TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CURRENCY—EQUITABLE ADJUSTMENT.
Mr. WESTERN has addressed a letter to his constituents, in which he exprisses an opinion, that " neither merchant nor manufacturer will make a profit till manufactures return to a high money price." The corollary from this is, that we ought immediately to return to a depre- ciated paper currency ; by which means alone the taxes, and the debt public and private, can be paid without national ruin. The propriety of a paper currency is one question, and of a paper currency of fifteen shillings to the pound is another. What advantage a depreciated cur- rency would afford, we cannot well see ; nor why it must be of paper. To raise the nominal value of the sovereign to 1/. 6s. 8d., would, we should suppose, answer all the purposes of sinking the real value of the one pound note to fifteen shillings. Giving up the materiel of the currency, however, what would its depreciation effect ? The man who owed a hundred pounds would save twenty-five, the man to whom a hundred pounds was owing would lose twenty-five ; and as the debts and credits of the community are the same, the Only result of this grand scheme would be to take the burden from one shoulder and lay it on the other : the weight would press with precisely the same power as before, although not in the same place. But the taxes would be diminished, which every body owes ! True, and for that very reason the proposal is not fit to be entertained by an enlightened Government. The diminution would not affect any one who serves the public ; for if his pay were too small after the change, it must of course be raised—if it were not, it is evidently too high at present, and ought to be lowered by a direct process. The only persons that the depreciation would really and permanently affect, are the fundholders. We have no ob- jection to the lowering of the dividends,---perhaps it may come to that at last : but if it must be done, for Heaven's sake, let it be done openly. Dco't let us go to work after a pickpocket fashion. If we have bor- rowed money which we cannot pay, and must compound with our creditors, let us act like respectable insolvents—call them together, submit our balance-sheet, and offer them ten or fifteen shillings in the pound, with the best security for the payment we can procure.
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