question--“we must not expect to be relieved from the distress, and difficulties, and dangers which overshadow the land, so long as we are determined that the value of the produce of our lands, mines, and manufactures, and the amount of the wages of labour, shall be dependant upon the possession of a few millions more or less of gold coin. Will some stickler for a high metallic standard tell us what proportion the value of the whole of the gold generally to be had in the United Kingdom at one time, bears to the value of all the other property of the country? If this question were satisfactorily answered, it is probable that we should not much longer be “Resolved, Like sugar-loaf turn’d upside down, To stand upon the smaller end,” but rather be disposed to treat this particular metal in the way that we treat all other marketable commodities--namely, suffer it to find its proper level.” It is edifying to remark the different interpretations which are given, by different supporters of the bullion representative system, of the present acknowledged distress and unparalleled tightness in the money markets of Great Britain. Sir Robert Peel--the apostle of the system, upon whose shoulders, we maintain, the primary burden of this enormous responsibility must rest--cannot but admit the fact of the gloomy deficiency; but he falls back upon the ultimate causes. These are, according to his view, over-speculation in railways, joined with a scarcity of food and an increase in the price of cotton. Granting all this to be true, what has that to do with the great question at issue? We are perfectly ready to admit that at the present moment there is an immense demand for money, and that the demand may be owing, in a great measure, to these and similar causes. We know perfectly well that if there exists a drain upon this country for gold, in order to purchase from abroad the supply of food which is deficient in consequence of the scarcity at home, the currency must necessarily be contracted, so long as a five-pound note of the Bank of England, or of any other bank, is held to be, in the eye of the law, not the representative of so much real property--be it land, or stock, or iron--but the eidolon or shadow of five golden coins of a certain weight and fineness, which cannot escape from the empire without annihilating the existence of the subsidiary paper. What we complain of in effect is this, that the whole enormous property of the three kingdoms should be represented merely by the insignificant and insufficient issue of thirty-two millions in bank-notes, and that the whole remainder of the currency is entirely metallic. For although there may certainly at times be a larger amount of paper in circulation, that paper, beyond the thirty-two millions, must be represented by bullion in the bank, and if the latter be withdrawn, the representative issue must be recalled. So that, by a