ABSTRACT
Your Committee must next refer to the confirmation and sanction which all their reasonings receive from the labours of the Committee of this House, which was appointed in a former Parliament to examine into the causes of the great depreciation of the Irish Exchange with England in 1804. Most of the mercantile persons who gave evidence before that Committee, including two Directors of the Bank of Ireland, were unwilling to admit that the fall of the Exchange was in any degree to be ascribed to an excess of the paper currency arising out of the restriction of 1797; the whole fall in that case, as in the present, was referred to an unfavourable balance of trade or of payments; and it was also then affirmed, that “Notes issued only in proportion to the demand, in exchange for good and convertible securities payable at specific periods, could not tend to any excess in the circulation, or to any depreciation.” This doctrine, though more or less qualified by some of the Witnesses, pervades most of the evidence given before that Committee, with the remarkable exception of Mr. Mansfield, whose knowledge of the effects of that over issue of Scotch paper, which has just been mentioned, led him to deliver a more just opinion on the subject. Many of the Witnesses before the Committee, however unwilling to acknowledge the real nature of the evil, made important concessions, which necessarily involved them in inconsistency. They could not as practical men, controvert the truth of the general position, that “the fluctuations of Exchange between two countries are generally limited by the price at which any given quantity of Bullion can be purchased in the circulating medium of the debtor country, and converted into the circulating medium of the creditor country, together with the insurances and charges of transporting it from the one to the other.” It was at the same time admitted, that the expense of transporting Gold from England to Ireland, including insurance, was then under one per cent; that before the restriction, the fluctuations had never long and much exceeded this limit; and moreover, that the exchange with Belfast, where Guineas freely circulated at the time of the investigation by that Committee, was then 1¼ in favour of Ireland, while the Exchange with Dublin, where only paper was in use, was £.10. per cent against that country. It also appeared from such imperfect documents as it was practicable to furnish, that the balance of trade was then favourable to Ireland. Still however, it was contended, that there was no depreciation of Irish paper, that there was a scarcity and consequent high price of Gold, and that the diminution of Irish paper would not rectify the Exchange. “The depreciation of Bank paper in Ireland (it was said by one of the Witnesses, a Director of the Bank of Ireland) is entirely a relative term with respect to the man who buys and sells in Dublin by that common medium; to him it is not depreciated at all; but to the purchaser of a Bill on London, to him in that relation, and under that circumstance, there is a depreciation of ten per cent.” By thus avoiding all comparison with a view to the point in issue, between the value of their own paper and that of either the then circulating medium of this Country or of Gold Bullion, or even of Gold coin then passing at a premium in other parts of Ireland, they appear to have retained a confident opinion, that no depreciation of Irish paper had taken place.
