THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 352. 
 
 B8T5 
 V.27
 
 H 
 
 LEGISLATION GONE ASTRAY; ^ 
 
 OR, 
 
 A REVIEW 
 
 '^ OF THE 
 
 BANKING CONTROVERSY, 
 
 AND 
 
 THOUGHTS 
 
 UPON THE INEXPEDIENCY OF PUTTING DOWN 
 
 THE 
 
 <©«e43ounti^Notc CTirculation ; 
 
 to wliich is added, 
 
 A PLAN 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 PREVENTION OF FORGERY 
 
 OF 
 
 BANK OF ENGLAND NOTES. 
 
 IVIutato nomine de te tabula narratur. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 J. M. RICHARDSON, 23, CORNHILL. 
 
 1828.
 
 MARCHANT, PRINTER, INGR AM-COURT, FENCHrRCII-STRFFT.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The public have been pretty well saturated 
 with pamphlets relating to Banking and Currency 
 Questions. The Bullion Report first led the way, 
 as a light shining in darkness ; afterwards, every 
 gentleman who could make a verb agree with its 
 antecedent, thought it right to " approach the 
 question of currency," and to trouble us with his 
 thoughts. Hence, upon this subject, such a flight 
 of pamphlets lighted upon the town as was never 
 known in the memory of the oldest man. 
 
 It is not my fault that they have not been 
 more generally read, and understood ; cotempo- 
 rary with their appearance there arose a strong 
 feeling that our Criminal Code wanted softening; 
 and I proposed, in a letter to the editor of a 
 
 A 2
 
 morning paper, that many crimes now punishable 
 with fine and imprisonment, such as slander 
 against the King, or against individuals ; abduc- 
 tion ; seduction ; running away with a ward in 
 Chancery ; conspiring to produce a run upon a 
 country bank, &c. Sec. I proposed to change and 
 soften the punishment (if softening it can be 
 called) and to compel the guilty parties to stand 
 upon 2iform in the nearest market-place, to read 
 through the Bullion Report, and the whole of 
 the above pamphlets, and never to leave the form 
 until they understood them. Unhappily for the 
 public, but happily for all wards in Chancery, 
 who would never have been liberated had my 
 plan succeeded, the editor most unkindly refu- 
 sed to insert my letter, and the public were thus 
 deprived of two objects most dear to them, viz. 
 Instruction upon the Currency Question, and an 
 amelioration of our Criminal Code. 
 
 Perhaps I had better inform the reader, at 
 once, what he may expect to find in the follow- 
 ing pages. Whilst the public have been loud in 
 inveighing against the Country Bankers, and in 
 putting down their one-pound notes ; — whilst the
 
 hair of many gentlemen has " stood on end" at 
 the many failures that have taken place amongst 
 them ; — whilst we have been desired to believe 
 that society has been " loosened from its founda- 
 tions" by their paper an ticks, and from the 
 " facilities" which they possess to carpet the 
 country with their notes ; in the midst of all 
 this din I have remained quite unmoved. I have 
 seen nothing from the beginning to justify all 
 this uneasiness, and I have seen nothing, ac- 
 cording to my view of the subject, to justify the 
 interference of Parliament. 
 
 In a few words I will explain the foundation 
 of a great deal that is to be found in the follow- 
 ing pages. I think we ought never to have med- 
 dled with these one-pound notes. — That it is in- 
 consistent and fantastical to single out a class of 
 men and manacle them, because their one-pound 
 notes are said to take gold out of the country, 
 to produce panics, and vicissitude of prices, 
 and, when unpaid, largely to affect the condi- 
 tion of the poor ; when, at the same time, we 
 suffer currency of another sort differing only in 
 name — Bills of Exchange, kc. to move about
 
 6 
 
 unmolested, and without limit, which also car- 
 ries away gold, produces panics and vicissi- 
 tude of prices, and, when unpaid, largely affects 
 the employment and subsistence of the poor. 
 
 Having now fairly launched my little bark, 
 may I be allowed to take advantage of a few 
 minutes, while the sails are filling which are 
 presently to propel me into the dark and stormy 
 ocean of controversy, to beg of all such who are 
 hostile to my flag to treat me according to the 
 acknowledged laws and courtesies of civilized 
 warfare. Descending to simple language, — to 
 let me have/«ir play. The following is my idea 
 of what fair play consists. 
 
 At the school where I was brought up, it was 
 the custom for the boys every week to write 
 themes; various were the subjects; upon history, 
 upon moral and political philosophy. The mas- 
 ter, who was a liberal man, said he did not care 
 what boys thought or wrote upon these subjects, 
 so as they supported their views by something- 
 like reasoning. He was a most strenuous advo- 
 cate for free and fair discussion, believing that 
 
 to be the best corrective of bad measures, bad
 
 principles, and bad opinions. I will here add 
 that, from the description, I am sure he is the 
 same man come to life again whom Mr. 
 Brougham mentions as being now " abroad." 
 
 One of the subjects submitted to us was the 
 ** discovery of the mariner's compass and the 
 blessing it had proved to mankind." On this 
 occasion, one of the boys, to our great surprise, 
 started with saying that he had strong doubts 
 from the use mankind had made of the blessing, 
 whether we should not have been better and 
 happier if we had remained in our primitive state 
 of locality and ignorance. In his theme he took 
 a long review of the slaughter and desolation 
 which nations had inflicted on each other from 
 their first acquaintance. He noticed one nation 
 in particular, possessing great " facilities" of 
 navigation, which had greatly exhausted her 
 strength and happiness in pursuit of objects of 
 ambition and glory; observing that, although 
 she had come out of all her battles with her 
 brows bound with victorious wreaths, yet she 
 had so embarrassed herself in the fray as
 
 8 
 
 afterwards to resemble the situation of a squeezed 
 lemon.* 
 
 Looking, therefore, at all circumstances, he 
 doubted, or professed to doubt, whether mankind 
 had gained any thing by the discovery. Now, 
 along with some very questionable statements 
 and inferences, there was in this theme some fair 
 discussion, and accordingly it was suffered to 
 pass. 
 
 On another occasion we were desired to write 
 on the state of the Roman Empire, during the 
 reign of the Emperor (I forget his name), and it 
 was required of every boy to allude to the de- 
 struction of Pompeii, as the most important 
 historical event of his reign. Now, whether it 
 was from an amiable weakness to believe in no 
 wonders, excepting such as happened in his own 
 
 * I must do the boy the justice to say that, although in this 
 allusion he produced a smile against his own country, yet he 
 afterwards acknowledged with gratitude that, embarrassed as 
 she was, she could yet keep the world in awe by holding up 
 her finger.
 
 county, (for at that time Mr. Waterton had not 
 travelled,) but a fine, rosy-faced boy from York- 
 shire, to whose uncorrupted mind the spectacle 
 of a volcanic eruption burying a whole city in 
 ruins appeared a perfect fable, insisted that the 
 whole story was a fiction, and declined to slander 
 his valuable time by introducing the subject into 
 his theme. The master, thinking that such a line 
 of conduct overleaped the bounds of all free 
 discussion, or rather was no discussion at all, 
 since it was merely a negation of an historical 
 fact under every body's nose, rang the bell, and 
 giving the theme to the servant, desired him to 
 light the fire with it. 
 
 Now, in the following theme submitted to the 
 public, there are many statements and inferences 
 which may reasonably admit of doubt. Let 
 them be fairly examined into ; but while I thus 
 lay myself open to every species of fair criticism, 
 may I intreat that this work may be protected 
 from the rough hands of those who, after the 
 fashion of our Yorkshire friend, make attacks 
 which are not warranted by any rule of fair 
 discussion.
 
 10 
 
 One word more before / pull up the anchor. 
 It has been observed to me by one for whose 
 judgment I have a great respect, that I have 
 not, in the following pages, treated the subject 
 with a seriousness suited to its importance; while 
 I acknowledge the justice of the rebuke, I must 
 beg the reader to believe, notwithstanding occa- 
 sional sallies of mirth and levity, that I am deeply 
 impressed with the belief that, in the step we 
 have just taken, we have been " led astray."
 
 LEGISLATION GONE ASTRAY, 
 
 <^x'. 8sc. 
 
 Not more puzzled was Lord Byron to find a 
 hero for his celebrated poem, than I have been 
 to find a beginning to this work. Oh! if the 
 public knew the difficulty which a young author 
 felt in starting, they would be more compas- 
 sionate towards scribblers. Walking up and 
 down the room for at least half an hour, it had 
 nearly proved fatal to my design, when taking 
 up the " Morning Herald" my eye rested upon 
 an advertisement, which not only furnished me 
 with a beginning, but also with a hero. " This 
 day is published, second edition, illustrated 
 with plates, and a portrait of the ingenious 
 Author, The Art of Tying the Cravat, exem- 
 plifying the Advantages arising from an elegant
 
 12 
 
 ArranjTcmcnt of this important Branch of the Cos- 
 tume, preceded by a History of the Cravat, from 
 its Origin to the present Time, and Remarks on its 
 Influence on Society in general. By H. Le Blanc, 
 Esq." 
 
 Every man has a hobby of his own. The in- 
 genious author of the above work, no doubt' 
 believes that society in general is greatly in- 
 fluenced by the mode in which people tie their 
 neckcloths, and that when the world becomes 
 shaken to its centre, it is entirely owing to gen- 
 tlemen's neckcloths being improperly tied. He 
 has a right to his opinions. A venerable major 
 (now no more) ascribed all the evils which 
 afflicted society, in his time, to the want of a 
 full, fair, and free representation of the people 
 in parliament. It was " like the air we breathed^ 
 if we had it not, we died.'" A popular writer, 
 taking another view, lays all our troubles at the 
 door of the currency ; whether his children 
 sicken, whether he loses his crop of kidney- 
 beans; the violets in his garden wither; if his 
 cows fall short of their accustomed supply of 
 milk; let even his dogs get the distemper, — it is 
 the currency ; it is a distempered circulation, 
 and nothing else, which produces all this animal 
 and vegetable strife. 
 
 Others attribute all our sorrows to vaccination. 
 Perhaps I had better, at once, tell my readers
 
 13 
 
 what mi) nostrum is, as well as what it is not ; 
 particularly as it will bring us in immediate 
 contact with the subjects I am now about to 
 discuss. 
 
 First then, I do not think our present derange- 
 ment has any thing to do with what is called 
 " Parliamentary Reform." Neither, secondly, if 
 the ingenious author will permit me to differ 
 from him, do I think the world has been brought 
 into its dislocated state from a bad and careless 
 method of tying its neckcloth ; and for this ob- 
 vious reason, that " society in general" seems, 
 for some time past, to have avoided the tie al- 
 together, and to have fastened its neckcloth by a 
 buckle behind. Nor do I think that vaccination, 
 as a first cause, has any thing to do with our 
 embarrassments ; but I think that a large share 
 of the deranofement with which we are now 
 afflicted has been brought about by a constant 
 intermeddling with the currency, and with (as a 
 necessary consequence) the banking and mer- 
 cantile business of the country; and that the 
 new measure we have just resolved on, viz. the 
 putting down of the one-pound notes, will only 
 add fresh fuel to our embarrassments, since, be- 
 sides producing more evil than it has got rid of, 
 it must necessarily lead us into a sea of legisla- 
 tion upon questions connected with Banking and 
 Currency, to which I see no end.
 
