quickly subsided when the Act was suspended, sufficient proof that the Act had, in great measure, produced it. See, then, for what we have to thank legislative meddling. During ordinary times Sir R. Peel’s Act, by obliging the Bank of England, and occasionally provincial banks, to keep more gold than they would otherwise have kept (and if it has not done this it has done nothing), has inflicted a tax on the nation to the extent of the interest on such portion of the gold-currency as was in excess of the need: a tax which, in the course of the last thirteen years, has probably amounted to some millions. And then, on the two occasions when there have arisen the crises that were to {341} have been prevented, the Act, after having intensified the pressure, made bankrupt a great number of respectable firms which would else have stood, and increased the distress not only of the trading but of the working population, has been twice abandoned at the moment when its beneficence was to have been conspicuous. It has been a cost, a mischief, and a failure. Yet such is the prevailing delusion that, judging from appearances, it will be maintained! “But,” ask our opponents, “shall the Bank be allowed to let gold drain out of the country without check? Shall it have permission to let its reserve of gold diminish so greatly as to risk the convertibility of its notes? Shall it be enabled recklessly to increase its issues, and so produce a depreciated paper-currency?” Really, in these Free-trade days, it seems strange to have to answer questions like these; and, were it not for the confusion of facts and ideas which legislation has produced, it would be inexcusable to ask them.