FORE:[596]
FORE:
FORE:It is impossible to conceive the extent of suffering and desolation inflicted upon society, almost every family being involved, more or less, in the general calamity. Flourishing firms were bankrupt, opulent merchants impoverished, the masses of working people suddenly thrown out of employment, and reduced to destitution; and all from causes with which the majority had nothing to docauses that could have been prevented by a proper monetary system. If Bank of England notes had been a legal tender, to all intents and purposes supplying the place of gold as currency; if these notes had been supplied to the country banks in any quantities they required, ample security being taken to have assets equal to their respective issues, then the currency would have had an elastic, self-adjusting power, expanding or contracting according to the requirements of commerce. Inordinate speculation would not have been stimulated by a reckless system of credit, and business would have been conducted in a moderate and judicious manner, instead of rushing on at a high pressure that rendered a crash inevitable. The Government, after anxious and repeated deliberations, supplied a remedy on this principle. They determined to issue one-pound and two-pound notes of the Bank of England, for country circulation, to any amount required. In the meantime the Mint was set to work with all its resources in the coining of sovereigns[244], which, for the course of a week, were thrown off at the rate of 150,000 a day. The notes could not be manufactured fast enough to meet the enormous demand for carrying on the business of the country. In this dilemma the Bank was relieved by a most fortunate discoverya box containing 700,000, in one- and two-pound notes that had been retired, but which were at once put into circulation. The people having thus got notes with Government security, the panic subsided, and the demand for gold gradually ceased. The restoration of confidence was aided by resolutions passed at a meeting of bankers and merchants in the City of London, declaring that the unprecedented embarrassments and difficulties under which the circulation of the country laboured were mainly to be ascribed to a general panic, for which there were no reasonable grounds; that they had the fullest confidence in the means and substance of the banking establishments of the capital and the country; that returning confidence would remove all the symptoms of distress caused by the alarms of the timid, so fatal to those who were forced to sacrifice their property to meet unexpected demands. The new measures so promptly adopted and so vigorously carried into effect, raised the circulation of the Bank of England notes in three weeks from 17,477,290 to 25,611,800. Thus the regular and healthful action of the monetary system was restored by an adequate circulation of paper money, on Government security, without specie to sustain it. There were at the time of the crash 770 country bankers; 63 stopped payment, 23 of them having subsequently resumed business, and paid twenty shillings in the pound; and even those that were not able to resume, paid an average of seventeen shillings and sixpence in the pound. It was estimated that the total loss to the country by this panic was one hundred million pounds.
THREE:Goldsmith was in his poetry, as in his prose, simple, genuine, and natural. His "Deserted Village" and "Traveller" were in the metre of Pope, but they were full of the most exquisite touches of pathos, of truth, and liberty; they were new in spirit, though old in form. Charles Churchill, the satirist, was full of flagellant power. He has been said to have formed himself on Dryden; but it is more probable that his models were Lucian and Juvenal. He was a bold and merciless chastiser of the follies of the times. He commenced, in the "Rosciad," with the players, by which he stirred a nest of hornets. Undauntedly he pursued his course, attacking, in "The Ghost," the then all-powerful Dr. Johnson, who ruled like a despot over both literary men and their opinions. These satires, strong and somewhat coarse, were followed by "The Prophecy of Famine," an "Epistle to Hogarth," "The Conference," "The Duellist," "The Author," "Gotham," "The Candidate," "The Times," etc. In these Churchill not only lashed the corruptions of the age, but the false principles of nations. He condemned the seizure of other countries by so-called Christian powers, on the plea of discovery. It was only to be lamented that Churchill, who was a clergyman, in censuring his neighbour's vices did not abandon his own.It was very generally understood that it had been definitely arranged that Lord Londonderry should represent England at the Congress of Verona, and it was universally believed, as we have seen, that this fact weighed on his mind and led to his suicide; but Mr. Gleig states that in consequence of the reluctance expressed by Lord Londonderry to undertake the mission, it had for some time been settled that England should be represented there by the Duke of Wellington, and that he had begun to make his preparations, when a severe illness fell upon him, from which he did not sufficiently recover to set out upon his journey till after Lord Londonderry's death. The Duke of Wellington started for his mission when Mr. Canning had been only forty-eight hours in office. Stress has been laid upon the fact that he received his instructions from Mr. Canning, and this has been declared to be the turning-point in our foreign policy, when England began to disengage herself from the Holy Alliance. She was not formally a party to that alliance, but the despots composing it had counted on her aid and influence in keeping down the nations which they oppressed. But Mr. Gleig states that Lord Londonderry himself had compiled a letter of instruction for the representative of England at the Congress, and that this was transferred without a single alteration to the Duke of Wellington. It is, he says, "a very interesting document. It touches upon every point which could be expected to come under consideration at the Congress, and it handles them all so as to guard with scrupulous care not only the honour of Great Britain, but the rights of foreign peoples as well as of their Governments. It assumes that the subjects of general discussion would be three: first, the Turkish question, external and internal; secondly, the Spanish question, European and American; and, thirdly, the affairs of Italy. With this last question the representative of England was directed not to concern himself at all. As England had been no party to the military occupation of Naples and Sardiniaas she had merely acquiesced in it with a view to prevent worse thingsso she felt herself precluded from advising upon the arrangement now that it was complete, lest by so doing she should appear to admit the justice of a proceeding against which from the outset she had protested. The representative of Great Britain was therefore instructed to hold aloof from all meetings at which Italian affairs were to be discussed, and, if possible, to avoid connecting himself with the Congress till these should have been settled."
THREE:[313]
