Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt:... Speeches of the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel, Bart., in the House of Commons, May 6th and 20th, 1844, on the Renewal of the Bank Charter, and the State of the Law respecting Currency and Banking. speeches, Etc. May 6, 1844. Sir R. Peel rose, and addressing Mr. Greene, who was in the chair, said--Sir, there are occasionally questions of such vast and manifest importance, and which prefer such a claim, I should rather say such a demand, on the attention of the House, that all rhetorical prefaces, dilating on their magnitude or enjoining the duty of patient consideration, are superfluous and impertinent. I shall, therefore, proceed at once to call the attention of this committee to a matter which enters into every transaction of which money forms a part. There is no contract, public or private, --no engagement, national or individual, which is unaffected by it. The enterprises of commerce, the profits of trade, the arrangements made in all the domestic relations of society, the wages of labour, pecuniary transactions of the highest amount and of the lowest, the payment of the national debt, the provision for the national expenditure, the command which the coin of the smallest denomination has over the necessaries of life, are all affected by the decision to which we may come on that great question which I am about to submit to the consideration of the committee. The circumstances under which the duty imposed on me arises are shortly these: --In the year 1833, an Act of Parliament passed which continued to the Bank of England certain privileges until the year 1855, and after the year 1855 until Parliament should determine to give one year's notice to the Bank of its determination to revise the charter. Before, however, the expiration of.