The Bank are required to furnish the Government with a weekly report of the accounts of the Issue and Banking departments. This report, which is popularly called “The Bank Return,” is published each Thursday afternoon, and is copied in the morning newspapers of Friday, together with the comments and deductions, more or less speculative and intelligent, of the different City editors. The Bank Return, so far as it regards the Issue department, is simplicity itself. Let the reader put one of them before him. On the one side he will find the total amount of notes issued, and on the other the bases of the issue, divided into the “Government debt,” the “other securities” (which together make up the total of £15,750,000, above mentioned), “gold coin and bullion,” and “silver bullion,” if there be any, which is very seldom the case. The simple term “bullion” signifies gold bullion, or gold in bars, which the Bank are compelled to receive from any person tendering it, in exchange for notes, at the rate of £3 17s. 9d. per ounce of 22 parts out of 24 of pure gold. It is evident that the amount of bank notes issued varies in exact proportion to the amount of gold in the Issue Department, the issue against the Government debt and other securities being invariable. Roughly speaking, the contraction or expansion of the circulation indicates a corresponding curtailment or increase in commercial facilities or requirements. Hence the Issue Department return becomes an important guide to the operations of bankers, brokers, and financial firms, by whom it is carefully watched, since the increase or diminution of the stock of gold may be said respectively to be a signal of safety or danger. The receipts or withdrawals of gold in any large quantity by or from the Bank are of two kinds, inland and foreign. The former for the most part occur at certain regular periods of the year, such as the harvest season, Scotch “term-time,” &c. They exercise but a very modified and temporary influence on the money market, for the laws by which they are governed are very fairly understood and recognised, and the amount of gold _actually in the kingdom_ remains unaltered. It is far different, however, with the demand or supply of gold from foreign countries, the importance of which to the financial world is so great that the amount of gold received or delivered by the Bank on foreign account is by them made known day by day, and is duly chronicled in the City articles of the morning papers. The exports and imports of gold (which practically, regulate the note issue) are governed by the state of the foreign exchanges, which are probably a mystery to many of my readers, but which up to a certain point may be readily understood. Approaching the subject as tenderly and in as elementary a manner as possible, I will at once simplify matters by saying that, with a few exceptions (such as regard India, Russia, China, &c.), the foreign rates of exchange represent the