66 For hood, levying a black mail on the poor people to | with the line of rivers and watercourses; in towns pay for that green-coated army of occupation? is it prevails most in the dampest and poorest neighit Mike that is that wicked fool?" Mike rushes borhoods; humid and impure air are its great in, terror-stricken. "Oh! is it you, Mike?" No, predisposing causes, low diet and other depressing no; he is not the guilty fool. Some one bangs influences probably aiding the predisposition. The at the door. "It is 1, Mike," says a hoarse voice; great preventives, of a broad and general nature, open the door they are after me!" But Mike are ventilation and cleansing. Cleanly people, as listens without stirring; an oath, a rush of feet, a the Dutch, or the Gallicians in comparison with silence-Pat Braghnan has gone. Two policemen the Sclavonians, enjoy a marked immunity. run up: Mike opens his door; he proves that thorough prevention the metropolis would need a Braghnan is not there; the policemen, however, thorough reconstruction of its drainage; but withturn out the protesting Mike; the whole country out waiting for any plans so tedious, the commisis astir; Braghnan is hunted from cabin to cabin, sioners suggest immediate stops to improve existing through bush and brake; he is found skulking in arrangements, to cleanse out sewers, and augment a ditch; and Mike is set free, rejoicing, perhaps the draught of water. They do not recommend for the first time in his life, in the practical immu- any renewed use of cholera hospitals, but suggest nity of innocence. It is those in the cabin that the much more effective measure of providing efnow listen with fear to the sound of the gun- fectual medical attendance at the houses of patients. they have ceased to be the privileged class: they | The very destitute can be taken to the fever-wards long for the time when those hated but feared po- of the union work-houses. The non-contagion, lice shall be taken away, and groan at the sound which is established on very strong evidence, is of every gun that renews the lease of those de- most important for its moral consequences on the tested lodgers; they begin to hate and despise the former visitation of the cholera, the abandonment fools that help to keep them there by this senseless of the sick was common, fear of infection being playing with deadly weapons, and set down the the motive. The admitted absence of contagion odious police-tax-not to be evaded by cajolery-greatly facilitates the treatment of the sick in every as a debt against such lawless neighbors. It is in the cabin that terror, and tribulation, and a sickening, longing wish for order in the neighborhood, now abide. The strong iron hand of the law is on the whole people: the criminal community has struggled in vain; it knows its master, and crouches down, trembling, subdued, and quiet. way. It will be desirable, as no doubt it will be provided, to give the medical officers authority to enforce the needful sanatory regulations on all places that come within their observation. It is to be observed that the regulations and improvements here indicated will not be useless, even should the cholera disappoint the general fear and No shots are heard. Perfect peace reigns all spare this land: the same plans will be of the round. The green-coated men, are collected; they greatest and most direct utility in counteracting are marched away, and seen no more. The sub-fever and other general ailments induced by bad dued district is once more free. No one listens in atmosphere.--Spectator. fear. If the landlord and his children no longer THE BRITISH FRONTIER. shrink at the sight of the armed ragamuffin, the WELLINGTON ON THE DEFENCELESS STATE OF laborer and his wife no longer cower at the sight of the armed policeman. Crime has been paid for, bitterly, in tribulation, in the hard coin of the poIs it certain that this country will never again lice-tax; in confessed vanquishment-the hardest be engaged in war? The question is one which, of all possible penalties. Without a present police for many reasons, demands an explicit and positive or the instant terror of penalty, the spirit of law answer. If it cannot be answered in the negative, abides in the place. Such is the change which it is then a truism that every additional month of Is it certain that may be realized in the lawless district, after Sir peace brings us nearer to war. George Grey's bill shall have been effectually our own country will not be attacked—that war carried out.—Spectator, 4 Dec. will not be brought upon our own territory? Many reasons forbid a certain negative. Our country is rich, and very vulnerable. An old warning on the defenceless state of our coasts, from the highest military authority in Europe, has just been revived. The existence of a letter from the Duke of Wellington to Sir John Burgoyne, entering very fully into the subject, has been hinted at before; but that letter has this week been publicly described by a well-known correspondent of the Morning Chronicle, whose communications are signed "P." We extract the descriptive passage CHOLERA. THE First Report of the Sanatory Commissioners, published 2 Dec., relates more especially to the measures for the prevention of Asiatic cholera, a subject which was referred to the commission for its earliest attention; but the measures suggested necessarily have a larger scope. The official report will not supersede further scientific inquiry into the nature of the disease and the mode of its propagation; but for immediate practical purposes, the document seems to establish the following data as the basis of practical and practicable measures Cholera is not contagious: its progress coincides likely places for debarkation; he proves the ease | is