 14 
 
 Out of this frosli intcrmeddlino- has spruno^ up 
 wliat is called the " Banking Controversy," Par- 
 liament having permitted the Bank of England 
 to establish " Branch Banks," and, of course, 
 materially to injure the business of the Country 
 Bankers. The Country Bankers complain that 
 it is hard upon them that a powerful company 
 like the Bank of England, who have acquired 
 wealth by means not open to the rest of the 
 community, should now come and seat them- 
 selves down in their neighbourhood, and by 
 means of their power and wealth, thus acquired, 
 take away their business and means of sub- 
 sistence. The Bank, on their part, say, what 
 no one can doubt, that in the step they have 
 taken they have not been influenced by any view 
 to aggrandize themselves, but have only yielded 
 to the wishes of His Majesty's Ministers. Go- 
 vernment, on its part, defends the measure of 
 putting down the one-pound notes, and establish- 
 ing Branch Banks, on account of the serious 
 mischief the community at large, and particu- 
 larly the poor, have received from the insolvency 
 of the Country Bankers in 1825-26. 
 
 These, I believe, form the gravamina of the 
 " controversy," which presently we shall largely 
 discuss ; but, first, it is impossible not to be 
 struck with the contemptuous, the cruel manner 
 in which one of the belligerents lias been
 
 15 
 
 treated. Both in and out of Parliament, the 
 Country Bankers have been assailed by ever}' 
 epithet that could designate them as a pest to 
 society. Whilst the press generally has dealt 
 out very hard blows, one journal, in particular, 
 alluding not long since to the controversy be- 
 tween the Bank of England and the Country 
 Bankers, which of the two was to supply us 
 with the circulation, compared both parties to a 
 couple of " shagtails" quarrelling for a bone, 
 which belonging to neither of them, but was the 
 property of their master, George the Fourth. 
 Pretty hard words these ! It would be nothing if 
 the rest of the press had not, treading in the 
 steps of their great Coryphoeus, lent all their 
 strength to vilify and insult the Country Bankers. 
 In selecting The Times journal to complain 
 of, I only do so because it is a journal of the 
 most extensive circulation and influence. It is 
 conducted with singular talent. Any man who 
 is a judge of composition (the above is not an 
 example but an exception) must see that it is no 
 common mind which moves the pen that writes 
 its " leading articles." It possesses a giant's 
 strength, and towards the Country Bankers it 
 has used a giant's tyranny. 
 
 Even Parliament has caught the contagion: 
 whilst all other classes of men have their friends, 
 the West- Indian interest, the silk trade, the Ca-
 
 16 
 
 nada Company, Hackney-coachmen, tlie Drivers 
 of Cabriolets, Operatives, north and south, 
 hardly a finger seems lifted in Parliament on 
 behalf of the Country Bankers. 
 
 Only a short time ago, a minister of the Crown, 
 a man whom we all look up to, a most accom- 
 plished man of business in this nation of men of 
 business, what does the reader imagine he called 
 the Country Bankers ? Speaking of the expe- 
 diency of stripping them of the power of issuing 
 one-pound notes, he said, that they were 
 " usurping the King's prerogative of making 
 money.'' Now, when two people quarrel, and 
 one calls the other " fool, blockhead, spend- 
 thrift," the terms are intelligible enough ; but if 
 one were to say to the other. Oh, you old alli- 
 gator ! it would be difficult to know the precise 
 meaning intended to be conveyed. So, in the 
 present controversy, a word has been used which, 
 although I have taken considerable pains to 
 understand, thinking of it every day at my meals, 
 I can assure the reader that I am still in darkness 
 as to its application, though not, perhaps, as to 
 the meaning of the minister. Indeed, after puz- 
 zling myself a great deal, I am not satisfied that 
 alligator was not the word intended to be used. 
 It meanSj I suppose, the law empowering his 
 Majesty, and his Majesty only, to coin and issue 
 money, that the issuing of one-pound notes by
 
 17 
 
 the Country Bankers is an usurpation of the 
 right thus vested in the King ; ergo, the Country 
 Bankers are usurpers. To begin, I confess I 
 cannot see the analogy. But why confine the 
 charge to the issuers of one-pound notes? Are 
 not men who raise and coin money in the shape 
 of five-pound notes usurpers also ? What of 
 men who coin in the shape of promissory notes 
 or bills of exchange ? Are they not usurpers too ? 
 I apprehend it can make no difference in the 
 question of usurpation (supposing it be usurpa- 
 tion) whether a man raises money or coins (as it 
 is now called) in the shape of ten one-pound 
 notes, payable to bearer, or in one note of ten 
 pounds, payable to bearer, or whether the obli- 
 gation he issues is in the shape of a bill of 
 exchange, payable to order, payable to-day, to- 
 morrow, or next day, or two months hence ; in 
 all these cases the act done is the same, viz. 
 issuing the symbol or representative of value, 
 i. e. raising money or coining. 
 
 This new view of our currency ; this new light 
 which has suddenly bursted upon us, places all 
 mercantile men who accept bills in a very em- 
 barrassing situation. It is clear that they are alt 
 usurpers ; even his Majesty's ministers are not 
 safe, for if it be true that to issue a one-pound 
 note is to " usurp," they (the ministers) have 
 been guilty for five-and-twenty years of a mis- 
 
 B
 
 18 
 
 prision of treason in not communicating the fact 
 to the law-officers of the Crown. The apology 
 of ignorance they cannot plead ; for, since they 
 have now turned King's evidence, they have 
 permitted Scotland, an integral part of the em- 
 pire, to issue one-pound notes, and have thus 
 aided and abetted her in her traitorous designs 
 against the King. The only way they can pos- 
 sibly get out of the scrape would be to pass an 
 act declaratory that what was usurpation to the 
 south of the Tweed was not usurpation to the 
 north of it ; to make treason, in short, a geogra- 
 phical question. 
 
 It will, most probably, turn out that the word 
 has been unadvisedly used, and that there exists 
 an act of Parliament expressly made for the con- 
 venience of the " trade of this kingdom," to per- 
 mit private persons to issue obligations under 
 ^5. If this be the fact, my reader, who have 
 read the elegant tirade of The Times newspaper, 
 and the not less elegant imputation of Mr. Hus- 
 kisson, will absolve the Country Bankers from 
 this sin, to begin with. Should I be mistaken, I 
 can only say, — 
 
 Cruel are the times when we are traitors, 
 And do not know ourselves. 
 
 As if the Country Bankers had not encountered
 
 19 
 
 their share of public odium, it was proposed, in 
 a letter addressed to a morning paper of great 
 circulation, about the time that the bankers had 
 assembled in London, last winter, to lay their 
 case before Government, — it was proposed that 
 some one should go to their great meeting and 
 catechise them, for the good of the public, as 
 to the mode in which they transacted their busi- 
 ness : for instance, what assets they usually 
 kept by them to meet their outstanding circula- 
 tion ; whether they were not in the habit of in- 
 cluding, in their general balance at Christmas, 
 debts which they knew to be bad, merely to im- 
 pose upon their own clerks, and, through them, 
 to impose upon the public, as well as also to 
 learn a variety of circumstances connected with 
 their private affairs. As I observed before, one 
 might leave such observations to die a natural 
 death, and let the good sense of the public have 
 its sway : but, unfortunately, as I will presently 
 endeavour to shew, that, upon this very simple 
 question of banking, the public have gone fast 
 to sleep. From that sleep I will now endeavour 
 to wake them, not by rude and violent means, 
 such as would ill become me ; not by hallooing, 
 but by gently pouring in their ears, as connected 
 with this fresh tampering with our currency, the 
 opinions of persons to whom, hitherto, they have 
 looked up with esteem and veneration. To re- 
 
 B 2
 
 •20 
 
 turn to the subject, it will hardly be credited 
 that there has appeared in print the skeleton of 
 a bill, of which a noble and learned Lord is the 
 reputed father, to compel Country Bankers to 
 render up, every year (I believe, every three 
 months), an account of their circulation : I confess 
 I feel the greatest curiosity to know and com- 
 prehend upon what principle this can be jus- 
 tified. To my " uncorriipted mind" a banker is 
 a mere trader, a dealer in money ; and why he 
 is to render up an account of his paper obliga- 
 tions to the inspection of " commissioners " any 
 more than a manufacturer, a merchant, or a 
 London banker, are to render an account of 
 theirs, it is quite beyond me to understand. — • 
 Once begin this inquisitorial system, it will be 
 Qiext required for a merchant to render an ac- 
 count, periodically, of the quantity of sugar he 
 holds; — for a provision dealer to state the quan- 
 tity of dried hams he has on hand ; — and for a 
 tailor to surrender an account of the quantity of 
 broad-cloth in his house. — They differ only in 
 name. Is it that when the Country Banker fails 
 he produces distress, and therefore he is to be 
 watched ? If this be the plea for legislation it 
 has, at least, the recommendation of novelty ; and 
 we shall presently see that if Parliament are to 
 take people's affairs under their protection who 
 issue obligations, then fail, and scatter around
 
 21 
 
 them poverty and misery, we can give them 
 plenty of employment in the immediate meridian 
 of Greenwich. 
 
 In reference to the meeting of Country Bankers 
 in December, I appeal to any man's sense of 
 justice, whether it is right that men who had 
 honourably paid their engagements and had as- 
 sembled together to lay their case before Govern- 
 ment, should be intruded upon, and baited by 
 an inquisitive public, as to the manner in which 
 they conducted their business. Why stop here ? 
 Why not enter into their domestic affairs ? The 
 transition from one to the other is so exceedingly 
 simple and obvious that, having once dropped i??, 
 it might be desirable to extend one's inquiries, 
 and ask what quantity of wine they had in the 
 cellar during the panic ; what they give a pound 
 for their meat ; whether they get their beer from 
 " Calvert's entire, " or from " Thompson's en- 
 tire," (both very excellent brewers) ; to ask the 
 bankers when their wives lay in last, how many 
 children they have got, distinguishing the sex, 
 age, &c. ; whether the children have had the 
 measles, the cow-pox, the chicken-ditto ; who 
 their godfathers and godmothers were, and 
 what did those godfathers and godmothers 
 promise for them. I see as little impropriety 
 in asking these questions, as in asking ques- 
 tions relating to their banking affairs, which
 
 22 
 
 concern no one but themsdvts. With regard to 
 the bill of the noble and learned Lord, should 
 such a bill ever pass, I sincerely hope it will be 
 followed up by another to appoint commissioners 
 to watch over (and what so important ?) the health 
 of the Country Bankers ; to empower them to 
 inquire into the state of their bowels ; to examine 
 their tongues every morning : should they look 
 unhealthy, to report the same immediately. To 
 apply, when necessary, a strong laxative in the 
 shape of — 
 
 R Olei Tiglii guttas X pulv. Jalap : ^ii. 
 Extr. Coloc. Co. 9i M ft. Pilul. XX. 
 
