XXII. 1830. CHAP. strong, which had sufficed for it in the preceding year, when it was 45,000 only. He forgot that, though the currency, upon the whole, might be the same as during the war, yet the proportion of it which consisted in paper had sunk from £53,000,000 to £28,000,000; and that it is a very different thing, as every person engaged in industry knows, to obtain advances from bankers when made in their own notes, which may be with safety four times their solid capital, and when made in sovereigns or Bank of England notes, when they can only be measured by that solid capital itself. He referred to the striking increase of houses and evident marks of riches in great cities, which was undoubtedly true, seemingly not aware that that was a proof of the existence and universality of the very evil complained of, which was that, from the change in the value of money, the realised wealth in the towns had increased 50 per cent, and the remuneration of industry in the country decreased in a similar proportion; and that it only confirmed the common adage, that the rich were every day becoming richer, and the poor poorer. Above all, he took it for granted, in the statement which he made as to the amount of gold currency in circulation (£28,000,000), that the whole gold which had been coined since 1819 was still at home, forgetting how large a proportion of it had been withdrawn in the immense loans to foreign countries contracted since that period, and remitted to South America for mining speculations undertaken by English capitalists in that quarter, and overlooking the certainty of the continuance and increase of the drain upon the metallic resources of this country, owing to the supply of the precious metals for the general use of the globe having, from the effects of the revolution in South America, sunk to a fourth of its former amount. Aware of the universal cry for relief from distress which pervaded the country, the Opposition, when they felt themselves at liberty to resume active operations XXII. 1830. 28. Graham's a reduction lic officers. upon the disappointment of their hopes of being admitted CHAP. into the Cabinet, bent all their energies to force the most extensive reductions of expenditure upon the Government. They did not venture in a body openly to face the Sir James question of the contraction of the currency, fearful of motion for exciting the jealousy of the capitalists by whom that of the salagreat change had been introduced, and whose fortunes ries of pubhad been so largely augmented by it, or perhaps ignorant of its vital importance on the matter of general distress which occupied universal attention; but all sections of the Opposition united on the common ground of demanding a reduction of the national expenditure, which was, in truth, a necessary consequence of the great reduction made in the nation's resources. Sir James Graham, on the 12th February, moved for a reduction of the salaries of all persons holding offices under Government, in proportion to the enhanced value of money produced by the Bank Restriction Act. "The operation of that act," he said, "had been twofold: it added to the weight of all fixed payments, while it lowered wages and the price of provisions. Hence the miserable state to which the people of this country were now reduced, and the necessity of rigid, unsparing economy-inviolable, inflexible justice; and in that system of economy, one great source of retrenchment must be the reduction of the salaries of those who had their hands in the public purse. Justice requires, necessity demands it. High prices, and nothing else, produced by a depreciated currency, had brought them high salaries; low prices, by curing that depreciation, must bring them low salaries." So strong was the feeling of the House on this question that the Ministers did not venture to oppose it openly, but evaded it by an 1 Parl. Deb. amendment, which was unanimously agreed to, for a xxii. 442, petition to his Majesty to cause "an inquiry to be made of Parlia into all the departments of the civil government,1 with 171. a view of reducing the number of persons employed 446; Mirror ment, v. CHAP. in the various services, and the amount of the salaries paid.”* XXII. 1830. 29. motion for a the army and navy lost. Feb. 15. Following in the same path thus successfully entered Mr Hume's upon, Mr Hume, a few days after, proposed a great and reduction of sweeping reduction of the army and navy, the former of which he proposed to be reduced by 20,000 men, and the latter by a sum of £1,500,000, and other savings, by which he estimated that a diminution in expenditure to the extent of no less than £8,000,000 might be effected. This great reduction was based upon the estimates of 1792, and on the alleged pacification of Ireland, now that the Catholics had obtained emancipation, forgetting that the empire had nearly doubled in numbers, and more than doubled in colonial dependencies and necessity for defence since that period, and that so far from Ireland having been pacified by the Relief Bill, it was now in a more disturbed state, and more required the presence of a large military force, than ever. In this * On this occasion Sir James Graham made the following remarks, which, however true at the time, were perhaps more to be admired for their oratorical power than their statesmanlike wisdom: "Sir, I have heard something of the luxury of the present times. I do not know whether the example was drawn from the gorgeous palaces of kings, or the rival palaces of ministers, splendidly provided for them by the public, or from the banquets of some East India Director, gorged with the monopoly of the China trade, or from some Jew contractor, who supplies hostile armies with gold drawn from the coffers of the Bank of England, and lends money to France arising out of profits or loans contracted here in depreciated paper, but which must be paid in gold;-but I must take leave to remark that we ought not to draw our notions of the state of the country from scenes such as these. Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey "Where, I ask, are all the boasted advantages of this once happy country? where are all the blessings which once distinguished her? where are all the comforts which her children enjoyed for ages? Alas! with deep regret I witness that all, all are gone. Pinching hunger and gloomy despair now usurp their station. The weavers throughout the country are only earning 4s. 2d. a-week, and their food is oatmeal, water, and potatoes. They work fourteen or sixteen hours a-day, and yet they can only earn this scanty pittance to support their wives and families. It is an extraordinary fact, that by dint of labour the power-looms (which were supposed to have caused their distress) are absolutely underwrought by these almost starving people."Mirror of Parliament, vol. i. p. 171. XXII. 1830. instance, accordingly, the Opposition were unsuccessful. CHAP. The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the forthcoming estimates had been prepared with the greatest attention to economy, and would be found to make as great reductions as were consistent with the public safety. The Whig leaders stood aloof, fearful of tying up their own hands when they succeeded to office, as there was every prospect of their soon doing; and Lord Palmerston and the Canning party objected to any considerable reduction in the forces in the colonies, with the necessities of which they were well acquainted. The Radical party, 1 Ann. Reg. therefore, were on this occasion reduced to their real 42; Parl. strength, and the motion was lost by a majority of 110; 482, 587. the numbers being 167 to 57.1 1830, 40, Deb. xxii. 30. son's mo revision of March 25. Still the Opposition were not discouraged; the clamour for a reduction of expenditure in proportion to the dimi- Mr Thomnution in the income of all the working classes in the tion for a nation was so violent, that, prudent or imprudent, willing the system or unwilling, they were obliged to yield obedience to it. of taxation. On 25th March, Mr Poulett Thomson brought forward a motion for the appointment of a committee for a general revision of the system of taxation, resting the demand on the great reduction which might be effected in the cost of collecting the revenue by a change of system, and the absolute necessity of having recourse to it immediately, from the general distress which prevailed, and the consequent reduction in the national income which was going forward. Mr Peel resisted the motion, not on general grounds, as to which he was quite in accordance with the mover, but on the special plea that the appointment of a committee charged with so momentous a duty as that of reporting on the whole system of taxation, was a virtual delegation of the most important duties of Government and the House to a fraction of its members. views prevailed, and the motion was lost by a majority 46, 53. of 167 to 78.2 Parl. Deb. xxiii. 127, These 146; Ann. It soon appeared, however, that the coalition against Reg. 1830, 1830. 31. beat on a tion. ques CHAP. Ministers had lost nothing of its power, and that nothing XXII. was awanting to render it victorious but an opportunity on which the various parties which composed it might Ministers unite without compromising their prospects when they minor succeeded to power. Such an opportunity soon occurred. March 26. On the very next day, in a committee of supply on the navy estimates, Ministers were thrown into a minority on a purely party question, regarding Mr R. Dundas and Mr W. L. Bathurst, two junior commissioners of the navy, whose united salary was only £900 a-year, who were struck off by a majority of 139 to 121. Encouraged by this success, Sir James Graham moved a few days after that the salary of the Treasurer of the Navy should be abolished, and the duties of the office transferred to the President of the Board of Trade, with which it had at one time been united. This motion, however, was rejected by 188 to 90, and the same fate attended several other motions for the reduction of particular offices made by the same indefatigable member. These repeated divisions on particular offices were indicative of the state of feeling of the leaders of the Whig party, who, chagrined at not being admitted to a participation of office 1 Ann. Reg. by the Duke of Wellington, took this mode of at once showing their displeasure and swelling the cry for economical reduction, by evincing the reluctance of Ministers to yield obedience to it.1 1830, 49, 63: Roe buck, i. 152, 162. These were mere party moves, intended to displace a ministry without embarrassing their successors, and convert the suffering of the moment into the means of political advancement. But there were not awanting those who took a nobler as well as a juster view of the general distress, and boldly pointed out its cause in the policy regarding monetary matters-so profitable to realised capital, so ruinous to laborious industry-which had for ten years been pursued by the Government. The subject was brought before the House of Commons by the two men in the kingdom most competent to master it, |