not the most national view of the subject: we with which it might be effected; he displays the might point to the enormous waste and destruction nullity of our means of defence. We have no mi- of our substantial wealth, to the utter overturn of litia, very few and very distant regulars-from 9,000 to 10,000 alone available at home-little artillery, no arms in store. He says, with infinite pathos, I am now bordering on seventy-seven years of age, passed in honor. I hope the Almighty may protect me from being a witness of the tragedy I cannot persuade my contemporaries to avert. "He afterwards proceeds to demand means, the most moderate; and with them he undertakes to secure us. His terms are 150,000 militia, and soine 10,000 or 12,000 additional soldiers of the line." We have followed a corrected version of the text, which is more emphatic in its phrase; but from the original version is to be collected the additional fact that the duke had submitted his plan of defence" to three ministers," [premiers, we presume,] “in vain.” Why in vain? Not because any ministry can be content with the state of the national defences, but because they have not had the zeal to undertake the trouble of arranging with parliament the matter of cost; perhaps also because they have not been able to picture to themselves what the duke means by "the tragedy"-taught to him, however, by no exercise of fancy, but by horrible experience of the reality in other lands. But are we all so bare of that intellectual function that we cannot construe the words? Because all existing arrangements, to the want and misery since the last civil war : it will not happen again tain; but he is as unheeded as Laocoon- neres !"' our generation has not witnessed an invasion of English homes, are we quite incapable of conceiving such an event? Do we not know what it implies? An accident, a word, a squabble between sailors or fishermen, might precipitate war; a diplomatic technicality might dictate a "demonstration." If a host of pulse-fed Russians or French A brutish disregard of the future awaits on the troops were poured into Sussex or Kent, would self-satisfied spirit of our day, which can deal with the devastation of our corn-fields, the waste of our no ideas but such as have tangible objects to sugorchards and hop-grounds, be the worst that we gest them-money gains, or sensual gratifications. should have to deplore? Would the plunder of We abdicate part of our faculties, and lay them "the city" itself be the thing that we should at the feet of the narrow-minded and dull, content dread? We should scarcely think of it, in com- to think no further than they can think, to imagine parison. Statesmen might, military officers might nothing but what they can know, to foresee noth-it would be their business; but we, the people ing but what they can understand on gross palpaof England, should be thinking of something more ble proof. We are paying the penalty of this stirring than that. Military officers might gain a blindness in past times. For temporary objects victory, and the bells might ring after it. But that we now despise, we expended enormous sums what might happen in the interval? Do not some in war, regardless of the cost to ourselves; and of us know what it is for a people to have an alien we are still paying, every year, many millions for soldiery turned loose among its homes? Do we our improvidence. We are now going to incur not know what it might be for the men of a house- the converse penalty, incurring the risk of ruinous hold to stand armed within the door, the women war to save a small present outlay. We have sent to inner rooms and hiding-places-to have the always refused to deal with the future of Ireland, door forced in the men to be vanquished—the and the penalty is that we have never done dealing women discovered? Do not men prefer to be with an interminable and sanguinary past. It is trampled down and die before they know what true again that this penalty is not identical with happens in such adventures? Are we to remain that which we shall incur by neglecting the future content, knowing that these things may be, in to which the white-haired veteran so eloquently Brighton or Hastings, in Canterbury or Horsham, warns us. It seems that we must know the ac nay, in London-in Camberwell or Islington, in tual horrors and devastation of war before we ca Belgrave Square or Sussex Gardens ? There is associate the idea of invasion with the latest meindeed no security against such a visitation. This tropolitan improvements, or think it necessary to 11 provide any more certain bulwark than a new police! This dulness to the warning, we say, is not courage, nor "practical" sense, but besotted brutishness.--Spectator, 4 Dec From the Spectator. RESULTS OF THE BANKING DEBATE. Endless, for example, is the diversity on the subject of "currency" relaxation and restriction, extension and contraction, bank charter act and repeal of it, paper and gold, convertibility, inconvertibility, modified convertibility, unlimited issues convertible, limited issues convertible, unlimited inconvertible, limited inconvertible, part convertible, part inconvertible, fewer banks, more banks, Scotch system, Irish system Enough; the brain whirls with the confusion of counsel. All has always followed as a necessary consequence of commercial energy, and is by no means susceptible of arbitrary or unlimited extension at the hands of central authority. Real wealth will be no more augmented by an extension of currency than the aggregate bulk of goods in the market would be increased by the extension of any other instrument used in commerce—an extension of hogsheads, of GRIEVOUS would be the disappointment if one canvass for bales, or of steel pens. Nor will the were to