,) to see and embrace their long lost parents, wife, or children in this world. Now, Mr. Cobbett, if such treatment as I have above so feebly attempted to describe, bear any sort of analogy to the common acceptation of the words justice and humanity, I will confess myself infinitely obliged to you, if you will be so kind as to explain to me the meaning of the words injustice and inhumanity. But, as you may not be disposed to take that trouble, permit me to bring the subject more home to your feelings, by a view of it through that simple, but never sufficiently to be admired precept of our blessed Saviour's, "Do unto others as you would that "others should do unto you." Suppose yourself only for a moment instead of a subject of our happy Isle, to be an African Chieftain, happy in the enjoyment of the society of the dear partner of your joys and

cares, your aged parents, and your lovely progeny, that some fellow Chieftain allured by a thirst of gain, attacks, vanquishes, takes you and your family prisoners, tears you from their fond embraces, and sells you for a slave. Supposing, I say, all this to be your lot, would you then think the government which sanctioned this traffic, the sole source and cause of all these your undeserved misfortunes, was one that laid claims to civilization, and to be actuated by the pure principles of justice and humanity? If you can conscientiously answer me this in the affirmative, then I will think you have ground for asserting, that the slave trade is neither contrary to the principles of justice or hu manity. Or what is the same thing, sup pose only that Jamaica, and the other West India Islands were the property of the Afri can Blacks, and governed by colonies of them, that their maritime power surpassed that of any other country under Heaven, that the African planters employed their coun trymen at home, under the sanction of their government to sail to Britain, there to make such offers for slaves as would prove an inducement for British Chiefs to go to war with one another for the sole purpose of taking prisoners: that you and your family were taken by the Tioman Doctor and his partisans; who, denying you even a parting look of every one dear to you, hurried you on board a ship, crammed you among hundreds of your equally unhappy countrymen, and setting sail for the land of slavery, left you a prey to all the horrors of despair! What would your opinion then be of this said African government? None of the most favourable I dare presume. But laying all supposition aside, let us return to the reality, and hear what you have got to advance in favour of the said slave trade; and against its abolition. Perhaps, you will say, it would be a piece of more glaring injustice to deprive the West Indian planters of this generation of their lawful purchase in the persons of their slaves, than to curtail the vilest slavery not only on the present, but on many African generatio s yet unborn. Of the fallacy of this argument I could wish also to convince you, after I shall have previously shown that the services of the ci-devant slaves are still as secure to the planters as ever. If a planter, for instance, emancipates his slave, doubtless, that slave is free to leave him, and go seek another master, at whose hand, perhaps, he expects better treatment: but still to a master he must go; for having no other means of earning his subsistence but servitude, and no means of reaching his native home, he labours under that unavoid

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