At the same time, if there had been no separation between the two departments, and the Bank of England had been conducted on its old principle, instead of being within one million and a half of stopping, there would have been very nearly £8,500,000 of treasure in your vaults?--We should have had £8,500,000 in our vaults."--_Lords' Report_, 1848. It will be said that the vast importation of grain, in the course of 1847, was a matter of necessity, from the failure of the potato crops in Ireland in the preceding autumn; and that, be the consequences what they may, they cannot be ascribed to Sir Robert Peel or the Free-traders. In one sense this is undoubtedly true. It is certain that the most staunch Protectionists would never have objected to the largest importation of grain, and exportation of sovereigns, in a period such as that of severe and unlooked-for scarcity. It was the precise object of the sliding-scale to admit grain, in periods of scarcity, free of all duty. But what the Free-traders and Sir Robert Peel are chargeable with, is having established a system of currency so fettered and restricted by absurd regulations, that the exportation of sovereigns _led necessarily and inevitably to a contraction of paper accommodation, and a shock to credit over the whole country_; and aggravated the danger by a monstrous regulation, which exposed the bank to the risk of stopping payment when they had still eight millions in gold--enough to have enabled them, perhaps, to go on--at one end of their establishment. They are responsible for the dreadful error of having not only done nothing to extend and secure the currency from being exported or contracted, when they had added so enormously to the internal engagements of the kingdom, but done everything, by the establishment of a permanent system of free trade, and a permanently fettered currency, to secure its reappearance on occasion of every future recurrence of an indifferent harvest, or any continuance of a great importation.