seek the conclusions of last week's debate on banking and distress in the express declaration there be the goods to be exchanged, and people interchange depend on any particular medium: if of opinions. There was in notable instances, even want them, they will be exchanged by some individually, no opinion; and collectively there was such a conflict of opinion, that each was neu-tant to have a sufficient medium of exchangemeans, bad or good. It is, no doubt, most importralized by the rest, as all colors combined make sufficient both in amount and in the qualities up one blank. But out of the effervescent heap necessary for such a medium-portability, verificaof opposite notions some results of tolerable distion, and unvarying uniformity of standard-so tinctness may be collected. that the endless variety of values may be referred to one common measure. Of all currencies yet devised, from cowrie shells and assignats to bullocks or diamonds, none has so completely satisfied the requirements of a commercial medium as gold coin. It is not so portable as some others; and vertible into gold coin, may be considered as an in that respect, representative paper, strictly conauxiliary that imparts to our currency cbsolute perfection-the convenience of the cheapest and this would be very unsatisfactory, but that in the sterling qualities of a defined, verified, and uniform most portable currency in the world, with the seeming chaos there is a principle of gravitation, standard.* It is the duty of the executive governand common sense evidently tends towards one ment to see that the general convenience of all be common instinctive negative conclusion-that the consulted-that arrangements dependent on comquestion of "currency" has had very little to do with the matter; that currency is best when sim- maintained; but it is no part of executive duty to mon observance be simplified, facilitated, and plest and most tangible; and that practically the increase individual wealth. It is the duty of the principle of the law regulating our currency is tolerably correct, requiring less to be altered than to because that can be best performed by the central executive to provide the best form of currency, be more strictly applied. Through an utter conauthority; but it is no part of the duty of the fusion of the terms 66 money, capital," currency,” “circulation," and the like, there is evi- which is the product of individual industry and executive to provide capital, "accumulated labor,” dently a feeling that money is not always capital, enterprise. It is not the duty of the state, thereand that currency is still less so. The very fore, any more than it is its faculty, to provide persons who clamored for more notes, felt, and confessed, that notes were not the thing which they lacked, when they told Sir Charles Wood, "If we know that we can get bank-notes, we shall not want them." This paradox is not the nonsense which it would seem. It evinces the instinctive sense of the real case. With active industry, with goods abundant courting exchange —that is, with the productive power and the material products for trade-it is obvious that commer-exchange, money is not capital, but it may indifferently cial men would fall upon some convenient mode of time, or any other term of value. In the economical represent any purchasable commodity-labor, capital, facilitating barter by a representative medium of sense, gold is capital only while it is the material in some exchange; but it is evident that the medium of process of production; as a medium of transfer, it is only the representative of capital, carrying with it a substantial exchange, as such, is not a constituent part of the guarantee in its own intrinsic value. An addition to the wealth. Adding to the medium adds nothing to gold in a country, therefore, in respect of its currency, is the material wealth. It is not a material, but a which imparts the guarantee to the currency; but in the only of importance in so far as it supplies the solid basis inere mode: the substance selected as the tangible sense of currency, no extension of gold can add to the form for that medium is only a tool, an instru- wealth or capital of a nation: it will only affect nominal price"-that is, the nominal ratio of value between the ment. With its extension or contraction the sub-coin and all other articles whatsoever; not real "price," stantial wealth will not be augmented or diminished, except indirectly it may be increased by the facility of interchange; a source of increase which 99 66 99 66 capital for merchants in time of crisis, by relaxation, extension, the loan of credit, or any other means; but only to maintain the currency inviolate against attempts to tamper with it, by bank For distinctness, it may be noted that the substance gold used in the formation of coin is "capital," as any tangible substance as an article of manufacture, “money” other goods are capital; and that in regard to its gross is capital; yet that in its operation as a medium of that is, the mean ratio of exchangeable value between each article and all other articles; which is determined by the higgling of the market, and only nominated by the currency. unfolding. It is said, and perhaps with truth, that railways abstracted no labor from our own soil. England had a sufficient harvest. But other parts of the united kingdom had not. It became necessary to send for food from abroad; and there was a lack of food-purchasing goods. No doubt, the price of cotton was unusually, nót rupt traders as well as common forgers and view which are they that retain that faculty. "smashers." It is the instinctive sense of these The more they are multiplied the greater will be facts which makes both houses of parliament enter the chance that an