There was no answer to Mr. Canning, but a very practical one. Mr. Perceval thought that the King would shortly recover and keep him in office—and that the Regent, if his Royal Highness had but the power, would forthwith turn him out of it. Such an argument might satisfy a more scrupulous minister. In vain, therefore, was it urged, “If the powers of a monarch are not necessary now, they are never necessary. In consulting the possible feelings of the sick King, you are injuring the certain interests of kingly authority.”
The passions or interests of a faction will ever ride high over its principles; and for a second time within half a century the theory of monarchy received the greatest practical insult from a high Tory minister. That the House of Commons thought a new era at hand was seen by its divisions. On the motion of Mr. Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne) against the “Restrictions,” the majority in favour of Government was but 224 to 200.
A variety of circumstances, however, to which allusion will presently be made, prevented the general expectation from being realized. The Government remained, but it was not a Government that seemed likely to be of long duration. On one important question Mr. Canning almost immediately opposed it.
IV.
The report of a committee, distinguished for its ability, had attributed the depreciation in the value of bank-notes to their excessive issue, and recommended a return, within two years, to cash payments. Mr. Canning had belonged to this committee, and had given the subject, however foreign to his customary studies, much attention. The view which he took upon the sixteen resolutions moved by Mr. Horner, May 8, 1811, was, perhaps, the best. To all those resolutions, which went to fix as a principle that a real value in metal should be the proper basis for a currency—a general landmark, by which legislation should, as far as it was practicable, be guided—he assented; that particular resolution, which, under the critical circumstances of the country, went to fetter and prescribe the moment at which this principle should be resumed, he opposed.
Such opposition was unavailing; and History instructs us, by the resolution which Mr. Vansittart then proposed, that no absurdity is so glaring as to shock the eye of prejudiced credulity.
“May 13, 1811.
“Resolution III.—‘That it is the opinion of this committee (a committee of the whole House) that the promissory notes of the company (the Bank) have hitherto been, and are at this time, held in public estimation to be equivalent to the legal coin of the realm, and generally accepted as such.’”
The Chancellor of the Exchequer thus called upon the House of Commons to assert, that the public esteemed, a twenty shilling bank-note as much as twenty shillings; and it had just been necessary to frame a law to prevent persons giving more than £1 and 1 shilling for a guinea, and all the guineas had disappeared from England. It had just been found expedient to raise the value of crown-pieces from 5s. to 5s. 6d. (which was, in fact, to reduce £1 in paper to the value of 18s.), in order to prevent crown-pieces from disappearing also. Persons were in prison for buying guineas at a premium; whilst pamphlets and papers were universally and daily declaring that the notes of the company were not at that time held in public estimation to be equivalent to the legal coin of the realm.