TWO:On the 12th of February Sir James Graham moved for the reduction of the salaries of all persons holding offices under Government, in proportion to the enhanced value of money produced by the Bank Restriction Act, which added to the weight of all fixed payments while it lowered wages and the price of provisions. "Hence," he said, "the miserable state to which the people of this country were now reduced, and the necessity for rigid, unsparing economy; and in that system of economy one great source of retrenchment must be the reduction of the salaries of those who had their hands in the public purse. Justice requires, necessity demands it." Ministers did not dare to resist this motion openly. They evaded it by an amendment, which was unanimously adopted, for an Address to the king, requesting him to order an inquiry to be made into all the departments of the Civil Government, with a view of reducing the number of persons employed in the various Services, and the amount of their salaries. On the 15th Mr. Hume attempted to carry retrenchment into the Army and Navy, moving a resolution to the effect that the former should be reduced by 20,000 men, and the latter by the sum of a million and a half. All the reductions he proposed would have effected a saving of eight millions annually. But neither the Whigs nor the Canning party were disposed to go such lengths. The motion was, therefore, defeated, the minority consisting solely of Radical reformers, who mustered fifty-seven on the division. Another assault on the Government was led on by Mr. Poulett Thompson, who moved for the appointment of a Committee for a Revision of the system of Taxation with a view to saving expense in the mode of collecting the revenue. The motion was resisted by Mr Peel on the ground that such important duties should not be delegated to a fraction of the members of the House. The motion was rejected by a large majority. A few days later, however, Ministers sustained a damaging defeat in the Committee of Supply on the Navy estimates. Two young men, who had been public servants for a few months only, Mr. R. Dundas and Mr. W. S. Bathurst, Junior Commissioners of the Navy, had been pensioned off on the reduction of their offices, the one with 400 and the other with 500 a year. The arrangement was attacked as a gross job and defended upon principle, and Ministers after[309] mustering all their strength were beaten by a majority of 139 to 121, on the motion that those pensions should be struck off. Several other motions, brought forward with a view of effecting retrenchments, were rejected by the House. This movement in the direction of financial reform, no doubt, received an impulse from the resentment of the leading Whigs, whose claims to take part in the Government were ignored by the Duke. But this remark does not apply to the efforts of Mr. Attwood and Mr. Baring, who moved that instead of a gold standard there should be a gold and silver standard, and that the Act for prohibiting the issue of small notes should be repealed. They strengthened their case by an appeal to the facts of the existing distress and commercial depression arising from a restricted currency. On the part of the Government, however, it was argued that a double standard of gold and silver would cause a loss of five per cent, to creditors if debtors were to pay in the silver standardthat the whole country would be a scene of confusion and ruinthat silver never was in practice the standard of the country, and that it never had been actually in a state to be used as a legal tender. Latterly the law had enacted that it should not be a legal tender beyond twenty-five pounds. By weight, indeed, it was a legal tender to any amount, but practically it had become so depreciated that there was no such thing as a standard by weight. Mr. Attwood's resolutions on the currency were negatived without a division.In much the same way the silk industry had been protected by prohibitory legislation, of which the only effect was to convert smuggling into an important trade. Again, the manufacturers petitioned for the removal of the duties upon spun silk, but were eager to exclude foreign manufactured silks. On the other hand, the silk spinners were opposed to the introduction of spun silk, but desired the removal of duties upon raw silk, while the journeymen believed that ruin stared them in the face if foreign manufactured silks were introduced. Robinson, with Huskisson's assistance, decided to admit foreign silk on an ad valorem duty of 30 per cent. At the same time he largely reduced the duties on the raw material. The duty on Indian silk was reduced from 4s. to 3d., that on Chinese and Italian silks from 5s. 6d. to 6d., that on organzine from 14s. 10d. to 7s. 6d. a pound. The manufacturers vowed and protested that they were ruined; in ten years' time they were exporting to France, their former rival, 60,000 worth of manufactured silk.