 Or in cases of a run upon the Bank, a conr.posing 
 anodyne in the shape of — 
 
 R Tinct. Opii. 5ii. Acetat. Morphini gr. X. 
 
 Infusi Papav. ^iiMfr. Haustus pro re natasuinendus. 
 
 Or it might even be right upon the true prin- 
 ciples of political economy, to appoint nurses to 
 put them to bed, and to see that they were pro- 
 perly tucked up, that they might rise the next 
 morning; and, like young " eagles that have 
 lately bathed," full of health and vigour, resume, 
 afresh, the duties of the day. 
 
 If it is said that this is satire, and not argu-
 
 23 
 
 ment, I answer that I should only be slandering 
 my own and my readers time in soberly refuting 
 such empirical attempts at interference; totally 
 unworthy of the wisdom of Parliament, and only 
 fit for No. 22, Church-street, Soho !* 
 
 Amongst other charges laid at the door of 
 the Country Bankers, it is said that they were 
 the primary cause of the panic in 1825-6. Never 
 can I cease to think that it was London, and 
 London alone to whom the sole merit is due of 
 having originated nearly the whole of the bub- 
 bles and the whole of the loans, the bursting of 
 which led to the panic which has since produced 
 
 * It does not belong to the subject, except as shewing an 
 itching for legislation, and how the best of us may be " led 
 astray." I allude to the celebrated marriage-act, passed a few 
 years ago, compelling persons about to be married to plaster 
 their names on the church-door a fortnight or three weeks 
 previously. It was the greatest insult ever inflicted upon the 
 education and feeling of the country. Is it to be endured that, 
 while a woman's thoughts are wrapped up in the contemplation 
 of the solemn, sublime, and awfully religious rite she is about 
 to go through, which is to affect her destiny here and hereafter ; 
 is it to be endured, that such thoughts are to be broken in upon 
 by the reflection that her name, along with that of her be- 
 trothed, is exposed to the gaze and gibes of the profligate ? Oh ! 
 on that fatal day how we sunk as a nation of cavaliers ! 
 Thank God! the bill no longer exists. If it sprung out of 
 Avhat is called the science of political economy, may that science 
 be for ever blotted out from the face of the earth.
 
 24 
 
 so inucli poverty in the world. Nothing is so 
 easy as to make charges, but to shew it was the 
 circulation of the Country Bankers which brought 
 these loans into life and activity, one ought first 
 to shew that, cotemporary with the birth of these 
 bubbles, there was an increase of the circulation 
 of country-bank-paper. Now, it appears from 
 documents which have appeared in the New 
 Times, that the issue of Country Bankers was 
 less then than it had been for two years prece- 
 ding : even if the issue had been larger, it is 
 unfair to fasten the panic upon the shoulders of 
 the Country Bankers, unless it can be shewn that 
 such increased issues came in contact with the 
 loans and produced the ruin that followed. It 
 would be more rational if one had said that, 
 instead of being principals, they were aiders and 
 abettors in common with nearly the whole bank- 
 ing and mercantile interest of the country; that, 
 partaking of the general delusion to get rich in a 
 hurry out of the bowels of South America, they 
 overshot their mark and burned their fingers. It 
 would be just as fair to single out a part of the 
 ocean on the coast of Devonshire, and say that it 
 was the cause of the dreadful irruption in 1824, 
 as to charge the Country Bankers with having 
 produced the panic in 1825. As the ocean, in 
 this case, was a mere instrument torn and con- 
 vulsed by mighty waters in its rear, so it was
 
 25 
 
 the mighty ocean of paper money in London, 
 which, getting diseased from a number of stink- 
 ing bubbles which had long floated on its bosom, 
 became distracted and deranged, and communi- 
 cating with its tributary waters, (the Country 
 Bankers,) they, one and all, were infected with 
 the disease of their common parent, and assisted, 
 in different degrees, to produce the fatal pesti- 
 lence we have just alluded to. 
 
 Here let it never be forgotten that we were 
 only saved from utter destruction by having re- 
 course to the assistance of those very one-pound 
 notes, the existence of which we had declared to 
 be incompatible with our prosperity and safety. 
 So much for the manner in which the Country 
 Bankers have been treated. 
 
 So little have I been infected with the fashion 
 of calumniating them, that I see circumstances 
 belonging to this controversy which entitle them 
 to very different treatment. It is not like a con- 
 troversy between two rival bankers, or it might 
 appear strange that the Bank of England should 
 ask permission of the Country Bankers, when 
 and where they may establish their Branch 
 Banks. The Bank of England has long ceased 
 to be a private establishment. Only now alluding 
 to it as a matter of history, and not meaning to 
 discuss the policy of the measure, it is well 
 known that the Bank, carrying on business as
 
 2G 
 
 private Bankers, did, in 1797, suspend their pay- 
 ments. There was, at that time, a great drain of 
 gold ; we were engaged in a frightful European 
 war, and France was threatening us with inva- 
 sion. These circumstances were the alleged 
 foundation of the Bank Restriction-Bill. Now 
 every Country Banker, every man in business 
 was more or less affected by the circumstances 
 which produced the above Bill ; a bill passed for 
 the exclusive salvation of the Bank of England. 
 Many Country Bankers yielding to the pressure 
 of those times broke down; others proudly held 
 up their heads, paying all their engagements. 
 Those who thus weathered the storm and whose 
 establishments still exist, have great reason to 
 complain. Here is an establishment of private 
 persons carrying on business and faltering in its 
 en^ao-ements, from what cause we will not now 
 inquire, the fact being all we have now to deal 
 with. Parliament throws its shield round the 
 Bank, and passes a bill to make it legal for them 
 7iot to pay their engagements. They continue 
 for twenty years to carry on business as bankers, 
 issuing paper obligations to an immense amount, 
 and never paying them ; acquiring by these means 
 immense wealth and power, whilst all the Country 
 Bankers in the kingdom who, in different degrees, 
 were affected by the pressure of those circum- 
 stances which induced Parliament to take the
 
 27 
 
 Bank under its protection, were obliged to con- 
 form to their engagements mider pain of the 
 Gazette or imprisonment, having no minister at 
 their elbow to protect them from the consequences 
 of their indiscretion. The Bank of England, 
 with this overwhelming wealth and power thus 
 acquired, have now planted themselves in diffe- 
 rent great cities where bankers exist, such as I 
 have described, and, under the plea of teaching 
 them the true science of banking, they take away 
 (for who can compete with them?) nearly the 
 whole of their business and, of course, their 
 means of subsistence. This curious anomaly as 
 it regards the situation of these two belligerents 
 is not undeserving of notice. 
 
 It has, however, nothing to do with Parlia- 
 ment, which, overlooking private considerations, 
 legislates only upon public grounds. It has just 
 abolished for ever the circulation of the one- 
 pound country notes, and I will now endeavour 
 to show, what indeed formed the principal design 
 of these pages, that, along with a little good, 
 we have in this new and unexpected tampering 
 with the currency, laid the foundation of a great 
 deal of evil. I am afraid I shall be obliged to 
 draw largely upon the patience and attention of 
 the reader, for, at the bare mention of the word 
 " currency," so many ideas rush upon one's mind 
 that one cannot give utterance to them all, and
 
 26 
 
 liow to arrang-e them, and where to stop, haviiig- 
 once begun, is the difficulty. I shall be obliged 
 again to seek for relief in the pages of the Morn- 
 ing Herald to assist me to terminate this work, 
 having so kindly lent me its aid to begin it. 
 
 I will endeavour to show that from the com- 
 mencement this has never been a case to legislate 
 upon. That we ought never to have interfered 
 with a currency such as we now have, con- 
 vertible into money at the will of the holder, and 
 that in having done so, we have made a fresh 
 start in the science of political economy, as well 
 as a new start in legislation to which I see no 
 end; that we have flown in the face of the best 
 of all book authorities, Adam Smith, and the best 
 of all practical authorities, Sir F. Baring, Mr. Hor- 
 ner, and a variety of others, who, while they were 
 sensibly alive to the mischiefs of a non-converti- 
 ble paper currency, and spoke in no measured 
 terms of that vicious system of circulation, such 
 as it was the lot of this country to put up with 
 during the darkest hours of her history, saw no- 
 thing to alarm them in the spectacle of a paper 
 circulation immediately convertible at the will of 
 the holder. 
 
 Here, no doubt, I shall be told that it was be- 
 cause the paper money was not convertible; it 
 was because almost all the issuers of this paper 
 failed, that Parliament thought it right to inter-
 
 29 
 
 fere, and put down the one-pound notes; that 
 persons of little or no property have had " faci- 
 lities" of issuing these one-pound notes; that 
 they have afterwards failed, produced a great 
 deal of distress, and aifected the subsistence and 
 employment of the poor; that these one-pound 
 notes are apt also to produce panics and along 
 with them great vicissitude of prices dangerous 
 to the prosperity of trade. These, in fact, form 
 the grounds of parliamentary interference. 
 
 To begin with the first, viz. there has been a 
 great number of failures amongst the Country 
 Bankers, that they have produced great distress, 
 and struck at the employment and subsistence of 
 the poor : this only means, I suppose, that it is 
 very wrong that Country Bankers should con- 
 tract engagements, and afterwards not pay them. 
 It is, I presume, not less wrong in any other 
 class of men to do so ; but it seems it is the 
 quantum of mischief and misery Country Bankers 
 have inflicted that forms the foundation of this 
 new bill. In their failures, the poor have been 
 great sufferers, and Parliament, in compassion 
 to them, puts down the one-pound notes. 
 
 I cannot imagine I shall have any difficulty in 
 gaining the reader's assent to the following very 
 simple propositions : — That, since it is right to 
 pick out a class of men and tie their hands be- 
 hind them, on account of the " facilities" which
 
 30 
 
 they possess to contract oblig-ations, afterwards 
 to fail, to involve people in trouble, and strike 
 at the employment and subsistence of the poor, 
 it is equally right that Parliament should mana- 
 cle other classes of the community, provided we 
 can make out a case and show that they contract 
 large obligations, afterwards fail, involve people 
 in trouble, and equally, with the Country Ban- 
 kers, affect the employment and subsistence of 
 the poor. And, that assuming the quantum of 
 distress to be the sa?ne, it matters not in what shape 
 the obligations are contracted, whether in the 
 shape of one-pound notes payable to bearer, or 
 ten-pound notes payable to bearer, or promissory 
 bills of exchange, payable to order, payable to- 
 day, to-morrow, or two months hence. 
 
