In the first place, they introduced the tariff of 1842, which so materially diminished the duties on importation in this country, and gave so great an impulse to the introduction of foreign articles of all sorts into the consumption of the people, as raised our imports in 1845 to £85,000,000, while our exports were only £53,000,000, exhibiting a balance of £32,000,000 against the country, which of course required to be paid in the precious metals. Secondly, having established this great drain of nearly _thirty millions_ annually on the metallic resources of the country, Sir Robert Peel next proceeded to pass the Bank Charter Acts, for England of 1844, and for Scotland and Ireland of 1845, which limited the bank notes of the empire, issuable on securities, to £32,000,000,[22] and enacted that for every note issued beyond that amount, a sovereign should be in the bank's strong-room to represent it. Thirdly, having imposed these firm restrictions on the increase of the paper circulation, and left no room for an augmentation to meet the growing wants of the community but by an addition to the stores of bullion in the country, and compelled a proportional contraction of the currency when the bullion was withdrawn, the Right Honourable Baronet and his administration next passed railway bills to the amount of above £150,000,000 sterling, to be executed in the next three years, and gave every facility to the undertaking of such projects, by lowering the deposits required from ten to five _per cent._ on the estimated cost of the undertakings. Fourthly, when the strain on the metallic resources of the country was beginning to be felt, from the immense balance of thirty millions in our commerce against us, and the calls on railway shares were becoming considerable, the Right Honourable Baronet next, as a permanent system, not an extraordinary remedy to meet a temporary disaster, introduced a free trade in grain, which was immediately applied by his successors to sugar. He thus sent thirty-three millions, in gold and silver, abroad in fifteen months. The consequence has been that the imports of the empire have probably become _double_ its exports in money value; that a balance of nearly £50,000,000 has this year been sent abroad in payment of articles of import; that the sums paid for grain alone in the three months immediately _following the finest harvest on record_, have exceeded £14,000,000; that nearly all the railways in the country have been stopped from the necessary contraction which, under the existing law, this export of specie occasioned to the currency; that distress of dreadful magnitude pervades the mercantile and manufacturing classes; and that our exports have fallen off at the rate of a million a-month, and our revenue above six millions a-year.