General as the distress is which, under the combined operations of free trade and a fettered currency, has been brought upon the country, there is one circumstance of peculiar importance which has not hitherto, from the efforts of the free-traders to conceal it, met with the attention it deserves. This is the far greater amount of ruin and misery they have brought upon the commercial classes, who supported, than the agriculturists, who opposed them. The landed interest is only beginning to experience, in the present low prices, the depressing effects of free trade. The Irish famine has hitherto concealed or postponed them. London is suffering, but not so much as the provincial towns, from its being the great place where the realised wealth of the country is spent. But the whole commercial classes in the manufacturing towns have felt them for nearly two years in the utmost intensity. It is well known that, during that short period, _one-half_ of the wealth realised, and in course of realisation, in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Glasgow, has perished. There is no man practically acquainted with these cities who will dispute that fact. The poor-rates of Glasgow, which, five years ago, did not exceed £30,000 a-year for the parliamentary city, have now reached £200,000; viz.
Glasgow parish, £90,000 Barony, 70,000 Gorbals, 40,000 -------- £200,000
The sales by shopkeepers in these towns have not, during three years, been a third of their average amount. All the witnesses examined before the Lords' committee on the public distress, describe this panic of autumn 1847 as infinitely exceeding in duration and severity anything previously experienced; and the state of matters, and the intensity of the shock given to public credit, may be judged of by the following entries as to the state of the Bank of England in June 1845 and October 1847, when the law was suspended:--
| | ISSUE DEPARTMENT. | BANKING DEPARTMENT. | | Date. | Notes | Gold and | Notes in | Gold and | | | Issued. | Silver | Reserve. | Silver | | | | Bullion. | | Coin. | +--------+ | | | | | June 7 | £29,732,000 | £15,732,000 | £9,382,000 | £779,000 | | -- 14 | 29,917,000 | 15,917,000 | 9,854,000 | 696,000 | | -- 21 | 30,051,000 | 16,051,000 | 9,837,000 | 587,000 | | -- 28 | 30,047,000 | 16,047,000 | 9,717,000 | 554,000 |