{338} excessive issue followed from their legalized inconvertibility. Yet, though these facts were long ago established by a committee of the House of Commons, the defenders of the “currency-principle” are actually blind enough to cite this multiplication of sixpenny promises-to-pay, _as proving the evils of an unregulated currency_! Returning now to the case of the Bank of England, let us pass at once to the Act of 1844. While still a protectionist—while still a believer in the beneficence of law as a controller of commerce—Sir Robert Peel undertook to stop the recurrence of monetary crises, like those of 1825, 1836, and 1839. Overlooking the truth that, when not _caused_ by the meddlings of legislators, a monetary crisis is due, either to an absolute impoverishment, or to a relative impoverishment consequent on speculative over-investment; and that for the bad season, or the imprudence, causing this, there is no remedy; he boldly proclaimed that “_it is better to prevent the paroxysm than to excite it_:” and he brought forward the Bank-Act of 1844 as the means of prevention. How merciless has been Nature’s criticism on this remnant of Protectionism, we all know. The monetary sliding-scale has been as great a failure as its prototype. Within three years arose one of these crises which were to have been prevented. Within another ten years has arisen a second of these crises. And on both occasions this intended safeguard has so intensified the evil, that a temporary repeal of it has been imperative. We should have thought that, even without facts, every one might have seen that it is impossible, by Act of Parliament, to prevent imprudent people from doing imprudent things; and, if facts were needed, we should have thought that our commercial history up to 1844 supplied a sufficiency. But a superstitious faith in State-ordinances disregards such facts. And we doubt not that even now, though there have been two glaring failures of this professed check on over-speculation—though the evidence conclusively {339} shows that the late commercial catastrophes have had nothing whatever to do with the issue of bank-notes, but, as in the case of the Western Bank of Scotland, occurred along with diminished issues—and though in Hamburg, where the “currency principle” has been rigidly carried out to the very letter, there has been a worse crisis than anywhere else; yet there will remain plenty of believers in the efficiency of Sir R. Peel’s prophylactic.