II
For many years in England every transaction had been carried on in paper. Individuals had borrowed money in it, and had received this money in bank-notes. If they were called upon to repay it in gold, they paid twenty-five per cent. beyond the capital they had received. On the other hand, if individuals had purchased annuities, the seller, whether the Government or an individual, had to pay them twenty-five per cent. more than they had purchased.
The resumption of cash payments, therefore, could not take place without great individual hardship and great public loss. There can be no doubt, also, that paper money afforded great facilities for trade; and that the sudden withdrawal of these facilities might be felt throughout every class of the population.
Thus, although Mr. Horner brought the subject before the House of Commons with great ability in 1811, it was not till 1819, when the war had ceased, and the public mind in general had been gradually prepared for terminating a situation which could not be indefinitely prolonged, that the ministers intimated their intention to deal with it by the appointment of a select committee, of which Mr. Peel was named the chairman.
Up to this period, it is to be observed, the resumption of cash payments could not have been carried; and up to this period Mr. Peel and his father, who both voted against Mr. Horner, had opposed the resumption. But the question was probably now ripe, so to speak, for being dealt with. It was a matter, therefore, of practical consideration, and Mr. Peel reconsidered it; and on the 20th of May it was curious to see the venerable Sir Robert representing the ideas of his time, and coming forward with a petition in favour of paper money; and his son, the offspring of another epoch, rising, after the father had sat down, to propose a measure by which paper money (I speak of paper money not immediately convertible into gold) was to be abolished; and avowing, as he said, “without shame and remorse,” a thorough change of opinion.
His proposals compelled the Government to repay the sums which it owed to the Bank, and compelled the Bank to resume cash payments at a date which the Bank anticipated by resuming them in 1821.
Of the necessity of these measures there can be no doubt; at the same time they were calculated, as I have said, to produce momentary discontent and distress, and already much discontent and distress existed.
There was, indeed, a dark period in our history to which I have already alluded in these biographical sketches, but Peel (luckily for him) was out of office during the greater portion of that gloomy time, and never made himself prominent in it except once, when called upon as a neighbour to defend the character of the magistrates on that day still memorable, in spite of all excuses and palliations, as the day of the “Manchester massacre.” He undertook and performed his very delicate task on this occasion with tact and discretion. No one, indeed, ever spoke in a less unpopular manner on an unpopular subject. Far superior to Mr. Canning, in this respect, from that calm, steady, and considerate tone which never gives offence, and which, laying aside the orator, marks the statesman, he neither attempted to excite anger, nor ridicule, nor admiration; but left his audience under the impression that he had been performing a painful duty, in the fulfilment of which he neither expected nor sought a personal triumph.