 Now, I shall be quite satisfied to leave it to 
 any man who moves in the world to say, whether, 
 of his own knowledge, he does not know mer- 
 chants, and particularly manufacturers residing 
 in our principal towns and cities, who contract 
 large obligations, and who, if they were to fail, 
 would produce more poverty and misery, and 
 strike more directly at the employment and sub- 
 sistence of the poor, than the failure of a 
 Country Banker. To illustrate the case, sup- 
 posing A, a Country Banker, fails, and B, a 
 manufacturer, fails ; both stop for the same 
 amount, both produce the same sum of human
 
 31 
 
 suffering; Parliament steps in, and, acting the part 
 of a nurse towards A, ties his hand behind him, 
 and prohibits him from carrying on his business ; 
 it stops his " facilities ;" but B, only because his 
 unpaid obligations were payable to order, him 
 Parliament leaves untouched. It allows him to 
 pursue his paper anticks with impunity. Even if 
 A afterwards paid 15^. dividend, and thus great- 
 ly alleviated the sum of human suffering, and B 
 only paid 5^. still A is the man to put down, and 
 B is the man to support and uphold. 
 
 Is this legislation in accordance with the en- 
 lightenment of eighteen hundred and twenty- 
 eight ? 
 
 The case I have put is a very temiperate one ; 
 to make a stronger one it is only necessary to 
 leave the country and come to London. We 
 shall then find that the *' facilities" of coining, 
 which we have enjoyed in this our great ocean 
 of paper money, make the Country Bankers as 
 mere flies upon the wheel. Yet we never think 
 of legislating here, although within these last 
 twenty years millions and millions of unpaid 
 obligations have been thrown upon a suffering 
 public, producing a large sum of human misery, 
 and largely affecting the employment and sub- 
 sistence of the poor. Owing to our " facilities" 
 of raising money upon paper, all the great 
 trading interests of the country, first one, and
 
 32 
 
 then the other, have alternately been laid pros- 
 trate ; have fallen a sacrifice to the paper anticks 
 carried on in London. 
 
 It is said, as a reason for putting down these 
 one-pound notes, that the poor who take them in 
 exchange for their labour have no means of 
 judging of the solidity of the parties who issue 
 them ; in fact, that they frequently have no 
 choice of paper. 
 
 Not at all insensible to the peculiar claim the 
 poor have upon us for support and protection, I 
 think their suiferings in this " controversy" have 
 been greatly exaggerated. In fact, we appear 
 to have had recourse to a most important measure 
 of legislation, founded chiefly on our compas- 
 sion for the poor, without first going into an inves- 
 tigation, without first ascertaining the real extent 
 of their sufl"erings. The Country Bankers failing 
 in 1825-6 does not convey to my mind the 
 slightest imputation against their conduct or 
 against their management. In London we were 
 only saved by a miracle ; although sitting upon 
 the very hearths of the great magazine, the Bank 
 of England, we were literally within twenty- 
 four hours of a state of barter. So little does 
 " my hair stand on end" at the numerous failures 
 which then took place amongst the Country 
 Bankers, that it is a matter of surprise to me 
 that they did not all fail. To continue the sub-
 
 33 
 
 ject, in legislating for the poor it would have 
 been more in accordance with the wisdom of our 
 rulers, if they had first inquired into the amount 
 of injury inflicted on the poor; it would have 
 been better to have looked into Country Bankers' 
 books, to have ascertained what dividends they 
 paid, then one might have approached this part 
 of the question with better means to come to a 
 just decision. I have already said, with regard 
 to their sufferings, I have great doubts that they 
 have been such as are represented, and here I 
 must observe that it is only the ignorant poor 
 who deserve our protection. If a poor man takes 
 a note and has the means of converting that 
 note into money ; if he has the means of changing 
 his security, and, from idleness or other motives, 
 refuses to do so, and afterwards finds himself 
 duped, clearly that man is not an ignorant man ; 
 clearly his sufferings do not form a case for 
 legislation. 
 
 It is a rule running through the whole of our 
 jurisprudence that, while the law acts the part of 
 a kind parent and protector, it does not act the 
 part of a nurse, it does not interpose its arm to 
 assist people who have the means of assisting 
 themselves. Such only of the poor, therefore, 
 deserve the protection of Parliament who have 
 no means of knowing what they are doing in 
 regard to these notes ; and the sufferings of sucfi
 
 34 
 
 have never from the beginnini^ justified our in- 
 terference. In every town and city, where there 
 is any circulation, there are three or four bankers, 
 and always one or two whose property is un- 
 doubted, and who are always glad to give their 
 own paper in exchange for other paper which 
 persons have less knowledge of. Besides the 
 facilities which the poor possess, in their own 
 towns, to exchange notes of which they know 
 nothing, many of the first bankers in the country 
 send their clerks to different towns on market- 
 days, and give their own paper in exchange for 
 the paper of other bankers. This is what is 
 called " carpeting" the country with their 
 " trash," but it is, to my " uncorrupted mind," 
 only an exchange of paper, and I see nothing in 
 the transaction to make one's hair " stand on 
 end," or even to '' loosen society from its foun- 
 dations." 
 
 Whenever the bankers endeavour to push their 
 local notes into circulation beyond what the bu- 
 siness of the community may require, they are 
 sure to return on their hands. The public need 
 no other security against an excess of currency. 
 They need feel no alarm, they can never be hurt 
 without a very criminal negligence on their part, 
 and that criminal negligence, as I shall presently 
 show, does not entitle them afterwards, when 
 they find themselves duped, to parliamentary
 
 35 
 
 compassion and protection. There would be no 
 such thbig as an " ephemeral" country banker, 
 if people would do their duty, and take the 
 paper of such bankers only as are men of pro- 
 perty and character. But, if farmers and trades- 
 men, with their eyes open, and to suit themselves, 
 choose to encourage another description of bank- 
 ers, and to run into risk and suffering, let than 
 suffer. Acts of Parliament are thrown away 
 upon such persons. 
 
 If it is said that, in the preceding observations, 
 I have altogether given the go-by to the question 
 of currency, I answer that I do not understand 
 what currency means, unless every bill of ex- 
 change that is issued forms a part of the currency 
 just as much as one-pound notes payable to bearer. 
 The whole fallacy of the step we have just taken 
 lies in supposing that it is only the one-pound 
 bankers' notes that compose our circulating me- 
 dium, and in supposing that they only, when 
 unpaid, produce distress, and affect the situation 
 of the poor.* In picking out the Country Bankers 
 
 * It is said that the amount of one-pound notes withdrawn 
 has been amply replaced by sovereigns — there is no doubt of 
 the fact ; but what consolation is it to those whom this new 
 measure of ours has crippled — the farmers and the tradesmen ? 
 None of these sovereigns ever come amongst them — they are 
 in bankers' drawers and rich men's pockets. My case is, 
 
 c 2
 
 36 
 
 and strippinn- Uiem of the means of doing- mischief, 
 and in leaving untouched issuers of bills, &c. it 
 is like punishing boys who have been wetting 
 our clothes with water thrown from squirts^ and 
 leaving unpunished others who have been sousing 
 us from buckets, and giving us the ague. 
 
 I confess, while the rest of the world seems 
 up in arms against these one-pound notes, I have 
 never, from the beginning, seen anything to jus- 
 tify all this arming. But, say the advocates for 
 the measure, " Will you suffer men to issue 
 notes, send the gold out of the country; after- 
 wards fail, and produce panics?" To which 
 I answer, Certainly, let them go on issuing their 
 notes. "What! and not pay them afterwards?" 
 
 that, by means of our small-note circulation, certain classes, 
 whose prosperity is of great consequence to the nation, received 
 considerable assistance, and prospered, and that now they get 
 no assistance, and are not prospering. Then it comes again 
 to the old point. Is it right that these men should issue notes, 
 fail, &c.? I answer, quite as right as men elsewhere (surely 
 THIS is not a question of geography) should issue bills of e.\- 
 change to ten times the amount, fail, &c. If it be right to 
 legislate, that man who fails and produces the greatest sum of 
 misery is the man for Parliament to lay its hands on. I see 
 nothing in the obligations of a Country Banker to mark him 
 out, while others are left untouched. Is it that the species of 
 currency he issues causes gold to leave the country? We shall 
 presently see the value of this argument, in a recent case, 
 involving gold to the amount of hundreds of thousands.
 
 37 
 
 Certainly ; if people are so silly as to trust them, 
 it is right that they should suffer. 
 
 Now, let us see what value is due to the argu- 
 ment of " panics," and " sending- gold out of 
 the country," and what value is due also to the 
 other argument of persons being ignorant of the 
 securities they take, and therefore worthy of 
 legislative compassion. 
 
 I allude to the South American Securities, and 
 I introduce the case with singular pleasure, be- 
 cause the obligations here were " payable to 
 bearer." Now here was a spectacle of states 
 contracting obligations upon the people of this 
 country to the amount of twenty or thirty mil- 
 lions ; — states without any political or legal being ; 
 amenable to no laws ; but 7'eal usurpers ; in open 
 rebellion against their parent country ; for almost 
 all the loans were contracted for before Mr. Can- 
 ning, stamping his foot on the floor of the 
 House of Commons, called them " into existence.'** 
 
 * It is but justice to the Morning Herald to state tlie part 
 it played on this occasion. Whilst this poor country was acting 
 the part of a milch cow to South America ; whilst the accre- 
 dited agents of these states were plunging their hands into our 
 pockets, chanting all the while loud hymns to civil and re- 
 ligious liberty, the editor of this paper, first and last, middle 
 and without end, kept on warning people of their danger,-- 
 hat in vain.
 
 38 
 
 Need 1 say tliat our gold was here in vtrif gnal 
 danger^ — Need I say that all these " obligations" 
 were the forerunner of the dreadful panic in 
 1825-G. What did Government do in this case 
 to keep the gold in the country ; to prevent 
 panic ; to prevent people from suffering from 
 securities, of the value of ichich they were quite 
 ignorant? Did they tie the hands of these 
 *' contracting parties'" behind them? Did they 
 put a stop to the " facilities" which they ap- 
 peared to enjoy of issuing *' obligations payable 
 to bearer;" of afterwards failing, and producing 
 great poverty and misery ? Not they : — but 
 while this extraordinary scene was going on, 
 and while Government foresaw and warned us 
 all of the mischief which was impending, the 
 accredited organ of each House of Parliament 
 stood up in his place, and told the public that, 
 while Parliament lamented the general delusion, 
 ?in^ foresaiu the desolation that would follow, yet 
 it would not act the part of a nurse, and protect 
 people from the consequences of their own in- 
 discretion. 
 
 I beo- the reader to remember that this case 
 involved the loss of millions of money, and hun- 
 dreds of thousands of gold : it was one of 
 unmixed evil — of unmixed suffering : — I beg the 
 reader to remember that the rage for these secu- 
 rities was the cause of the dreadful panic which
 
 39 
 
 shook society to its centre with a vengeance ; 
 and which in " pulling down the mighty from 
 their seats" largely affected the subsistence of 
 the " humble and poor.' Yet we shut our eyes 
 against all this, and legislate only for panics, 
 produced by Country Bankers' one-pound notes, 
 spread all over the country, and confessedly con- 
 ducive (along with some alloy of evil) to the 
 prosperity of the landed and commercial interests 
 of the country. With this example of yesterday 
 before our eyes, we are now desired to believe 
 that, for the safety of our gold, and to preserve 
 us against panics, it is right to throw picquets 
 across the Tweed to prevent the invasion of a 
 Scotch one-pound note. 
 
