One of the most pregnant evils of the really corrupt Press is, that the principles of the Revolution, which placed the present family on the throne, are daily slandered and denied, in senseless commendation of the battles of Peterloo and Bonny Muir. Every petty pilfering of a mob is dignified with the name of treason, and the right of resisting tyrants confounded with the crime of sedition. As ultra-loyalty is busy, it may not be amiss to quote those sentiments of Sidney, (written long before the Guelphs were even heard of) which promoted that royal family from Hanover to St. James's; and they are quoted without the slightest reference to the present times, but to preserve the recollection of wholesome truths:- ." "Tis ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults, and wars; but 'tis worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness, and baseness, as to have neither strength nor courage to contend for any thing; to have nothing left worth defending, and to give the name of peace to desolation. I take Greece to have been happy and glorious, when it was full of populous cities, flourishing in all the arts that deserve praise among men: when they were courted and feared by the greatest kings, and never assaulted by any but to his own loss and confusion: when Babylon and Susa trembled at the motion of their arms; and their valor exercised in these wars and tumults, which our author looks upon as the greatest evils, was raised to such a power that nothing upon earth was found able to resist them: and I think it now miserable, when peace reigns within their empty walls, and the poor remains of those exhausted nations, sheltering themselves under the ruins of the desolated cities, have neither any thing that deserves to be disputed among them, nor spirit nor force to repel the injuries they daily suffer from a proud and insupportable monster."

Such are the immutable truths, and the memorable lessons taught by history. And, says a Greek writer, "After treating of our duty to the gods, it is proper to teach that which we owe to our country. For our country is, as it were, a secondary god, and the first and greatest parent. It is to be preferred to parents, wives, children, friends, and all things, the gods only excepted and if our country perishes, it is as impossible to save an individual, as to preserve one of the fingers of a mortified hand."

O FREEDOM! Sovereign boon of Heav'n!
Great charter with our being giv'n!
For which the patriot and the sage
Have plann'd, have bled thro' every age!
High privilege of human race,

Beyond a mortal monarch's grace!

CHRISTOPHILUS.

'Discourses on Government, Sect. XXVI. Civil wars and tumults not the

greatest evils that can befall nations.

SECOND LETTER

TO THE

RT. HON. FREDERICK J. ROBINSON,

PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE

ON

THE PRESENT STATE OF THE

CURRENCY:

IN WHICH ARE CONSIDERED, THE EFFECT WHICH THE REPEAL OF THE BANK RESTRICTION ACT HAS

A SECOND LETTER

ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE

CURRENCY,

&c. &c.

SIR,

Having in the preceding letter discussed some of the sources from which the present distresses of Agriculture have been supposed to spring, I shall now proceed to consider another cause to which they have been ascribed. This is a branch of the subject which involves a question of very great importance, and merits the most candid and temperate discussion. Many are deeply impressed with the idea that the distress which, at the present moment, presses upon the English agriculturist, and which, if not by some means alleviated, must inevitably ruin him, arises principally from the contraction of the circulating medium produced by the operation of what is commonly termed Mr. Peel's bill enacting the repeal of the Bank Restriction Act.

Those who ascribe the difficulties of agriculture to this measure, as their source, assert that the Act passed in 1819, to regulate the standard of our currency, has added nearly one fourth to the exchangeable value of the pound sterling; and that this increase in the value of the pound sterling, produced by a mere act of the legislature, has made an addition of 25 per cent. to the previous outgoings of the farmer. They affirm that his rent, though nominally the same, has really increased one fourth; that his taxes have increased one fourth, and that parochial rates, tithes, and the wages of labor, have increased, at least for a time, in an equal proportion: Rents are at present generally regulated upon what are commonly termed war prices, or upon the standard of value which

existed previously to the passing of the bill enacting the prospective repeal of the Bank Restriction Act. This, at least, is the fact of all farms let on leases executed before 1819.

The fact of a depreciation having taken place in our currency, during the suspension of cash payments, has been unanswerably established by the arguments and proofs of the bullion committee in 1811: there are few who do not now accede to the truth of the following resolution recommended by that committee for the adoption of the legislature. It is the tenth of the resolutions proposed by Mr. Horner in a committee of the whole House of Commons, May 6th, 1811; Resolved, "that it appears, that the actual value of the promissory notes of the Bank of England (measuring such value by weight of standard gold and silver,) has been, for a considerable period of time, and still is, considerably less than what is established by the laws of the realm to be the legal tender in payment of any money contract or stipulation." The present Chancellor of the Exchequer strongly denied, and, to the inexpressible astonishment of the public, still continues to deny, that any such depreciation had taken place in our currency, and on the 14th and 15th of May, 1811, among other memorable resolutions, he prevailed upon a majority of the House of Commons to adopt the following:-Resolved, that the promissory notes of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England have hitherto been, and are at this time held in public estimation to be equivalent to the legal coin of the realm, and generally accepted as such in all pecuniary transactions to which such coin is lawfully applica ble.". But when it is a fact, notorious to all the world, that the guinea sold for, at least, 17. 6s. 3d.; nay, when it is known, that government itself gave 28 shillings a piece for guineas, to be sent abroad, it is an absolute waste of trouble to argue with any man who, in the very teeth of these facts, has still the hardihood to maintain, that the guinea was not worth "more than a pound note and a shilling." At the very moment, when this right honorable financier maintained that a pound note and a shilling were equivalent to a guinea, his agents and emissaries were traversing the country, in all directions, and buying up all the gold which they could meet with, at the rate of 28 shillings for each guinea; which is as convincing a proof as that two and two make four, that the depreciation in the value of the pound sterling was at that time 333 per cent. Of the fact therefore, that a very considerable depreciation had been produced in our currency by the suspension of cash payments in 1797, no rational mind can, for a moment, entertain a doubt. Indeed, it is now almost universally acknowledged that the currency of this realm had suffered some depreciation; although there be not an equal concurrence of opinion as to the