undue portion of industry will into an "inquiry" as wide as the chaos of notions be diverted from employments that produce food or is confused, with the evident foregone conclusion food-purchasing goods. Active industry in any that the main subject of inquiry, the law securing paid labor begets an appearance of prosperity a strictly convertible standard, must be maintained which may mislead if that enterprise be not availwith closer rather than less strictness. ably productive. It increases the diversion of Another main branch of the great investigation industry, betrays the workers who are so "pros so laxly conducted by the honorable and right hon-pering" into habits wasteful of those necessaries orable assemblies, is the effect of the railway which they do not replace, and fosters the growth expenditure. The general tendency is to make a of a population not employed availably for the dead set at railways. Sir Charles Wood charges immediate purposes of subsistence. This is one them with abstracting a vast amount of capital reason why we see such shoals of people of the from the "floating" state to make it "fixed;" angentry class competing for employments impossible accusation so abstract in form that it scarcely sat- of attainment. But the more gigantic the operaisfies the popular mind. One set of economists go tion, the more disastrous will the error become to such an extreme that they almost reckon rail- before it be found out. This is no fanciful theory, ways among the cardinal vices-crimes which are but is merely an historical statement of the facts mala in se, and the investment of capital as sheer experienced in the railway fervor. Whether that waste. This indiscriminate vituperation begets a activity was excessive or not in regard to the ordireaction; and others, with Sir Robert Peel, make nary aggregate amount of speculative investment, light of the railway drain. Sir Robert observes or the true ultimate demand for railway accommothat there always has been exaggerated specula-dation, is not the question that determines its mistion; some kinds might have been worse than chievous effects in the view that we are now railways-as speculation in wasteful foreign enterprises; railways will ultimately be reproductive there they remain for the money, and they will be instruments in augmenting our wealth; so that although the draught of that capital happened, by the coincidence of other demands, to be inopportune, it is in itself meritorious rather than otherwise. Such we take to be the pith of some to say artificially, raised; no doubt, the demand volumes spoken and written on the point. Per- for corn was sudden; but it is the fact, that, conhaps it is an answer to the vulgar class of censure currently with those checks on the production of on railway speculators; but it does not touch the exportable goods, our manufactures were also real difficulty-which lies, we think, in a point stinted by the diversion of capital to railway enterthat economists have not kept steadfastly enough prise. Industry had been diverted from the proin view. The primary end of all industry is to duction of food-purchasing goods to the production supply the workers and their dependents with the of works not available for that purpose. Railways necessaries of life. The division of employments may at some future time increase our facilities of greatly increases the productive power of human production; but "while the grass is growing," industry. But although employments may be &c. We had neglected the rule of keeping a divided, a certain portion of them ought to be sufficient portion of our industry employed on the devoted, immediately or mediately, to the produc-production of food or food-purchasing goods. tion of necessaries—food, raiment, and lodging; The legislature cannot plead exemption from blame above all food. However removed the individual in this matter, since its encouragement of railway worker may be from the plough, the first object speculation-its creation of the speculating bodies of his labor is to secure to him his portion of food; with peculiar and gigantic powers-was a direct and however multiplied the processes of exchange and active diversion of industry into this questionbetween him and the tiller of the earth, all those able channel. exchanges constitute the channel by which his labor is vicariously applied to the soil, and the product, food, is conveyed back to him. Multiplied, therefore, as employments may be, a certain proportion of them ought to be devoted, within a given time, either to the production of food, or to the production of articles readily exchangeable for food sufficient to make up the supply within that given time. Now, in the minute division of employments and the multiplication of intermediate exchanges, that channel has a chance of being greatly confused-possibly broken off. In the crowd of employments, it is not possible to keep in A third section is the drain of bullion for corn. From what has gone before, we see how the diversion of capital to purchase corn was swelled to the enormous amount of 33,000,0001.; while orders for food-purchasing goods could not be executed 66 for want of capital," so that it was necessary to make up the amount needed with bullion. Wanting goods, we were obliged to lay violent hands on our currency-to pledge our great tool of trade. The railway expenditure, therefore, was not only concurrent with the corn drain, but helped to swell it. And, sending away our instrument of trade, we crippled our means of producing goods to pay the debt incurred; so that every sovereign explain thus. The dominant and legitimate thus sent out of the country constituted a double motive in trade is self-interest: it may be more or .OSS. The deficiency, said some, might