 All ages are distinguished : — The Augustan 
 age ; the age of poetry ; the age of chivalry ! 
 but this is the age of " straining at gnats and 
 swallowing camels !"
 
 40 
 
 Hitherto, I have confined my defence of the 
 one-pound-note circulation as forming only a 
 small part of our currency ; and which we have 
 no pretence to put down upon the plea of its 
 producing panics, kc. while, at the same time, 
 we suffer a currency of another sort, bills of 
 exchange, kc. to move about unmolested, and 
 which, differing only in name, produces, in an 
 infinitely greater degree, (since it forms a greater 
 part of the circulation,) the evils which we 
 attribute, exclusively, to country-bank paper. 
 
 And here I should be quite disposed to rest 
 my case, but so many considerations arise out of 
 the important measure we have just had recourse 
 to, that I must trespass a little longer upon the 
 patience of the reader. 
 
 1st. — I complain that in putting down a paper- 
 currency, convertible into money, we have made 
 a fresh start in the science of political economy. 
 From whose book have we now taken a leaf? — 
 from Adam Smith's? He saw nothinof to shake 
 society to its centre in a convertible paper-cur- 
 rency. Did we learn it from the Bullion Report? 
 Did we learn it from Sir Francis Baring, Mr. 
 Horner, and a number of others whose names I 
 could mention, and to whose opinions, as com-
 
 41 
 
 bining- proioiiiid learning with practice, we have 
 hitherto looked up with esteem and veneration? 
 These eminent men, while they were sensibly 
 alive to their country's prosperity, and spoke in 
 indignant terms of the currency we then had, 
 saw nothing in a convertible paper- currency to 
 alarm them ; they saw no evil in it but what 
 would speedily cure itself. All their labours were 
 directed to bring about such a currency. They 
 were not men whose hair " stood on end" at the 
 spectacle of ten unpaid one-pound notes payable 
 to bearer, and remained unmoved at the specta- 
 cle of an unpaid twenty-pound bill of exchange, 
 payable to order. They were not men who 
 strained at gnats and swallowed camels. 
 
 2d. — It is only yesterday that Parliament has 
 pitted itself against Country Bankers, and 
 against their one-pound notes. The time was 
 we treated them very differently. Every Minister, 
 from Mr. Pitt downwards, has acknowledged, in 
 his turn, the large assistance tliey have given to 
 the great interest of the country. It is of that 
 assistance, now suddenly withdrawn, that I 
 mean to speak, and it forms by far the most im- 
 portant part of the question. 
 
 It is not, I hope, asking too much of the 
 reader again to entrap him into a proposition : 
 viz. that to enable us to pay the interest of our 
 laroe national debt, it is essential that the
 
 42 
 
 landed, manufacturing, and tradinfv interests 
 should enjoy a temperate, if not a large share of 
 prosperity. 
 
 Now, however we may differ as to the ineatu, 
 is there any doubt of the fact that the small 
 circulation of the Country Bankers gave great 
 life and activity to these interests; that it enabled 
 them to pay their share, (and it was a lion's 
 share,) to the exigencies of the State, and thus 
 largely assisted Government to carry on the war ? 
 
 Is there any doubt also of the fact that these 
 great interests are not prospering now ? 
 
 And what have we done ? at a time of general 
 distress, when the house is on Jire, we say to 
 the persons who have the means to assist the poor 
 sufferers — we say to the solvent, rich Country 
 Bankers, " You shall not be allowed to assist 
 these people in small sums, except in the 
 coin of the realm ; because we have, in the 
 eleventh hour, found out that one-pound notes 
 produce panics, convulsions in trade, and so 
 forth, and that it is better, upon the true princi- 
 ples of political economy, that people should be 
 burned to death rather than owe their salvation 
 to the eleemosynary aid of a one-pound note, 
 payable to bearer.'' 
 
 Few, I fear, will escape from the fire, unless 
 the Bankers act from humanity, and not from 
 interest. To suppose that they will .^cnd to Lon-
 
 43 
 
 don for sovereigns, paying 3 or 4 per cent, 
 interest to lend it to the sufferers, at 5 per 
 cent, is to suppose them mad. There was a con- 
 siderable profit attached to the circulation of the 
 one-pound notes, and in putting them down we 
 have destroyed the link which bound the banker 
 and all these great interests together in one com- 
 mon tie of reciprocity.* 
 
 * Since we ivill legislate, of the two evils it would be better to 
 let the Country Bankers go on issuing, and make them give se- 
 curity. But now comes a difficulty which gentlemen dispose of 
 with most astonishing sang-froid. Now let us survey the sea 
 of legislation we here get into; — looking over the sides of my 
 little bark, I see it surroiinded by lawyers, asking to come on 
 board and teach us our duties. It is in vain I say to my ship's 
 crew this is a trading vessel, and, while I am master, here 
 laivyers dominion shall not come. My sailors, instead of 
 attending to their duties, have now got their necks stretched 
 over the side listening. Amongst the number floating on the 
 ocean, I perceive two men very distinguished, to whom the 
 rest appear to look up. One is a fine, portly, handsome man, 
 with a countenance full of fire and intelligence; he seems to 
 take up a large share of the attention of my ship's crew. The 
 other is not so handsome, but out of his mouth proceed at 
 times the most astonishing bursts of eloquence; upon his 
 sweet and honeyed sentences, my men seem to fasten 
 with rapturous delight; even the very wind, which until 
 now blew loud, and shook my little boat to its centre, seems 
 on a sudden to have become hushed, to listen for awhile 
 to an inspired voice. But to proceed, (for I know very 
 well that if these men come on board, they will make my
 
 44 
 
 Little are the public aware what injury lias 
 been done to these great interests in thus taking 
 
 sailors believe that the wind blows from the east when it blows 
 fiom the west, that the needle points to the south and not to 
 the north — in short, that the mast is made of a Broom, and 
 that Scarlet is the colour of the sea). Such a bill can only 
 mean " a Bill to secure the PubUc against Country Bankers' 
 unpaid obligations." All the rest is leather and prunella. 
 Then upon what principle can we manacle a banker at New- 
 castle and leave alone a banker in London, or even a merchant 
 in London? Suppose a London Banker to fail in debt in the 
 the shape of balances, and acceptances outstanding to the 
 amount of half a million — or, suppose a London merchant to 
 fail to the amount of £100,000 — half of which was in ac- 
 ceptances, mere accommodation bills. Do not such failures 
 as these create distress? What difference can it make to a 
 creditor in what shajje his debt is in ; whether in the shape of 
 fifty one-pound notes, a balance of £50, or an unpaid ac- 
 ceptance of £50 ? Is it that the poor suffer so directly from 
 the failure of a Country Banker? 1st. From personal observa- 
 tion, I doubt the yhc^ 2dly. Unpaid one-pound notes, scat- 
 tered over a large district, are not so likely to produce such 
 severe and lasting distress, as large bills of exchange unpaid 
 and falling wholly upon an individual. To put a strong case, 
 suppose a London Banker to fail to the amount of half a mil- 
 lion, and to pay 10s. in the pound, and a Country Banker to 
 fail to the amount of £50,000, and pay 15s. which is the case 
 for legislation? Neither; but for choice, the London Banker. 
 I know very well I shall be told that London is not Newcastle, 
 and Newcastle is not London, to which I will add that one is 
 distant from the other 275 miles; that the Express coach per- 
 forms the journey in twenty-eight hours and fifteen minutes ;
 
 45 
 
 away from the Country Bankers the inducement 
 to assist them. Having been behind the scenes, 
 I can speak of the benefit which well-conducted 
 banking-houses scatter around the community. 
 They grant small loans to the tradesman, the 
 farmer, and the manufacturer. They prevent 
 them in a moment of distress, for want, perhaps, 
 of a few pounds, from throwing their commodi- 
 ties on the market, at a ruinous price, and thus 
 producing " vicissitude of prices." Besides con- 
 ducing so directly to the benefit of agriculture 
 and trade, these banks form in themselves a 
 market for capital, and render the general ca- 
 pital of the country more productive than it 
 otherwise would be. They act as agents between 
 the borrower and lender, supplying the wants 
 of the former, and employing the surplus of the 
 latter. Not to fatigue the reader with details, 
 and even at the risk of being thought a parvenu, 
 I do not know any man so useful in his sphere as 
 a Country Banker, with means in his hand, and 
 judgement properly to apply those means. I 
 know no man whom it is less the interest of a 
 
 and that the guard's name is Smith — at least, if it is not Smith 
 it ought to be. I forget what French minister it was, who, 
 asking what he could best do to give life and activity to trade, 
 w^as told " Laissons /aire." Fas est ab haste discer -e. X' 
 
 •»TL.t-"J-»_
 
 4G 
 
 wise Government to (juarrel with and to put 
 down.* 
 
 But as an anodyne to the withdrawing of tlie 
 one-pound notes ; as oil to the wounds of those 
 who have suffered in the conflagration, we have 
 sent down by the mail-coach to most of tlie 
 principal towns, a scion of the great house in 
 Threadneedle-street, carrying in his train " en- 
 tering clerks, sovereigns, money-shovels, impres- 
 sions, and waste-books." 
 
 Not at all insensible to the comfort which these 
 Branch Banks will be to all men of property, to 
 all old maids, to all annuitants, to all nervous 
 
 • It has been asked how is it that Lancashire gets on so 
 well without these notes ? Lancashire is certainly a very large 
 and important county, but it is only one county out of a great 
 number, and it is bounded on three sides by counties who do 
 issue notes, and which notes do circulate in Lancashire. Be- 
 sides, she has a circulation of small bills without number, 
 which is so much currency in another shape. Whether a better 
 or a worse currency, must depend, I apprehend, upon nothing 
 but the solidity of the parties who issue it, and not upon the 
 circumstance of its being payable to " order," instead of 
 " bearer." May I be permitted for a minute to tear myself 
 away from this very dry subject, and relate a story which is 
 attributed to a Banker in London. Being in Paris, and ob- 
 serving that almost every Frenchman had an " order" of 
 some kind dangling from his bosom, he asked, with great 
 simplicity, whether these ** orders" were not payable to 
 *' bearer."
 
 47 
 
 and dyspeptical persons, I have great doubts 
 whether they will do any good to trade ; I have 
 great doubts whether they will act the part of a 
 Samaritan to those whose wounds are yet open 
 from the effects of 1825 and 1826. Indeed, the 
 Bank have already told us it was Government 
 who booked their places, and lifted them into 
 the mail ; therefore, it is not reasonable to expect 
 they will put themselves out of the way. 
 
