"I think there has been some misapprehension as to the objects contemplated by the Act of 1844. I do not deny that one of them was the prevention of the convulsions that had theretofore occurred in consequence of the Bank of England not taking due precautions as to the regulation of its issues. I did hope, after the experience of former crises, that the Bank of England would adhere to those principles of banking which the directors acknowledged to be just, but from which they admitted they have departed. (Hear, hear, hear.) I am bound to admit that in that hope, and in that object, I have been disappointed; and I also admit, seeing the number of houses that have been swept away--some of which, I fear, were long insolvent--(Hear, hear)--and others which, being solvent, have suffered from the failure of other houses--I am bound to say that in that object of the Bill I have been disappointed. (Hear, hear.) It was in the power of the Bank to have, at an early period of the distress, raised the rate of discount, and to have refused some of the accommodation they granted between 1844 and 1846. (Hear, hear, hear.) I cannot, therefore, say that the defect is exclusively, or mainly, in the Bill--(Hear, hear)--but my belief is, that executive interference might have been given without the necessity of the authority of the noble lord."--_Morning Post_, Dec. 2, 1847. The observations which have now been made, show that these remarks are not only unfounded, but precisely the reverse of the truth. Had the Bank of England drawn in their discounts, and raised the rate of interest between 1844 and 1846, at the very time when the railway and free-trade work, into which Sir Robert Peel had plunged the nation, was at its height, what must have been the result? Nothing but this: that the catastrophe which has ensued would have come on two years sooner than it has actually done. The Right Hon. Baronet would have been prevented from making his emphatic speech on the admirable effects of his policy, and the diminution of crime, in the opening of the Session of 1846; he would have found the jails and the workhouses full enough, at the period of that glowing eulogium on free-trade policy and its effects. By making liberal advances to railway companies in 1844 and 1845, the Bank of England, and the other banks which followed its example, only enabled the country for a time to do the work upon which Sir Robert Peel had set it. By enabling, by similar advances, the manufacturers for two years longer than they otherwise could have done, to send a large export of manufactures abroad, the Bank, for that period, averted or postponed the catastrophe which must ensue in a commercial state, when its imports, for a series of years, have come greatly to exceed its exports. It is because the contraction of the currency, rendered imperative on the Bank by the Right Hon. Baronet's bill, has disabled our manufacturers from carrying on their operations