CONTENTS OF VOLUME LVIII.

VOL. 58, No. 1.] LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1826. [Price 6d.

The law is, that every man shall pay his debts in gold and silver. The law is, that every bank shall pay its notes in gold and silver. The law is, that no paper money, of any sort, is a legal tender. The law is, that, if any banker tender you Bank of England paper, and refuse to give you sovereigns, for his notes, you may refuse the notes, and bring an action against the banker, and that if the notes which you present for payment amounts to ten pounds, or upwards, you may arrest the banker, who thus attempts to shuffle you off with Bank of England notes. The law is, that silver is legal tender to the amount of forty shillings, but to no higher amount. This is the law, relating to these matters; and, therefore, if men be ruined, or even starved, in consequence of their holding bank notes, the fault is their own, and not that of the law or the government.

TO

THE PEOPLE OF ESSEX.

ON THE DANGERS ATTENDING PAPER MONEY.

Kensington, 29th March, 1826.

MY FRIENDS,

THERE is this good in suffering, that it has a tendency to make men wiser than they were before they suffered; and, supposing you to be like other men, I may, I hope, congratulate you on a vast increase of wisdom, in the course of the last four months. But, still I

deem it my duty to address you on the dangers attending papermoney, and to endeavour to induce you to rely on no sort of money, except the King's coin, a piece of which his Ministers have expressed their desire that every poor man should have in his pocket. I address myself to you in particular, because certain A

Printed and Published by WILLIAM COBBETT, No. 183, Fleet-street.
[ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL.]

and his people to the public? They do no work of any sort; they produce nothing, nor do they

transactions in your county point you out to me as persons who are, just at this time, peculiarly liable to be deceived. You have seen a improve the worth of any thing great deal of the breaking of that is produced by others. "They banks; you have seen also a great toil not, neither do they spin"; deal of the efforts to prop them and, if not "arrayed quite like up; you have felt the effects of SOLOMON in all his glory," I this banking work, which has strongly suspect, that Solomon, in ruined many thousands of you; all his glory, never had, at any but, still, you want to know a one time, so large a quantity of little more of the nature of the "FINE OLD WINES" as is thing, called a bank. now advertised for sale at the You find people enough to say, house of your late banker, Mr. that "banks are very good things," CRICKITT; and, I could almost that "the notes are a great ac- venture to take my oath, that Socommodation"; and the like. LOMON never spent ten thousand Strange assertions! Can bank-pounds on an election, and that, notes cause the land to produce too, taken by him out of a bank, food? Can they create any thing? No; but, they can, and they do,

in which he had not one single farthing..

cause one man's property to pass Here, my friends, is one of the to another, without the latter giv-great causes of the sufferings of ing any thing for it. They can this nation; one great cause of cause enormous robbery, and the increase of the paupers, of screen the robber from punish- the thefts, of the size of the gaols, ment. Suppose me to be a banker; poor-houses, mad-houses, and of suppose me to have put nothing into my bank; suppose me to get a horse from a farmer and to pay him in some of my notes, knowing, at the same time, that my notes represent no property at all. Why should I, if I can get a horse in this way, run the risk of being hanged for horse-steal- Mr. CRICKITT, in his examinaing? Of what use are a banker tion, is, in the newspapers, re

those horrid scenes of deplorable misery and starvation, which we daily behold. Somebody must lose, somebody must suffer, in consequence of the gains of those who thrive by paper-money; and, at last, a large part of this suffering falls on the working class.