 If a tradesman should want a little money to 
 help him through a rainy day, or if a farmer 
 wants a few pounds to enable him to pay his rent, 
 this mighty corporation, looking at the applica- 
 tions as a mere matter of business, and posses- 
 sing none of those feelings which govern Country 
 Bankers, whose prosperity is so intimately blended 
 with the prosperity of these classes, the Bank 
 would, of course, refuse to advance the money. 
 It would be nothing to them if the tradesman 
 failed, or if the farmer, for want of a little tem- 
 porary aid, sold his corn to some rich man at a 
 ruinous price ; or supposing, to put a stronger 
 case, that A, by turning a stream of water, could 
 greatly improve his property, and also irrigate 
 and improve that of B, C, and D, his neighbours, 
 and that all these four persons vfexe jointly to ask 
 the Bank for a loan of five hundred pounds, (and 
 nothing is more common under the old system of 
 banking,) Avhat possible interest could it be to
 
 48 
 
 the Bank wliich way tlie stream flowed? The 
 agent would write to London for instructions. 
 The Directors here, looking at the application as 
 a mere question of business, would write to 
 Newcastle, " Lend no money on the stream.'' The 
 natural politeness of the clerk would prevent him 
 from returning so laconic an answer ; and the 
 following is a copy of the letter which would, 
 probably, be written, first premising that there 
 would be a tremendous margin, a very fine en- 
 velope, and plenty of red sealing-wax, for such 
 things form the symbols and luxuries of all public 
 functionaries, just as toys form the symbols and 
 luxuries of children : — 
 
 (Copy). 
 Sir, Newcastle^ June 1, 1828, 
 
 I have communicated to the Court of Directors 
 your proposition to borrow the sum of five 
 hundred pounds, conjointly with various parties 
 mentioned in your favour of the 26th ultimo, now 
 before me, to enable you, by turning a stream of 
 water, to irrigate and greatly improve your own 
 property as well as that of other persons ; and 
 having nothing in return to communicate, 
 I have the honour to be. Sir, 
 Your most obedient 
 
 and very humble servant, 
 
 Agent to the Branch Bank of England Bank. 
 
 To Mr. A.
 
 49 
 
 I will now allude to a circumstance as showing* 
 what machines great corporate bodies make of 
 us poor public : — It is well known that there are 
 cases (if not one case, for there's nothing like 
 temperance) of parties whose stock had been 
 abstracted by means of forged powers of attorney 
 by a banker, w^ho lately forfeited his life to the 
 offended laws of his country, and who, applying 
 afterwards for their dividends, were sent back 
 unsatisfied. I shall mention no names; neither 
 do I ask for any reasons why they were sent back 
 unsatisfied ; the case requires none. Neither 
 have I a doubt that, throughout the whole affair, 
 the Bank were influenced by a desire conscien- 
 tiously to discharge, according to their sense of 
 justice and propriety, the high trust reposed in 
 them by the proprietary ; and it is only necessary 
 to look at the distinguished names which compose 
 the direction to absolve them from any imputation 
 of intentional wrong. But I have only to deal 
 with two facts, viz. that the stock was abstracted 
 by means of a forged power ; and that the party 
 whose stock was thus abstracted was not privy 
 to, or even criminally negligent of, the fraud ; 
 and I put it to any sensible man to say whether 
 all the legal advice in the world should ever have 
 prevented the Bank, the moment they were satis- 
 jied that the party was not privy to the fraud, from 
 replacing the stock and paying him his dividends. 
 In acting otherwise, I submit they committed a 
 
 D
 
 60 
 
 pecuniary wrong, to say nothing of the mental 
 suffering they inflicted ! Out of this case I might 
 collect abundant materials for a long speech; but 
 I leave the aiidacia vef^ba to others whom it may 
 suit better. I have not lived to so little purpose as 
 not to have noticed in this great city inter nos 
 sanctissima d'lvitiarinn mqjestaa ; and I sincerely 
 believe that if the Bank had the power, and, 
 with it, the inclination, to confine me in irons 
 for what I have now so temperately alluded to, 
 hardly an arm would be raised to protect me : 
 but j)itij and compassion, virtues which are highly 
 ornamental and nothing costly, I should have a 
 very pretty ro/^-siderable share of. 
 
 Unless I have been guilty of misrepresentation, 
 this case proves two things : — First, how unfit 
 the Bank are to teach the Country Bankers the 
 true principles of banking ; and, secondly, how 
 the very simple science of banking may be em- 
 barrassed by the presence of a lawyer. 
 
 It is refreshing to turn from this and see how 
 private establishments act under similar circum- 
 stances. A banking-house in London (it is not 
 necessary to mention names) was forged upon for 
 £1200. The merchant, whose name had been 
 forged, immediately waited upon the partners, 
 and, satisfying them of the fact, in ten minutes 
 the money was replaced to his credit. With a 
 fine spirit of generosity the merchant offered to
 
 51 
 
 divide the loss; the bankers, not at all insensible 
 to his liberality, instantly refused it, alleging that 
 they could not suffer him to bear a loss which 
 was altogether the consequence of their own 
 negligence. 
 
 But, lastly, in connexion with the step we have 
 taken, have we nothing to fear from again surren- 
 dering the whole circulation to the management 
 of the Bank ? Into what Lethean stream have 
 we plunged so suddenly to have forgotten what 
 the wisest and best of our public men have been 
 so long ringing in our ears ; line upon line, afid 
 precept upon ptxcept ; that the power of the Bank 
 had already become too great for any minister to 
 grapple with? Where are all those whose 
 swords, in other times than these, would have 
 leaped from their scabbards at a proposition 
 again to place into the hands of the Bank the 
 power to alter, daily and hourly, the property of 
 every man in the country? And what, particu- 
 larly, has become of that pen which instructed 
 the public creditors that, owing to a depreciated 
 currency, brought on by the bad mismanagement 
 of the Bank, he only received seventeen shillings 
 in the poimd? 
 
 All is now hushed. — The audacia verba are 
 now flung at the Country Bankers, ivho are as 
 mere flies upon the wheel. We tie their hands 
 behind them, we fasten heavy loggers to their 
 
 D 2
 
 52 
 
 feet, wliiie we leave the great monarch of paper- 
 money, the parent of all depreciation, the mother 
 of all panics and all vicissitude of prices, to walk 
 about the forest without a keeper; again to run 
 wild, and again to plunge us into all the miseries 
 of a distempered paper-currency. 
 
 It is not danger present and visible that I am 
 alluding to. But, supposing a war were to arise 
 out of the present distracted state of the east of 
 Europe, not a collision, but such a war as would 
 please the gentlemen of the Stock Exchange, 
 does any one believe it could be carried on for 
 six months without Parliament again having re- 
 course to the Bank-Restriction-Bill ? Parliament 
 stands partly pledged not to give us a second 
 edition of that bill : it was equally pledged 
 never to touch the sinking fund, our sheet anchor 
 in the day of trouble (and a pretty sheet anchor it 
 has been) : but Government, partaking of the 
 common lot of humanity, bended to circum- 
 stances, and broke in upon that thing of phan- 
 tasy. So, in my opinion, it will again bend to 
 circumstances, and, in case of war, again enact 
 the Bank-Restriction-Bill. That bill, whenever 
 this country may think it necessary to arm, is as 
 much a " part and parcel " of our system (I hope 
 it may be otherwise) as horses are a *' part and 
 parcel " of a mail-coach. Our large debt and it 
 are brother and sister, Uttei^ed in one day; or, per-
 
 53 
 
 haps more properly speaking, man and wife ; 
 and although of late there has been a separation 
 a mensa et thoro, we shall find, the moment the 
 blast of war blows in our ears, that it will be our 
 interest to prevail upon them to kiss each other 
 and make it up, if not for their sakes, at least 
 for the sake of their i/iterest-ino; children, the 
 Three per Cent. Consols and Reduced, who would 
 dow?} and implore us not to bereave them, in their 
 old age, of any share of parental protection. To 
 resume the subject. What will be the situation of 
 this country with the Bank-Restriction-Bill renew- 
 ed. Here will be in full sway and practice amongst 
 us a mighty corporation, having the whole circu- 
 lation in its hands, and possessing more real 
 power than any king ever possessed from Nebu- 
 chadnezzar downwards, — with whom vve shall 
 necessarily be so inived up, that, in resenting an 
 insult from abroad, it will be necessary for the 
 constituted authorities of the land first to go and 
 tap at the Bank parlour, to know whether it will 
 suit their high mightinesses to expand their cir- 
 culation, and furnish us with the means of re- 
 sistance. Is this a mere rhapsody ? Is it not a 
 matter of history, that, in the time of Mr. Pitt, we 
 were so entangfled with the Bank, that the whole 
 course of our foreign policy was at the mercy of 
 their deliberations ? Yet Mr. Pitt was the boldest 
 minister this country ever saw ; lie ])Owed his
 
 54 
 
 proud neck to tio out but to the Bank of England. 
 We have now got at the head of affairs (and long 
 may he remain there) boldness personified; one 
 on whose brow " Fear is ashamed to sit.'' His 
 grateful country feels persuaded he is equal to 
 every collision, excepting a collision with the 
 Bank ; only let him read t/ion a " moral lesson," 
 — let him take the field against theniy — his mili- 
 tary science will fall lifeless from his hands ; he 
 will find that the Old Lady " wears a charmed 
 life," which laughs to scorn all human thunder, 
 even although wielded by such a man as the 
 Duke of Wellington. 
 
 Let us now see what we have already done to 
 propitiate the " Old Lady," and to coax her one- 
 pound-notes payable to bearer. Let us see how 
 we have been " led astray." 
 
 At a time when the guinea was notoriously 
 worth 26*. in reference to the Bank of England 
 note of 20*., a certain assembly, containing 
 within its walls a large share of the talent and 
 education of the country, and reflecting, as I 
 believe it does, at least for all practical purposes, 
 the image of the people, notwithstanding all the 
 orations fulminated from the Crown and Anchor, 
 and from the Cat and Mutton Fields, near Hack- 
 ney, — what did this assembly do? it voted (the 
 fact being such as I have stated) that a one- 
 pound Bank of England note and a shilling were
 
 55 
 
 equal in value to a guinea.* Now, if it were 
 not foreign to my disposition to joke, I would, 
 out of respect to the quarter from whence this 
 celebrated resolution emanated, keep my pen in 
 subjection. Treading close on Sir Benjamin 
 Backbite's heels, I say nothings hwi this Iivillsaj/, 
 that it w^as the greatest insult ever attempted to 
 be put upon the guinea. So sensibly did the 
 guinea feel it, that, stung with rage, and regard - 
 
 * This celebrated resolution was for many years a bone of 
 contention between me and a gentleman, for whom I have a 
 great respect, although our opinions are as wide as the " poles 
 asunder." I used to put this question, after first agreeing 
 that there was no intrinsic value in the pajipr of the one- 
 pound-note, and that the Bank could issue just as much of it 
 as they pleased, — I asked, supposing that there grew in the 
 garden of the Bank a number of chesnut trees, bearing a 
 boundless quantity of fruit of a peculiar kind, not to be found 
 in any other part of our dominions, and therefore not easily 
 forged, and that the Bank were to make ther)i the measure of 
 value, instead of the paper; and that Parliament, to save us 
 from panics, &:c. &c. were to throw around the chestnut the 
 same protection that it had given to the paper ; I asked him 
 whether he would be disposed to say, in reference to a question 
 of depreciation, that a horse chestnut and a shilling were equal 
 in value to a guinea. The " controversy" always ended in 
 his insisting that a horse chestnut was not a Bank-note, and a 
 Bank-note was not a horse chestnut. I do not understand 
 much of the dark science of political economy, but I am per- 
 suaded that in the question of the currency, we are most of us 
 " led astray" by names,~~hy mere sound.
 
