The Bank Charter Act cannot be maintained... — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

8 result.” ‘Take 1784, for instunce, as an example.” ‘¢ Then look at 1792,” ete. etc. It is a very remarkable fact; that although no statesman that ever lived was so conversant with the practical work- ing of our monetary system, and had thought so much on the subject, as Sir Robert Peel, and consequently knew how injurious to commerce are the oscillations in the price of money, that he should have framed a law to carry this system out even to an excess; and further knowing, as he did, how invariably (since commerce began) cheap money had always a tendency to produce pressure, and a panic afterwards, that in constructing his Bill of 1844, he quite overlooked the panic element altogether. It almost seems incredible to me, Sir, that he should have stated as much (in the same speech from which I have already quoted) when, alluding to the panic of 1847, he said,— “ The case, Sir, of Panic is one which is not to be provided against; it was one of those cases, as was foreseen by the late Mr. Huskisson, which was not a matter for legislative inter- ference, but for the emercise of the discretion of the Govern: ment.’ With all due submission to such authorities, it appears to me to be the case of all others requiring the attention of ‘legislative interference,” and one where assistance might be so easily afforded. Surely if we provide means of saving property from shipwreck, we might extend the principle a little further, and try to save solvency from being panic-wrecked. In good times, and in moderate ones, the prudent and solvent part of the community can take care of themselves, but in time of panic they cannot. In this emergency, they ought to have assistance rendered to save them from the general crash, or in other words when all private credit fails, a further extension of public credit ought to be allowed. 9 And I believe it to be just as sound and safe policy for the Bank to err on the side of expansion in the time of pressure, as it is to err on the side of stringency at other times; and I believe all experience will prove this, if we will examine into every panic that has occurred in this country since commerce began; in countries where a very corrupt circulation is in vogue, this might be otherwise. It is very extraordinary, that although Sir Robert Peel, in the same speech from which I have already quoted, went minutely into all the particulars of the panic of 1793, to shew how exactly it resembled the one of 1847, that he should have thought it necessary to apply so different a remedy to the one that was adopted so efficiently at the former period. Surely the sagacity of that great statesman was wanting here. However the panic of 1847 resembled the one of 1793, most undoubtedly the latter was mitigated by the expansion, and not by the contraction of public credit. [ appeal, Sir, tothe ‘ample page” of history, which proves beyond a doubt that 5,000,000 of Exchequer Bills were wisely advanced by the Government to mercantile houses, and ‘this mode of relief,” says the historian, Belsham, ‘was found extremely beneficial in its immediate operation; and the tide of commerce soon returned to its accustomed channel.” I think we may safely infer, that when Sir Robert Peel was called upon to remodel the Bank Charter in 1844, the awkward position in which the Bank of England had been placed for want of gold in 1839 was too fresh in his memory, to allow him to legislate altogether unbiassed in the matter, and perhaps led him to a somewhat prejudiced conclusion; whatever might have been the cause of the then great drain of bullion from the Bank, the re-occurrence of such a state of things might have been easily prevented without such an arbitrary measure on the functions of the