Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844. Various
if we express our wonder how any minister who witnessed it, can at this hour have the temerity to return to the charge. Party-spirit, always higher and keener in Scotland than elsewhere, was at once forgotten in the common cause. All ranks, from the peer to the peasant, rose up in wrath at the proposed innovation; and from every county, city, town, village, and corporation in the kingdom, indignant remonstrances were forwarded to the foot of the Throne, and to the Imperial Parliament of Great Britain. It was assuredly a dangerous experiment to make with a proud and jealous people. Old watchwords and old recollections, buried spells which it were safer to leave alone, began to revive amongst us; and many a lighter act of aggression, which had been passed over at the moment in silence, was then recalled and canvassed, and magnified into a serious grievance. In short, Scotland, from the bottom of her heart, felt herself most deeply insulted.
It was at this time that the celebrated letters of Malachi Malagrowther appeared. To the general sentiments contained in that work, we subscribe without the slightest hesitation. Strong language is usually to be deprecated, but there are seasons when no language can be too strong. We think meanly of the man who can sit down to round his periods, and prune his language, and reduce his feelings to the level of cold mediocrity, when he knows that the best interests of his country are at stake, and that he is her chosen champion. And such, most assuredly, and beyond all comparison, was Sir Walter Scott. He went into that conflict like a giant, in a manner that disdained conventionalisms; he neither begged, nor prayed, nor conceded, but took his firm ground on the chartered liberties of his country, and spoke out in such manly and patriotic accents as Scotland has rarely heard since the days of Fletcher and Belhaven. All honour be to his memory! Were it for that good work alone, his name ought for ever to be immortal.
In consequence, ministry were condescending enough to allow a Parliamentary enquiry. Even that was not granted readily, as the prevailing impression in the cabinet seemed to be, that Scottish affairs were of too slight importance to occupy the time of the Imperial Parliament. The old country might be dealt with summarily, and left to remonstrate at its leisure. But the spirited resistance of our representatives, and it is no less incumbent upon us to add, that innate sense of justice in Englishmen, which will not suffer any one to be condemned unheard, procured us the investigation, upon the issue of which we were willing to rest our cause. The Scottish banking system underwent the severest of all scrutinies before committees of the Houses of Peers and of the Commons; and the following was the nature of the reports.
The committee of the House of Commons, after recapitulating the leading points which were brought out in evidence before them, came to the following conclusions – which it is very important to bring before the public now, as they refer not only to the deductions which the committee had formed from the history of the past, but to the special reasons which were to influence the legislature in future and prospective change.
"Upon a review of the evidence tendered to your committee, and forming their judgment upon that evidence, your committee cannot advise that a law should now be passed, prohibiting, from a period to be therein determined, the future issue in Scotland of notes below five pounds: —
"There are, in the opinion of your committee, sufficient grounds in the experience of the past for permitting another trial to be made of the compatibility of a paper circulation in Scotland with a circulation of specie in this country.
"Looking at the amount of notes current in Scotland, below the value of five pounds, and comparing it with the total amount of the paper currency of that country, it is very difficult to foresee the consequences of a law which should prohibit the future issue of notes constituting so large a proportion of the whole circulation.
"Your committee are certainly not convinced that it would affect the cash-credits to the extent apprehended by some of the witnesses; but they are unwilling, without stronger proof of necessity, to incur the risk of deranging, from any cause whatever, a system admirably calculated, in their opinion, to economize the use of capital, to excite and cherish a spirit of useful enterprise, and even to promote the moral habits of the people, by the direct inducements which it holds out to the maintenance of a character for industry, integrity, and prudence.
"At the same time that your committee recommend that the system of currency which has for so long a period prevailed in Scotland, should not, under existing circumstances, be disturbed, they feel it to be their duty to add, that they have formed their judgment upon a reference to the past, and upon the review of a state of things which may hereafter be considerably varied by the increasing wealth and commerce of Scotland, by the rapid extension of her commercial intercourse with England, and by the new circumstances that may affect that intercourse after the re-establishment of a metallic currency in this country.
"Apart from these general observations, bearing upon the conclusions at which they have arrived, there are two circumstances to which your committee must more particularly advert.
"It is evident that if the small notes issued in Scotland should be current beyond the Border, they would have the effect, in proportion as their circulation should extend itself, of displacing the specie, and even in some degree the local currency of England. Such an interference with the system established for England would be a manifest and gross injustice to the bankers of this part of the empire. If it should take place, and it should be found impossible to frame a law consistent with sound and just principles of legislation, effectually restricting the circulation of Scotch notes within the limits of Scotland, there will be, in the opinion of your committee, no alternative but the extension to Scotland of the principle which the legislature has determined to apply to this country.
"The other circumstances to which your committee meant to refer, as bearing materially upon their present decision, will arise in the event of a considerable increase in the crime of forgery. Your committee called for returns of the number of prosecutions and convictions for forgery, and the offence of passing forged notes, during the last twenty years in Scotland, which returns will be found in the appendix. There appears to have been, during that period, no prosecutions for the crime of forgery; to have been eighty-six prosecutions for the offence of issuing forged promissory notes – fifty-two convictions; and eight instances in which the capital sentence of the law has been carried into effect."
This may, on the whole, be considered as an impartial report; and, as it is as well in every case to disencumber a question from specialties, we shall state here that experience has since shown that there has been no tendency whatever to the introduction of Scottish notes into England. With regard to the other special point referred to by the committee – that of forgery – such a thing as a forged bank-note is now unknown in Scotland. The evidence taken before the last committee on banks of issue in 1841, established the fact, that since the improved steel plates were brought into general use, there has never been a forgery of a note. Such being the case, it is unnecessary here to dispute the wisdom of that policy which would leave a great national institution at the mercy of a single forger. The experience of this last month alone might show how wretchedly that test would operate if applied even to the Bank of England.
Setting these specialties aside, the only possibly grounds which this committee saw for any future legislative interference were, "the increasing wealth and commerce of Scotland, the rapid extension of her commercial intercourse with England, and the circumstances which may affect that intercourse after the re-establishment of an English metallic currency." To us the first part of this reservation sounds somewhat like a threat of future bleeding when Scotland shall have become more pursy and plethoric. Nevertheless we are ready to join issue with our opponents on any of these grounds.
The report of the Lords was even more favourable; and, at the risk of being thought tedious, we cannot refrain from inserting their admirable digest of the evidence, which, for candour and clearness, might be taken as a universal model.
"With respect to Scotland, it is to be remarked, that during the period from 1766 to 1797, when no small notes were by law issuable in England, the portion of the currency in Scotland in which payments under five pounds were made, continued to consist almost entirely of notes of £1 and £1, 1s.; and that no inconvenience is known to have resulted from this difference in the currency of the two countries. This circumstance, amongst others, tends to prove that uniformity, however desirable, is not indispensably necessary. It is also proved, by the evidence and by the documents, that