Lord Hawkesbury spoke exultingly of paper. It is not only, said his lordship, a cleaner, neater, and more por table medium to represent property, but it is the essence of wealth itself. The flourishing state of our com merce, is the cause of this inability to produce specie to answer the demands upon the Bank of England. Mr Sheridan called upon gentlemen, if this was the Lase, to explain how it happened, that the public were of this opinion, and yet rejected it. The public like bank notes as well as guineas ; and yet, while ministers asserted this, they passed a law to protect the Bank against the demands of that public. They passed a law to compel that public to take the paper, which it was pretended was as popular as gold.
The statement of the Bank clearly ascertained their solvency in paper : but with regard to their power, or the prospect of power, of renewing their payments in money, it was far from satisfactory. According to the state of their finances, they stood thus on the 25th of February : Amount of bank notes in circulation, 8,640,2501.
Bills and notes discounted,—cash and 4,18 1,400 bullion,—petty cash in the house, Difference, 4,453,850/.
In this statement, the comparative amount of the dis counted bills, and of the coin and bullion, were not given. This was not satisfactory to the public ; for the main point on which the public alarm had been ground ed, was the inability of the Bank as to real, not nominal money.* A table was indeed drawn up by a I\ lr Allardyce, from which the coin and bullion of the Bank, at their stoppage, was said to be 1,272,000/. This was said to be ascertained,frorn a statement of proportionate increase or diminution of the cash and bullion in the Bank for distinct periods in several years. But the direct sum of their cash and bullion was not given in by the bankers. Allowing, however, that this sum did exist in cash and bullion at the period of stoppage, it gave but a scanty prospect of their speedy resumption of solid payments.
Mr Pitt was charged with having drained the money from the Bank, and sent it abroad in subsidies. He -cplied, that the whole of the transactions of the Bank, or nearly so, were transactions in paper. This answer certainly repelled the direct censure, that he had drained the Bank of gold ; but it still (lid not disprove, that the advances of the Bank to government, the consequences of an expensive war, had occasioned an issue of paper too much disproportioned to the solid money of the country ; that the whole system of our finances was a paper system, and that it had been stretched to a dan gerous length.
In estimating the finances of the year, Mr Pitt stated, that the loan which he should require would amount to eighteen millions, besides five millions and a half of exchequer bills, and thirteen millions and a half of navy bills, which he proposed to fund. Three millions were raised for the assistance of our allies. A levy of 15,000 seamen was ordered to be raised upon the different parishes ; a supplementary militia, to the number of 60,000, and a force of 20,000 irregular volunteer cavalry, was expected to be raised by an act, which obliged the owners of pleasure horses to furnish a certain propor tion of horsemen for the militia. The general fear had hardly been quieted upon the subject of public credit, when it was awakened by a still more alarming danger This was a mutiny on board the channel fleet, which broke out in the mouth of April.
The fleet being entirely in possession of the seamen, delegates met from all the ships in Lord Howe's cabin. Two petitions were presented, in respectful but firm language,—one to the [louse of Commons, the other to the Board of Admiralty,—demanding a small increase of pay, and of the Greenwich pensions, and a redress of sonic grievances ; in all very reasonable demands. These were readily granted by government, and order was restored without a drop of blood being shed. A revolt. of a more licentious nature broke out soon after in the fleet at the Noce, where the seamen, on the refusal of their demands, seized some vessels laden with provi sions, and, mooring their ships across the Thames, threatened to cut off all communication between the mouth of the river and the metropolis. Government, to guard against the worst extremes to which the mu tineers threatened to proc.cd, ordered all the buoys to be removed from the mouth of the Thames, whilst furnaces, and red-hot shot, were kept in readiness at Sheerness, and at Tilbury, in case of the forts being attacked. The firmness of government in persisting to refuse their demands, finally prevailed over these im provident and misguided insurgents, who at length struck the red flag of mutiny, and, after struggles on board several of the ships, the ringleaders (of whom the chief was Richard Parker) were seized by the loyal part of the crews, and put to death after a solemn trial.