 .00 
 
 less of its baptismal vow, it iiumetliatoly left the 
 country to adorn, to irrigate, to strengthen the 
 land of our enemy. 
 
 To persons, therefore, who say that there 
 is no danger of too close an alliance between 
 Goverment and the Bank, I put this simple 
 question. Whom was this celebrated resolu- 
 tion meant to humour? was it to humour the 
 guinea? was it to humour an ignorant public, 
 who thought 26s. and 20*. were not one and the 
 same thing? was it not, in fact, to humour a 
 paper-currency which, under the peculiar care 
 and guardianship of the Bank Directors, had be- 
 come distempered ? 
 
 Turn we now from the *' Old Lady," in whose 
 fascinating society oceans, streams, monarchs, 
 dolphins, forests, have been dancing about in one 
 maze of metaphorical confusion; — let us tear 
 ourselves away from her, and talk of Scotland, 
 whose very name fills the mind with a variety of 
 pleasing images. 
 
 Why is Scotland permitted to issue one- 
 pound notes? Parliament clearly has not treated 
 the question as one of use and abuse; otherwise 
 Nottingham, Hull, Lincoln, Norwich, and a 
 variety of other places are unfairly dealt with, 
 since the bankers there have never failed. Go- 
 vernment, from the beginning, disdaining to 
 treat it as a question of geograp/ii/, voted the
 
 57 
 
 one-pound note to be malum in se, without any 
 reference to place. Then I ask, upon what prin- 
 ciple is Scotland to enjoy a right which we deny 
 to persons at Newcastle? In passing a law to 
 punish all persons carrying loaded guns in the 
 streets, we do not select for punishment persons 
 carrying loaded guns in Cheapside, and leave 
 unpunished gentlemen carrying them at the west 
 end of the town, in whose hands, perhaps, (if 
 gentlemen in the city will permit me to say so,) 
 there is less danger of explosion; but having 
 voted a loaded gun to be malum in se, as we have 
 now voted the one-pound note, we suffer no one, 
 even if he should write us threatening letters, to 
 say '' let me have my gun, it has never exploded." 
 It is quite clear, however, that in this question 
 Scotland has got to windward of us, and has, in 
 the preference shewn to her in this Bill, for ever 
 blotted out from our language that excellent house- 
 hold proverb, " what's sauce for the goose is 
 sauce for the gander." 
 
 Is it that Scotland issued notes previously to 
 1797? If that be the fact, and the thing in 
 itself be really bad ; if it be true that to issue a 
 one-pound note is to usurp, — to strike at the pre- 
 rogative of the king, — then Scotland is by far 
 the greater criminal, inasmuch as she appears to 
 have taught us the business of usurpation. The 
 sooner, therefore, she hastens to the south, (she
 
 58 
 
 knows the road vei'y well,) and hcgs forgiveness 
 of her offended king, the better opinion I shall 
 liave of her loyalty. 
 
 But, it seems, these Scotch notes are not to be 
 allov.'ed to circulate south of the Tweed ; why 
 not ? Is it that they may not be paid, and thus 
 produce panics ? — hardly. Because the very 
 principle (if principle it can be called) upon 
 which we except Scotch notes from the operation 
 of this bill is, that we believe them to be, and 
 not without reason, almost out of the reach of 
 insolvency. Why then not let a poor trades- 
 man take one of these notes if he can turn an 
 honest penny? The more I look into this 
 " Controversy," the more I become embarrassed. 
 Now comes another difficulty. — How are we to 
 prevent the irruption of these notes ? By acts of 
 Parliament ? Wc flight as well attempt to stop the 
 tide at Gravesend with our thumbs. 
 
 Scotland will forgive me in alluding to a strong, 
 pungent, magnetical attraction existing in this 
 country, which daily and hourly causes her sons 
 to move southward. Her notes will, I am per- 
 suaded, partake of this attraction. How then 
 can we repel them? Shall we suspend the 
 Habeas Corpus Act? — hardly. What if we 
 catch a Scot in the very act of issuing a note, 
 what the lawyers call Jlagrante delieto, shall we 
 put him to death and send his body to London
 
 59 
 
 for the benefit of anatomical science ? Against 
 that proposition, short as we are of subjects, and 
 excellent subjects as the Scotch are, I will hold up 
 my hand. The most advisable plan (I say it with 
 submission) would be to raise a new regiment, 
 to be called the " One-pound Note Regiment," 
 to bivouac on the Tweed, and to be employed, 
 exclusively, in watching the irruption of these 
 notes. I would recommend that picquets should 
 be thrown forward, whose duty it would be to 
 give notice, by firing, of the invasion of a one- 
 pound note. Should they come in droves, or in 
 sums altogether exceeding twenty pounds, it 
 might be right, upon the true principles of poli- 
 tical economy, that a large bonfire should be 
 lighted to warn the surrounding country of its 
 danger, as was the case in the threatened inva- 
 sion by Bonaparte. Without this precaution, 
 our brave defenders might be thrown into 3. panic. 
 It would be, also, right to explain, in the shape 
 of a regimental G. O. that it was only Scotch 
 one-pound notes, payable to bearer, that the 
 regiment had to deal with ; that all obligations 
 above that sum, as well as all obligations pay- 
 able to orde7\ would be suffered, as usual, to 
 circulate, because they never, when paid or 
 unpaid, produce panics and vicissitude of prices; 
 they never, paid or unpaid, affect the employ- 
 ment and subsistence of the poor ; and also 
 BECAUSE people who take such obligations have
 
 60 
 
 their eyes open. Xot so with tliose who took 
 the one-pound notes ; their eyes were shut, and, 
 therefore, they are (pretty innocents !) proper 
 objects of regimental compassion and pro- 
 tection. 
 
 I forget what man it is in the play of " The 
 Critic" who, after making a very long speech, 
 asks Puff, — " Pray, sir, how am I to get off the 
 stage?" " Any how," replies Puff ; " so as you 
 DO go, the audience care nothing about the 
 means." This is precisely my situation ; my 
 speech having now come to a termination, I am 
 puzzled how to get out of this ^' Controversy" 
 with grace and effect : my readers being by this 
 time nearly asleep, and caring lictle about the 
 grace, so as I do go.* Taking up The Morning 
 Herald, my eye rested upon a passage complain- 
 ing that the farmers are not such, in regard to 
 their habits and education, as they were in olden 
 times ; and this very paragraph will enable me 
 comfortably to take leave of my readers, and to 
 close this my first and last performance before 
 the public. 
 
 It is, also, one of the charges against the 
 
 * As a warning to all who use methaphors, and as showing, 
 also, how fleeting is all human prosperity, I began life as a 
 free mariner on board a little bark of my own. I am now 
 become a strolling player. " To what base uses maij we 
 return, Horatio."
 
 Country Bankers, that they have produced this 
 change in the face of society. It is complained 
 that from the " facilities" of paper, many farmers 
 have become a new race of men ; that they have 
 become haughty and expensive, and that instead 
 of attending to their crops, they are now to be 
 seen following the hounds ; that their daughters, 
 instead of making dumplings* and working Solo- 
 man and Sheba in worsted, are cutting out satin 
 slips to decorate their persons at the approach- 
 ing county-ball. The charge is too frivolous to 
 be treated gravely ; we shall presently see that 
 farmers, their wives, and daughters, are not the 
 only persons whom the " facilities'' of paper-money 
 have jostled from their spheres. 
 
 It is very true, a great alteration has lately 
 taken place in their education and habits : for- 
 merly, about twenty years ago, if a man went 
 into a farm-house there was no Turkey carpet 
 
 * As for the dumpling part of the story, if the public would 
 only read an excellent Treatise on Diet, by Dr, Paris, they 
 would never eat another dumpling as long as they live. I 
 consider digestion to be of so much importance that I trust our 
 lawgivers will soon give their attention to it. Since dumplings 
 are highly indigestible, and produce serious abdominal dis- 
 turbances, I think it might be right, upon the best principles 
 of political economy, to prohibit Country Bankers from eating 
 them. The law would operate two ways, to keep them in 
 health and to make their paper safer.
 
 62 
 
 >vhereon to rest his feet ; there was no pier ^luss 
 to reflect his image ; hospitality and kindness 
 there was plenty of, but all was plain as at a 
 Quaker's dinner. Education was not then as it 
 is now ; poetry, at least in its higher flights, was 
 quite unknown to them, the prevailing and almost 
 the only poetry being — 
 
 " How doth the little busy bee 
 Improve each shining hour, 
 And gather honey all the day 
 From every opening flower." 
 
 Very good in its way, but in this there is nothing 
 of the madness and inspiration of poetry of the 
 present day. Their prose was of a piece with 
 their poetry ; the most prevalent books being the 
 Seven Champions- of Christendom, Philip 
 Quarle, Sorrows of Werter, Pilgrim's Progress, 
 The Haunted Tower, and Prince Le Boo, all 
 excellent books in their way^ but having nothing 
 of the inspiration of books of the present age. 
 Then, as to their musical attainments, I cannot 
 speak in terms of commendation. The piano, 
 which was generally of a green old age and 
 probably picked up at a sale, was yiever in tune. 
 If a neighbour came in to drink tea and was 
 fond of music, one of the wenches, as they were 
 then called, rose at a conventional wink from 
 mamma, and throwing her rosy fingers on the
 
 63 
 
 chords, which she thumped with prodigious 
 violence, she played either " Yes, Beda ; thus, 
 Beda ;" or the Multiplication Table, set to music 
 to the tune of Yankee Doodle. As a gi^eat treat, 
 she would play and sing " The Romans in 
 England they once did sway," it was what their 
 fond parents most truly called killing chronology 
 and music with one stone. Then, to conclude 
 the evening's amusements, came, in grand dia- 
 pason, that very excellent and inspiring, but not 
 altogether very new, song, God save great 
 George ouu King. 
 
