3dly, Taxation is more or less oppressive in proportion to the quantity of money in circulation; a reduction of taxation has not much effect upon industry. For fifteen years antecedent to 1832 the fiscal modifications had been considerable, but the people gained little by them.

4thly, To obtain the augmented currency that is desirable, silver should be the only standard, and

5thly. Country bank-notes ought by all means to be preserved. They are the most important instruments of circulation that exist. They act directly upon the channels of industry, and are all employed in bond fide feeding and clothing the population whom Bank of England paper does not so directly reach.

2 The speech here quoted was delivered by Mr. Matthias Attwood, the London Banker. The explanation of the theory was given by his brother, Mr. Thomas Attwood, the Banker at Birmingham.

Peculiar as these views appear, they coincide with some others which have not been feebly expressed. Mr. Cock published a pamphlet about the same period, in which he says, "There seems to be in all countries a sort of indescribable value set upon the precious metals, far beyond what would appear to be warranted by their intrinsic merits. It is true that their portability, incorruptibility, and being at the same time less liable to great fluctuations in price, make them desirable articles to keep, when wealth is required to be hoarded. But taking all these considerations into the estimate, and fixing prices on them accordingly, they are of no more value than a given quantity of sugar and coffee, answering to the same nominal value, and estimated also by all the circumstances of corruptibility and waste and other disadvantages by which they are affected. . . . As long as a paper currency is founded on actual property, whether gold, silver, coffee, sugar, or other goods, it does not appear to me to be possible that too much can be circulated."

2 Agio is the premium between the current value of any two mediums of exchange - as between paper currency and metallic currency - or between one metal and another, as silver and gold. The word, in France and other continental money-markets where gold, though a legal payment, is not compulsorily so at its standard value, is the price which is chargeable before a Bank can be compelled to pay it.

If to these opinions, I add from Mr. T. Attwood's evidence in 1832, his view of the state of things, that arises because they are not enforced; a state, by-the-by, which may be truly said to have existed with as severe a reality during the last three years as it ever did before, I shall probably be held to have noticed as fully as it deserves, the Attwood theory of currency. "The reward of labour being destroyed, the labourers, who can each produce four times as much of the comforts of life as they and their families could possibly consume, are starving while superabundance reigns around them.

They find no employment because the organ of industry, which is money, does not exist in sum-cient quantities to give the productive classes a reward for their exertions. The peasant, idly wandering about, looks over the hedge of the half-cultivated farm, where the land is suffering for want of his labour; but at the same time, the farmer has neither the profit nor the money to enable him to bring the land into cultivation. . . . Retail prices have not been so much reduced as wholesale, yet retail tradesmen were never so much distressed as they are at present; they have so many bad debts, so much competition, and such diminished sales. To these classes, a depreciation of the currency would be highly beneficial; it would enable the debtor to discharge debts which he cannot now pay without destruction."

The agricultural distress, into the particulars of which we have thus been led to enter at some length, followed by the panic of 1825, and numerous failures amongst the private Bankers in the country, produced another consequence, at which it is necessary to glance here; although a better opportunity will present itself by-and-by, for noticing it as fully as its importance and effects demand, - I allude to the introduction of joint-stock Banks in 1826, at the particular instance of Lord Liverpool's administration. The origin and progress of these useful institutions, will occupy a separate chapter; but they cannot be passed silently over in a sketch of the affairs of the Bank of England, because they were avowedly brought into life for the express purpose of subduing some of the evils, to the correction of which that establishment was pronounced unequal.

In 1832, the joint-stock Bank plan having had some trial, and the improved system which the Bank of England was to have derived from experience having been fairly tested; the House of Commons availed itself of the opportunity presented by the approaching termination of the Bank Charter, to appoint a committee to inquire into the expediency of renewing that charter, and also to inquire into the system upon which Banks of issue in England and Wales were then conducted. The present Earl Spencer, then Lord Althorpe, being chancellor of the exchequer, sat as chairman of this committee, to which it would be unfair to deny the merit of having elicited a body of general information, interesting and instructive in a high degree. Still, as a whole, it is an imperfect and powerless labour, and far short of the occasion. We feel, it is true, in going through the evidence, that a good deal is told which had not been so well known before; and that sufficient data are furnished, to enable us to substantiate, in the most conclusive manner, the best doctrines applicable to the question: nevertheless, that there is a marked want of practical demonstration in the inquiry, and that, however clear may be the exposition of past mistakes, no guarantee or security is afforded against their recurrence. We have nothing but a repetition of the old story. Past misconduct is admitted, and the way by which it was to have been avoided is explained; but they who found their account in committing mistakes before, are left free to commit them again: and accordingly they have committed them; and so they will go on, until there shall arise some talent more original and commanding than has yet manifested itself in these long and wearying investigations, which shall strike into a new and superior path, and compound from the dull and clouded chaos around, some as yet undiscovered elements, to give the practice of the science a force, cohesion, and insistency, of which it has hitherto proved so lamentably deficient.