have been less liberally construed, more or less intelligently ; supplied with paper: but the apparent ease which but such it is. According to Sir Robert Peel's that would have imparted would have removed the admission, the main object of the act of 1844 was great check on the export of gold, and would thus left to rest, in part at least, on "moral obligation;" have helped the operation of adverse exchanges; a motive which is the dominant one in many relaand a drain of gold to any greater extent would tions of life—which may be relied on, to a certain have endangered the practical convertibility of our extent, in intercourse between statesmen, in diplocoin the issue of paper to supply the place of the macy, in ecclesiastical affairs; but it is not the exported gold, therefore, would only have substi- primary and dominant motive in commercial opertuted for present "tightness" the risk of speedy ations, and therefore, not being the strongest public insolvency; and that insolvency, by destroy- motive in such affairs, it was not the one to be ing the convertibility of all paper, and so depreciat-relied on. Either it should have been ascertained ing its exchangeable value, would have brought on that real contraction of currency which exists when its worthlessness is disguised in the abundance of its material. We saw instances of that in France, and in the United States after the war of Independence, when depreciation had almost destroyed the worth of the currency, so that there was actually an absence of currency hidden under heaps of assignats. that the self-interest of the bank would make it work always for the public interest, or self-interest should have been forced into the service by compulsory enactment. Sir Robert Peel admits that, for its main object, the act of 1844 rested on "moral obligation;" the bank, being a trading community, has acted as traders act, and with the motives of traders—either to secure a profit by some stroke of trade, or to "oblige a customer" by The fourth great branch of the discussion relates winking at some trading laxity; but if the directo the conduct of the Bank of England. Amid all tors have neglected to secure to the country those the conflict of judgments, a pretty general inclina- benefits which are to be expected from sound tion to blame the managers of the bank is visible; statesmanship or sound executive administration in a few feebly defending them. Lord John Russell financial affairs, we must say that the bank is less and Sir Charles Wood cannot exonerate them. to blame than the statesmen who left their own Sir Robert Peel expected better of them. Some function to the voluntary performance of traders; doubt whether the existence of such an institution those traders having already shown, on every critis desirable. Violent people exclaim, “The bank ical occasion, that they were traders, not statesmen has done it all!" We do not perceive the sense -not even traders of perfect intelligence or the or fairness of these diatribes. Let us be just as most expanded views. Of course, it remains for well as severe. Has the bank broken its constit-real statesmen to supply this defect in the act of uent law? No-not even in the way it was 1844. advised to do by her majesty's ministers. What has it done? It has disappointed an expectation entertained of it by the author of the latest bank charter act. Sir Robert Peel says that "the object of the bill of 1844 was to impress, if not a legal, a moral obligation upon the bank, to prevent the necessity of stringent measures by taking timely precautions;" and "that object was not carried out." Very true. The bank has not acted uniformly in the spirit of the bank charter act; and the act induced no material change inent loss, and the continued absence of an effective that part of the management which was left to the discretion of the directors. As early as the autumn of 1844, the bank used its vast resources, augmented by the public deposits, to stimulate speculation, by reducing its discount from 4 to 2 1-2 per cent; a spur to gambling, which, doubtless, had great influence on what followed. And at every subsequent stage, unchecked by any "moral obligation" implied in the bank charter act, the bank has regulated its discounts chiefly by its own interests, either in respect of credit, profit, or safety, down to the very last reduction to 6 per cent. But how is it that the bank is able to adopt a course assumed to be so injurious to the public? Because, as the ostensible author of the act of 1844 confesses, an erroneous principle lay at the bottom of that arrangement. The error we would That act, then, though most usefully regulating the currency in particular respects-though supplying better guarantees for the essential qualities of a currency than any previous law-is admitted to be inoperative in one great cardinal function. We are without an efficient exemplar and guide in the direction and control of commercial enterprise. In the absence of that guide, we have miscalculated our investments, and have locked up an undue portion of our available capital. That pres guide until the hiatus of the act of 1844 be filled up, will suggest the safest course for the community-retrenchment in speculation and expenditure of every kind. From the Spectator. COMMON SENSE OF THE WEST INDIAN CASE. THE case of the West Indies is again earnestly mooted in the press, and will soon come before parliament; for, like the ghost of a murdered man, it will continue to haunt the legislature until it be laid by the performance of justice. Lord George Bentinck is to move for a committee of inquiry into the present condition and prospects of the West Indies, with a view to relief. Mr. Hope has given notice of an additional motion to follow Lord |