 Now all is changed. The " facilities" which 
 the " rascally" Country Bankers have given the 
 farmers have enabled them to make their houses 
 more comfortable, and to give their children a 
 better education. I see nothing in this to *' shake 
 society to its centre," but, on the contrary, much 
 to be grateful for. To continue ; their education 
 having undergone a change, every book just 
 mentioned has been swept from the shelf, and in 
 their places are to be seen Lord Byron, Mecha- 
 nics Institutes' Tracts, Shakspeare, Philosophy 
 in sport made Science in earnest, Cobbett's 
 English Grammar (the most useful of all useful 
 books). Tracts of the Useful Knowledge Society, 
 and the Art of Tying the Cravat, by H. Le 
 Blanc, Esq. with a picture of the ingenious
 
 G4 
 
 author * Not only has their reading- undergone 
 a chano-c, but Apollo has been " abroad,"' the 
 piano has been tuned, and instead of such house- 
 hold stuff, as the " Romans in England," our 
 ears are now ravished with " Di tanti palpiti ;' 
 instead of the Multiplication Table set to the 
 tune of Yankee Doodle, the girls treat us with 
 " Tu clie accendi.'*t Neither have they been 
 left behind in the general acquirement of science. 
 The Useful Knowledge Society, in this respect, 
 has spread a feast before the eyes, of the delight 
 of which they had previously no conception. 
 Formerly, when boys and girls walking in the 
 
 * I lately saw at a farm-house, amongst other books, " A 
 Plan for Establishing aClearing-House at the Stock-Exchange." 
 All the family had read it. None of them could understand 
 it. Neither could I, but I learned from one of the farming- 
 men that it had been for a long time a favourite plan with the 
 projector, but that not succeeding, he afterwards died of a 
 broken heart. 
 
 t It is not necessary, that because I rejoice at the downfal 
 of the " Romans," and prefer Italian music, that the reader 
 should rejoice also. Every man has a right to his opinions. 
 Lord Byron tells a story of a lady who had such a horror of 
 foreign music, that in the midst of a large party, she exclaim- 
 ed, unable any longer to bear it, " Rot your Italianos ! I 
 loves a simple English ballad." To her uncorrupted ear, 
 the Multiplication Table set to music to the tune of Yankee 
 Doodle would have been the highest possible treat. Chacun 
 a son gout.
 
 65 
 
 orchard and seeing an apple fall, they picked it 
 up and either eat it, or put it into a dumpling ; 
 now they sit down upon the grass, and, forming 
 themselves into a " committee of science," they 
 examine into the fall of the apple ; they discuss 
 the laws of gravitation; and, by the assistance 
 of a little tract, they communicate to each other, 
 with rapturous delight, the important and very 
 useful fact that the apple fell to the ground with 
 a rapidity proportioned to the square of its dis- 
 tance. 
 
 Not to tire the reader with details, the 
 education and address of farmers' daughters 
 now-a-days is nearly equal to that of our metro- 
 politan belles. To sum up all in one word, they 
 turn their stays inside out, and wear bustles.^ 
 
 But, in the mean time, what have we been 
 doing, in London, of late years, with the *' faci- 
 lities" we have enjoyed from the great ocean of 
 paper money ? Have tve not (at least a good 
 
 * A friend of mine, who is behind no one in his thirst after 
 useful knowledge, and who, like Paul Pry, sifts every thing 
 to the bottom, has long asked his female friends, but in vaiii, 
 to explain and justify this fashion. I have never had any doubt 
 myself that it is in compliment to Sir Robert Sepping's new- 
 principles of naval architecture. Be it, however, as it may, 
 it is by far the most becoming fashion we have seen for many 
 years ; it sits particularly well on such who possess the othnn 
 cum dignitate. 
 
 E
 
 many of us) been jolted out ot" our spheres? 
 Have tvc stopped behind in the general chase 
 after knowledge — in the great march of intellect? 
 Not we indeed : on the contrary, we have made 
 most prodigious strides in general education and 
 science. Formerly, as a boy at school, one of 
 the first things one learned (and it was a sort of 
 trap to know what a boy's mind was made of) 
 was, that a pound of lead was a pound of lead, 
 in all times, in all places, under all circum- 
 stances ; and that a pound of feathers was a 
 pound of feathers ; the one being always equal 
 to the other ; but now, from a society lately 
 sprung up amongst us, professedly to scatter 
 useful knowledge amongst the people, we have 
 been given to understand that, if it were possible 
 to put a pound of lead close to the sun, it would 
 weigh 22lbs. 15oz. IGdwts. 8|gr. ; that, if it 
 were carried up to Jupiter, 2lbs. loz. 19dwts. 
 1^5.gr. ; and, carried up to Saturn, lib. loz. 
 lOdwts. l-TT&i'- Again: so changed are we, 
 that, formerly, meeting one's friends in the street, 
 remarking upon the weather and asking after 
 absent acquaintances, was all that was ever 
 thought of But 7WIV, people walking from 
 church form themselves into " committees of 
 science,'' and out of their mouths fly words of 
 wisdom that would quite astonish our ancestors. 
 " Very fine day this, Mrs. Byles : how is Mr.
 
 ()7 
 
 '' Byles?" " Quite well, 1 thcink you, sir: are 
 
 " i/ou pretty well?" " Thank you, ma'am, quite 
 
 " charming. Pray, Mrs. Byles, liave you any 
 
 " idea at what rate the wind is now travelling?" 
 [il/r^. Bylcs here hesitates, not preciseljj cumpre- 
 hending the question.'] " Not at all, sir, I only 
 
 " know it is exceeding pleasant." " Then, my 
 
 " dear ma'am, I have the pleasure to inform you 
 
 " that it is travelling (the day being such as 
 
 " described) at the rate of one mile an hour, 
 
 " and that its perpendicular force on one 
 
 " square, in avoirdupois pounds, is '005 decimal 
 
 " parts."* 
 
 * It is pleasing to the mind to turn from this, which can 
 only be intelligible to men of science, and fasten upon some- 
 thing which is really useful as well as intelligible ; it is a 
 formula to pass from dates expressed in Olympiads to the 
 vulgar era, and vice versa. (See Useful Knowledge Tract. 
 General History, p. 15.) Its simplicity is beyond any praise 
 of mine : — 
 
 The n'** year of the p*'' Olympiad is that which begins in 
 the summer of the year B, C. (781~4p— n); but, if this 
 formula become Zero, or negative, it expresses, when increased 
 by 1, the year A. D. The unit is added because the year 
 1 B. O. is succeeded by the year 1 A. D. without any inter- 
 vening year to answer to the case when the formula becomes 
 Zero. For the m^*" year B. C. divide (776m) by 4 ; if this 
 give a quotient q and remainder r, the year is that in the 
 summer of which begins the (r X 1)"* year of the (q x 1)'** 
 Olympiad. For the m'^year A.D. the dividend is (77.0 X m).
 
 GS 
 
 Ikit, to bring- this work to u close, what right 
 liave we, while we are revelling in intellectual 
 delights, and subscribing to and patronising every 
 institution having for its object the improvement 
 of the mind, — what right have we to turn round 
 and abuse the Country Bankers, because they have 
 improved the education and altered the habits of 
 the farmers ; because, in short, by bettering their 
 lot, they have given them a taste for the " ad- 
 vantages and pleasures of science ? "
 
 69 
 
 Plan for the Prevention of the Forgery of Bank 
 of England Notes. 
 
 To men who have a hydrophobia of all change, 
 whose minds are invincibly steeled against every 
 alteration, be it what it may; who think that 
 there should be only twelve judges because there 
 were twelve apostles, and whose very flesh creeps 
 at a proposition to convey, by Macadamized 
 roads, a double letter from Northampton in 
 eleven hours instead of eighteen ; to such men, 
 the 7'eal innovators, as Mr. Brougham justly called 
 them, in vain do I address myself; but to those 
 who at least /w^f?// to every plan having for its 
 object the public good, and to such particularly 
 to whom nulla unquam de morte hominis cunctatio 
 longa est is a maxim dear to their hearts, I need 
 make no apology in submitting the following plan 
 to prevent the forgery of the Bank of England 
 notes. 
 
 The Bank have spared no expense in endea- 
 vouring to accomplish so desirable an object, but 
 it has always appeared to me that they have gone 
 upon a wrong scent. They have relied chiefly, 
 if not altogether, upon engraving. The ob- 
 jection to this is that the public are not judges of
 
 70 
 
 Between -.1 »>ood engraving and a 
 bad one, every rusticus can judge ; but between 
 engravings wliich are all good, although each 
 differing from the other, no one but a professional 
 man can see their various beauties and distinctions. 
 So satisfied arc the Bank of this that, after con- 
 siderable expense, they have at last abandoned 
 the idea. 
 
 My plan is independent of engraving, and 
 dependent altogether upon hand-writing, of 
 which every man, woman, and boy is a judge. 
 I propose that the Bank shall select from their 
 body of clerks twenty-five young men who write 
 what are called beautiful " i-unning hands," — to 
 advertize their names as usual, and that every 
 note issued shall be signed by three of this num- 
 ber. Need I say that there is not one man out 
 of five thousand who writes what is called a 
 beautiful hand, — that there is not one man out of 
 twenty thousand who, writing well himself, pos- 
 sesses also the difficult knack of imitating other 
 hand-writings, beautiful in themselves, all dif- 
 fering from his own, and each differing from the 
 other. Look at the difficulty here interposed 
 against forgery. No man can ever set about the 
 business without being a very fine writer himself, 
 and without possessing also what I have alluded 
 to, viz. the knack of imitating other hand- 
 writings. The forger would thus be obliged to
 
 71 
 
 seek out companions in his villany, — let the Bank 
 only select good writers, he might be months, 
 and even years before he could light upon rogues 
 able to assist him in his crime. 
 
 Now let us see how the public would benefit. 
 Every merchant, every banker, every tradesman 
 would know, to begin with, that no bank-note 
 could be good, unless it was executed in the 
 finest style of penmanship. Where would be the 
 difficulty of every man in the country making 
 himself acquainted with these twenty-five signa- 
 tures? Every cashier of a banking-house in this 
 city makes it is business to know five hundred 
 hand-writings; they are very rarely imposed 
 upon; it is the only security bankers have, and 
 without this security no banker could last a week. 
 Then with regard to the Franking department at 
 the Post-Office, the clerks there have to attend to 
 at least one thousand signatures; yet how excel- 
 lently well is this department conducted. Every 
 tradesman sends away goods and pays away mo- 
 ney every hour of his life upon the knowledge of 
 hand- writings only. And here we must recollect 
 we have in our plan something to guide us ; all 
 the signing names are specimens of penmanship. 
 Not so with those gentlemen who frank letters 
 and draw upon bankers ; for I have seen in my 
 time, amongst this class, specimens of very loose 
 and careless writing. I can only say, (and I can
 
 72 
 
 liave no interest in misleading,) that if tlie notes 
 were signed in the way I propose, and the Bank 
 were to give me six months to try and forge 
 them, I should be obliged to decline it as too 
 difficult a job, to say nothing of the prejudice 
 implanted by early education and habit to get 
 my bread in another way. 
 
 To this I will only add that, in the only two 
 cases of forgery that came under my cognizance, 
 the parties never could have committed the crime 
 had they been required to imitate specimens of 
 fine penmanship. 
 
 Whereabouts on the note the signatures are 
 placed is a mere matter of detail. Perhaps, four 
 or five signatures might be better than three. 1 
 see no objection to it, excepting that I think three 
 would answer the purpose as well. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 :MAnCHANT, PRINTr.R, INCnSM-rOinT, rF.NCmP.fll-STREF.T.