REJECTION OF THE UNITARIAN MARRIAGE ACT, ETC.
The Unitarian marriage act was this year again rejected, although supported in the lords by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Lichfield, and Lord Liverpool. The same fate was awarded Mr. Serjeant Onslow’s bill for the repeal of the usury laws, though Mr. C. Wynne stated that not only himself, but the chancellor of the exchequer, and most of the cabinet ministers, were favourable to their abolition. Ministers had left the house when the subject was discussed, anticipating that the division on the bill would not take place till a late hour, and that their presence was not necessary for its success. While they were absent the bill was rejected by a majority of forty-five against forty. This decision was owing partly to the arguments of the solicitor-general against the measure. Borrowers, he said, might be divided into three classes: mercantile borrowers, landed borrowers, and persons who might be considered general borrowers; they not belonging to either of the above classes. Mercantile borrowers, he continued, generally obtained a loan to profit by it. They did not borrow from necessity, but to trade; and if they could make ten or twelve per cent, on the borrowed money, there was no reason why they should not pay the lender seven or eight per cent. But was there, he asked, any landed proprietor so ignorant, as not to see, that, if the monied man could lend to the trade, at a higher rate than five per cent., he would not lend to him at that sum. It was one advantage to the lender, that he could recall his capital at pleasure, or get it back at a short notice. Now when a man lent capital to a trader, he was generally enabled to command the use of it when he pleased; but if he lent his money on land he could not do this: there was all the trouble and inconvenience of a mortgage; he could not recall it for two or three years; and therefore in proportion as he could not command the use of his capital when he lent it to the landowner, he would make him pay a higher rate of interest for it than the trader. He believed he was not wrong when he stated that eight out of every ten estates in the kingdom were loaded with debt. Now under what circumstances did the country gentlemen borrow money? Was it to employ it at some seasonable crisis, when by prudence and dexterity he might obtain vast profit? No. The benefits which he could receive as its produce were fixed: he never could obtain from a borrowed sum beyond a determined amount. Could any one say, therefore, that the repeal of the usury laws would be beneficial to the latter class? But if the terms of borrowing were so unfavourable to the landed class, what expectation could the general borrower entertain of being able to obtain a loan under any other than oppressive terms? These persons generally stood in need of only small sums; their necessities were pressing, and therefore they were exposed to the most grinding demands. They could have no choice but to submit to the terms imposed upon them, be they never so oppressive.