and esteem, as an undeniable security and promise of future ho-
nour, worth, and moral rectitude. Speaking as I am, looks very
like flattering a man to his face, which some do not approve of,
and which too generally borders on design or meanness. I am
at your mercy; but I have reasons for paying my respectful com- .
pliments, and for not carrying them farther in the present in-
stance. Your case is before the world written in deeds to which
no language of mine can do justice, and which will never suffer
you to fall into either oblivion or contempt, as has been prophe-
sied by one of the second-sight seers of the infallible, doughty,
dogmatic journals, THE NEWS! To whom, with your permission,
Shebago intends to address a few complimentary lines on his un-
common candour and newly assumed decided character, and no
less on his charity, good language, and uncommon foresight.
You are, Sir, standing thus, and such is your case, I am going,
but with diffidence and respect, to lay my case before you. Aud
I feel ashamed, and almost afraid to reveal even to yourself the
miserable secret-that you have had a Greenwich Collegeman for
a Correspondent in the ardent but forlorn Shebago. I have been
for some time an inmate of this building, hopeless distress drove
me here, where I have nothing except a bare sustenance, without
liberty, and in constant danger of losing even that, and gaining
a cell in Hoxton. Judge, then, how gladly I would accept of a
change-how anxiously I wish for it, were I only to obtain a sub-
sistence without the fear of a mad-house before my eyes. Any
one of the letters of Shebago would obtain me that in-
dulgence, as they have just enough of that kind of sense and
spirit which would most assuredly gain their author the unquali-
fied character of confirmed madness:-A term that I have more
than once known to be substituted for and confounded with sense
and reason. The purport, then, of the latter part of this letter is
simply to inquire, if you can any way find me an employment
where I can be useful to you and maintain myself. I would es-
teem it a blessing, and believe me I am neither ambitious nor
avaricious. A very trifle would render me happy, and removing
me out of this would grant me content. I write to you with a
confidence and hope not common in my correspondence with my
betters. Whatever way you may decide, I shall ever remain the
same in mind. I must beg pardon for troubling you with any
concern of mine and taking up so much of your time, and return
my thanks for the notice you have been pleased to take of my
letters. Indeed, the pains you have been at, in correcting them
for the press, make them as much or more yours, than those of
your much obliged and humble servant, THOMAS HOOD.

Marlborough Ward, Royal Hospital,
Greenwich, Dec. 14th, 1825.

Printed and Published by R. Carlile, 135, Fleet Street.

No. 25, VOL. 12.] LONDON, Friday, Dec. 23, 1825. [PRICE 6d.

BANKS-PAPER MONEY-STOCKS-FUNDING SYSTEM

-FINANCE.

To write at this moment, upon any other subject than the above, would be to shew an indifference toward public feeling, excited on a serious matter. The paper panic of the last fortnight has superseded every other consideration; and the death of the Emperor of Russia is made subservient to it. Even my liberation has been worked in as one of the causes of this state of things; for such was an observation made, to my surprise, by a countrygentleman not unskilled in politics. As far as study is necessary to understand this paper-morey subject, I confess that I am ignorant; for though I have read much upon it, I have thought but little. But I have uniformly entertained an idea, that it must be a bad state of things, as to legislation and government, which is to be kept in a constant state of fear about the price of stocks, and about an ephemeral property, which exists only in the imagination when fairly sought. The real property of the country is lost sight of in a constant attention to a gambling with that which is but a spiritual or evanescent property-a mere thing of the imagination. The spiritual things called stocks are evidently only convertible to real property upon a confined scale, or in a small degree; if all were to seek that conversion, none would find it. You can only sell stocks when buyers are to be found. If no buyers were to be found, the thing ceases to exist, other than in the disposition of such a legislature, as may, from time to time, be formed, to tax the existing generation with the burthen of an interest for this nominal property. So long as there is a hope that such a legislature will be found, so long will there be a gambling, a buying and selling, and all sorts of tricks with respect to what are called stocks; so long will there be no secu. rity for the industrious labourer, and so long will disappointment and misery be the predominant sensations of the people of this country. Real property, that which is only to be produced by labour, cannot compete with this nominal property created by a funding and banking system, and the former is unfairly, unjustly taxed, to support the mischievous existence of the latter.

It is probable, that what I have written has been written and spoken a thousand times before; but so far, I have not copied.

Printed and Published by R. Carlile, 135, Fleet Street.

The foregoing sentences are a plain dealing man's view of the fietitious property called stocks or funds. I am now about to copy from, and to review, Mr. Paine's Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance. This pamphlet is confessedly Mr. Cobbett's text book on this subject, and I do not expect to educe any thing new from it, nor to do any thing more than to exhibit it in a strong light, at a moment when it will be read with more than usual attention. The pamphlet itself is sold at sixpence, and is well worth the perusal of all who are interested, as to their property, or in their depositings of property, in the public funds. It can be safely said of Mr. Paine, that his penetration was so great that he always took a correct view of all political affairs. He copied from no party men; he espoused not the interests of a few against that of the many; he looked fairly at men and things and sought to work out something new for the benefit of the majority; in fact, of mankind at large. This is no where more visible than in his new view of the English System of Finance.

