On the 13th of February Mr. Palliser
made his first great statement in Parliament on the matter of the five-
farthinged penny, and pledged himself to do his very best to carry that
stupendous measure through Parliament in the present session. The City men
who were in the House that night, and all the directors of the Bank of
England, were in the gallery, and every chairman of a great banking
company, and every Baring and every Rothschild, if there be Barings and
Rothschilds who have not been returned by constituencies, and have not
seats in the House by right, agreed in declaring that the job in hand was
too much for any one member or any one session. Some said that such a
measure never could be passed, because the unfinished work of one session
could not be used in lessening the labours of the next. Everything must be
recommenced; and therefore, so said these hopeless ones, the penny with
five farthings, the penny of which a hundred would make ten shillings, the
halcyon penny which would make all future pecuniary calculations easy to
the meanest British capacity, could never become the law of the land.
Others, more hopeful, were willing to believe that gradually the thing
would so sink into the minds of members of Parliament, of writers of
leading articles, and of the active public generally, as to admit of
certain established axioms being taken as established, and placed, as it
were, beyond the procrastinating power of debate.
Pages:
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824