venience, and the loss attending, whilst foreign gold was of so much more value than British. Upon the fullest consideration of the subject, seeing that no injury was done to the community, that none was heard of, that no petitions had appeared against it, that the credit of the bank, instead of being diminished, had increased, he must support the motion. It was the continuation of a measure wisely and well imagined, and executed by the late administration (that of Mr. Pitt).

We shall have occasion, at a future time, to examine Sir Robert Peel's views of a paper currency, and compare them with those of his son; but we may remark, that his arguments go the whole length of deprecating a return to cash payments under any circumstances, and to the maintenance of an inconvertible paper currency. His approbation of Mr. Pitt's policy at the close of his speech was much more forcibly expressed on the ensuing 7th of May, when Mr. Nicholls moved a vote of censure on Pitt's administration. Sir Robert Peel said, that he had the honour to be a member of the commercial world, and had had frequent occasion to transact with the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, business of great difficulty and importance. From personal knowledge he was therefore able to state, that no minister ever understood so well the commercial interests of the country. He knew that the true sources of its greatness lay in its productive industry. Circumstances obliged him to lay burthens on the country, but he had first taught the country how to bear those burthens. Large debts were indeed contracted, but they were more than equalled by the increase of wealth arising from his wise measures. It was not unusual for a country to flourish in peace; but where was there another minister to be found under whose auspices the resources of the country had been doubled in the midst of an expensive and vigorous war? Debts had been contracted, but they were all domestic debts; and the interest was spent amongst ourselves. Whatever might be said of our

burthens, the country, under their pressure, was more flourishing than at any former period. Many things had been urged to show the evils arising from our paper money; but no issue of paper money had been made which we had not funds to support; unlike a neighbouring country which issued paper until its value was depreciated almost to nothing. The late minister had been the benefactor of his country, and had neglected no one's interest but his own. It had indeed been said, that though he did not enrich himself, he had secured his influence, by bestowing pensions and titles on others. But he had no occasion to have recourse to such arts; he had secured sufficient support by honourable measures; three parts of the house, who were incapable of being bribed, were his friends. When such was the case, the house ought not to content themselves with a bare vote of thanks, but to bestow on him some more solid mark of their approbation. It would be disgraceful to the nation to allow such a man to retire to languish in poverty. He for one would be happy to contribute to prevent this; not from any personal motives, but on account of the important services he had rendered his country.

This speech had great weight both in the house and in the country; it was the testimony of a gentleman who had fifteen thousand men in his employment, and who paid to the excise upwards of forty thousand pounds annually on printed goods alone. Few persons could therefore claim higher authority for their opinions on the mercantile and commercial results of an administration.

On two very important points Sir Robert Peel gave sound advice to his countrymen, and anticipated the policy since pursued by his son. He resisted restrictions designed to enhance the price of food, and he opposed the attempts made by ill-judging philanthropists artificially to raise the rate of wages. When Mr. Sheridan proposed a bill to limit the number of apprentices to be taken by calico-printers, Sit

Robert Peel showed that this was nothing more than an insidious mode of enabling journeymen, by means of tradeunions and combinations, to give the law to their masters. The result of such a system would be, to drive capital from the trade, and to help the operative in realizing the fable of the clown who killed the goose that layed the golden eggs. This plain statement was so convincing, that the mischievous measure was rejected without a division. Mr. Erskine, on this occasion, happily illustrated the absurdity of the demand made by the advocates of the journeymen. He said that the cry against the numbers coming into the trade was as ridiculous as if he, or others, old journeymen in the profession of the law, should come to parliament to complain of the number of young men of talent that were educating for that profession, and beg that the house would shut the door against them, for fear they should interfere with the old practitioners." An equally mischievous proposition by Mr. Rose, was, to fix a minimum of wages for cotton weavers, resisted by Sir Robert Peel with equal success. He said that he disapproved highly of the principle of the measure, and was anxious to make it known that the disapprobation was founded upon a true regard to the interests of the workmen themselves. The great cause of the distress then (in 1808) felt, was not the oppression of the masters, but the shutting up of the foreign markets; and the fact was, that masters were suffering from this cause still more than the men. He repeated, that the effect of such interference would be to drive capital from the trade, and thus render the state of the operatives far worse than it was before.

In 1811, the commercial and manufacturing interests of England were subjected to a crisis of depression, more severe and intense than any with which they had been previously assailed. The Chancellor of the Exchequer moved for a committee to take into consideration the state of the commercial

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credit of the country, and, on its recommendation, proposed that a sum of six millions, in exchequer bills, should be advanced to certain commissioners, for the assistance of such merchants and manufacturers as should give security for re-payment. As no branch of industry had suffered so severely in this panic as the cotton trade, Sir Robert Peel zealously supported the proposed palliative. Its effects, however, in relieving the distress for which it was meant as a remedy, proved to be very inconsiderable. The sums applied for were to a far less amount than the provision made; for few of the persons whose circumstances were embarrassed, could provide the requisite security. Besides, when the complaint of the manufacturers and merchants was that their stocks were left on their hands, it would have been madness for the one to go on producing, and the other importing, without a prospect of increased demand and consumption.

At this crisis the ministers threatened the cotton trade, already severely crippled, with a tax on the import of cottonwool. Sir Robert Peel opposed it, on the ground of the impolicy of imposing a tax upon the raw material, especially at a time when the cotton manufacturers were starving; and chiefly through his influence, the impolitic measure was for the time abandoned. He also resisted a proposition for limiting the number of apprentices; and he showed that in large establishments it was the interest of masters to be careful of the life and health of their apprentices. He referred with some complacency to the measures which he had himself proposed on the subject of factory labour, and he ridiculed the cry about these apprentices being torn from their parents, when the fact was they had no parents who owned them, but were thrown on the parish.

In 1813, when the pressure of taxation was so severely felt that the ministers could not venture to propose any new impost, Sir Robert Peel advocated the application of a portion

of the sinking fund to the current expenses of the nation, and took that opportunity of enunciating his favourite theory of the national debt. He said it was a subject which he had deeply considered, as deeply perhaps as most men; and he really did not think that the country owed more at that moment than it had owed ten or twelve years ago; for all that we owed among ourselves, was national property. It is singular how any man of common sense could have uttered such palpable absurdity; it would have been just as wise to assert that highway robbery is no national injury, so long as the robbers spend the produce of their plunder in the country. Those who are taxed to pay the interest of the debt, are not remunerated by the reflection that the receivers of that interest are their countrymen; on the contrary, they have reason to complain that those who are supported in idleness by the interest of funded property, are so many labourers abstracted from contributing to the general welfare of the community. They are mere consumers, without being in any way producers; and the effect of increasing their number is precisely similar to that of increasing the number of drones in a hive.

When the proposition for laying a duty on cotton-wool was renewed, in 1813, it was defended as an act of retaliation for the blockade which the Americans had laid on their own ports, and as a protective duty, which would stimulate and encourage the growth of cotton in our own colonies. Sir Robert Peel renewed his opposition to the measure; he said, that as a person long acquainted with the cotton-trade, and a witness of the rapid improvement in the manufacture since Arkwright's invention, he strongly deprecated the proposed measure. The improvement effected had attracted the notice of Mr. Pitt so much, that he thought it desirable to encourage the importation of the raw material from all parts of the world free of all duty. The export of cotton-goods from this country had in one year amounted to the enormous sum of eighteen