Mr. Paine's opening paragraph is decisive of the question; it is thus:-"Nothing they say, is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying; yet, we can always fix a period beyond which man cannot live, and within some moment of which he will die. We are enabled to do this, not by any spirit of prophecy or foresight into the event, but by observation of what has happened in all cases of human or animal existence. If, then, any other subject, such, for instance, as a System of Finance, exhibits in its progress, a series of symptoms indicating decay, its final dissolution is certain, and the period of it can be calculated from the symptoms it exhibits." If the reader can perceive that the National Debt has gone on increasing, if he can perceive, that there has been, in reality, no reduction during the ten years of peace, if he can see, that the late panic was, or is greater than any that occured during the war, greater than any that has before happened, he may rest assured, that these are so many symptoms of decay, and that the system must eventually die, and be annihilated The time when is as difficult as to say the time when a man will die, who is left to the ordinary course of events. I told Dr. England, the Archdeacon of Dorset, in February, 1822, that I then thought that the funding system would be broken up within four years, or by 1826, and the present panic is evidently one of its death-throes. The Doctor scouted the idea, and wished he had a few more thousands in the funds. The Gaoler seconded him. What do they now think?

Mr. Paine proceeds to shew the progress of the national debt with the progress of war, and his calculations with regard to the last war were quite within compass. In treating of it, he has the following observation, which has been verified to a certainty in the present year. He says!"It will not be from the inability of pro

curing loans that the system will break up. On the contrary, it is the facility with which loans can be procured, that hastens that event. The loans are altogether paper transactions, and it is the excess of them that bring on, with accelerating speed, that progressive depreciation of funded paper money that will dissolve the funding system." How very characteristic of the present year? Though our own government has not been borrowing money, the loans to foreign governments and the various Joint Stock Companies are similar indications.

It was observed by Mr. Paine and followed by Mr. Cobbett, as a certainty, that an abundant issue of paper money lessened the relative value of gold and silver with the necessaries of life and produced a general impoverishment among the mass of the people. Which is to be explained by saying, that, in consequence of the issue of paper money in abundance, the journeyman, whose nominal wages are twenty shillings per week, procures less and less of food and clothing with that twenty shillings, in proportion with the abundance of the issues of paper money. This is a matter in which it is somewhat difficult to shew the why and the wherefore, as the markets for such commodities, as are called the necessaries of life, are influenced by so many causes; but there has been an effect uniformly visible from the issues of paper money, and that effect has been to lessen the value of the wages of the labouring

man.

"Public credit," has been well remarked by Mr. Paine to be “suspicion asleep." Of this we have a proof, whenever there is a run upon the banks, whenever gold is asked in exchange for bank notes. While bank notes were a legal tender, banks were not so liable to be pressed, as the Bank of England or any other bank will issue its notes with more facility, and upon a different species of credit, than it will issue gold. Let the suspicion of the public be once fairly awaked, and away go all the banks, all the stocks, and all that wretched system of finance, by which knaves profit and by which the honest man is pillaged. There is no proportion between the gold and the paper money of the country, and our best political economists deprecate all issues of paper money that are not to be paid in gold with facility. Mr. Paine has a pretty illustration of this matter, he says:- "One of the amusements that has kept up the force of the funding system is, that the interest is regularly paid. But as the interest is always paid in Bank Notes, and as Bank Notes can always be coined for the purpose, this mode of payment proves nothing. The point of proof is-can the Bank give cash for Bank Notes on which the interest is paid? If it cannot, and it is evident it cannot, some millions of Bank Notes must go without payment, and those holders of Bank Notes who apply last will be worst off. When the present quantity of cash in the Bank shall be paid away, it is next to impossible to see how any new quantity is to arrive. None will arrive

from taxes, for the taxes will all be paid in Bank Notes; and should the government refuse Bank Notes in payment of taxes, the credit of Bank Notes will be gone at once. No cash will arrive from the business of discounting merchants' bills; for every merchant will pay off those bills in Bank Notes and not in cash. There is therefore no means left for the Bank to obtain a new supply of cash, after the present quantity be paid away."-This is clear at the present day, wherever the notes of a bank are brought in in quantities sufficient to exhaust the gold of the bank, it breaks, or in common phrase, stops its payments, and for the best of all reasons-it has nothing left wherewith to pay. The facility of issuing Bank Notes has made the managers of the Bank to feel themselves weighty men. They speculate beyond their real means, and, when pressed, feel the arrival of a time which they have not anticipated and which they scarcely thought possible.

The political changes produced by a failure in a system of finance are not the least important part of the matter, and, on this head, Mr. Paine narrates his experience thus:" It is worthy of observation, that every case of a failure in finances, since the system of paper money began, has produced a revolution in government, either total or partial. A failure in the finances of France produced the French Revolution. A failure in the finance of the assignats broke up the Revolutionary Government, and produced the present French constitution. A failure in the finances of the old congress of America and the embarrassments it brought upon commerce, broke up the system of the old confederation and produced the present federal constitution. If, then, we admit of reasoning by comparison of causes and events, a failure in the English finance will produce some change in the government of that country." There is not a question but it will do so: and the sooner the better; for it is much wanted.

The Sinking Fund Bubble, for paying off the debt of the government, was thus aptly illustrated by Mr. Paine, in 1796. We have seen the effect as here stated :-" As to Mr. Pitt's project of paying off the national debt by applying a million a year for that purpose, while he continues adding more than twenty millions ayear to it, it is like setting a man with a wooden leg to run after a hare. The longer he runs the farther he is off," And yet, what solemn saws have we heard from our legislature about this ridiculous sinking fund! Where is it now? The very name was a pun upon the reality of the thing-a sinking fund! All government funds are sinking funds.

This little pamphlet of Mr. Paine's is quite sufficient to com'municate a full knowledge upon its subject. I never before read it with the same effect as at this moment. Almost every paragraph has its peculiar beauty and force. In proceeding, he observes:-"Though all the approaches to bankruptcy may actually exist in circumstances, they admit of being concealed by appear