ABSTRACT
The cause of the monetary malady of 1847, one thing is evident, that it was not anticipated by those who would be deemed most competent to form an accurate judgment on such a topic. The ministers themselves were clearly taken by surprise; indeed, with a commendable ingenuousness, they omitted no opportunity of impressing upon the country their astonishment and perplexity. Lord George Bentinck was greatly opposed to this view, that the ‘monetary difficulty’ was occasioned by investments in railway enterprise. He broke ground upon this head on the night of the 25th of April, when the chancellor of the exchequer made his first and unsuccessful attempt to pass the vote for the Irish railways. Mr. Goulburn who, in the debate of the 30th of April on the government grant for Irish railways, first threw out the idea in parliament, that the ‘monetary difficulty’ was mainly occasioned by the conversion of the floating capital of the country into fixed capital.
