THIRTY YEARS OF LIBERAL LEGISLATION. (continued 2)

Sir R. Peel says the experience of the last half century proves, that every period of prosperity is followed by a corresponding period of disaster, and that it is under one of the latter periods of depression that the nation is now labouring. We agree with the Right Honourable Baronet that for thirty years past this has been the case, and we will tell him the reason why. It is because for that period his principles have been in operation. But there was a period before that when no such deplorable alternations of good and evil took place; when the nation in prosperity was strong without running riot, and the government in adversity checked disaster, instead of aggravating it. It was the period from 1793 to 1815, when a currency adequate to the wants of the nation was supplied for its necessities, and our rulers had not yet embraced the principle that, in proportion as you increase the work men have to do, and enlarge their number, you should diminish their food. It was the period when Mr Pitt or his successors in principle were at the helm. Three commercial crises came on at that time, all occasioned by the abstraction of specie for the use of the great armies then contending on the Continent,—those of 1793, 1797, and 1810. In the first, the panic was stopped by Mr Pitt's advance of £5,000,000 exchequer bills; in the second, by the suspension of cash payments; in the third, when gold was so scarce that the guinea was selling for twenty-five shillings, by the issue of bank-notes to the extent of £48,000,000. That last period, which under the present system would at once have ruined the nation, was coincident with its highest prosperity: with the Torres Vedras campaign, and a revenue raised by taxes of £65,000,000 yearly. All the panics on record have arisen from the abstraction of gold in large quantities, and have been cured by the issue, sometimes speedy, sometimes tardy, of a corresponding amount of paper. Sir R. Peel's policy doubles the evil, for it at once sends abroad the cash under his act of 1846, even in the finest seasons, to buy grain, and, under the act of 1844, at the very same moment contracts the currency, by the increase of which alone the evil could be remedied.

Sir R. Peel, however, has completely, as already noticed, instructed us in the true principles of the currency. It is his policy which has brought them to light. He contracts the currency when gold is scarce, and expands it when it is abundant. The true principle is just the reverse: it is to contract the paper when gold is abundant, and an expansion of the currency is therefore little needed: and to expand it when it is scarce, and therefore an addition to it is imperatively called for. The price of gold will at once tell when the one or the other requires to be done.

We conclude in the words we used on this day twenty-two years, on Jan. 1, 1826, immediately after the cessation of the dreadful panic of December 1825:—"It may be that the Ministry is right, and that all these changes are wise and necessary, but we cannot discover it. The more accurately we examine, the more firmly we are convinced of the truth of our own opinions. Time has brought no refutation to us, whatever it may have done to those from whom we differ; in so far as experiment has gone, we may point to it in triumph in confirmation of our principles and predictions. If at the last we be proved to be in error, we shall at least have the consolation of knowing that we have not erred from apostasy; that we have not erred in broaching new doctrines and schemes, and supporting innovation and subversion; that we have not erred in company with the infidel and revolutionist,—with the enemies of God and man. We shall have the consolation of knowing that we have erred in following the parents of England's greatness,—in defending that under which we have become the first of nations, and in protecting the fairest fabric that ever was raised under the face of heaven, to dispense freedom and happiness to our species. Our error will bring us no infamy, and it will sit lightly on our ashes when we shall be no more!"