II. Having thus laid the nation fast in golden fetters, and prevented the possibility of an extension of the currency, for carrying on all undertakings beyond this £32,000,000, save by an augmentation of the gold coin in the country, government next proceeded to give every possible encouragement to railway undertakings, and to pass bills through the legislature for new undertakings of that description, requiring the outlay from 1845 to 1848 of at least £150,000,000 sterling, _in addition_ to the ordinary expenditure and operations of the country, already raised at that period to an unusual and unprecedented height. III. Having thus, in 1844 and 1845, landed the empire in an extraordinary and unheard-of amount of undertakings, requiring the utmost possible extension of the currency to carry these on, government, in 1846, next proceeded to introduce the free-trade system--allow the free importation of foreign grain, and throw down the protection barriers which had hitherto alone sheltered the native industry of the empire, and prevented, save on extraordinary emergencies, any considerable drain upon its metallic resources. They thus raised the imports to £85,000,000, sent the metallic circulation headlong out of the country, and of course contracted, by the force of the law of 1844, in a similar proportion, its paper circulation. By the two combined, they occasioned such a strain upon the bank that, in the end of October 1847, it was within a few days of stopping payment. Ministers were in consequence obliged to suspend the Bank Charter Act; but not till an amount of bankruptcy had been brought upon the middle class, and misery upon the people, unparalled in the history of Great Britain.