Still more astounding, however, is the assumption of these “currency-theorists,” that their doctrines are those of Free-trade. In the Legislature, Lord Overstone, and in the press, the _Saturday Review_, have, among others, asserted this. To call that a Free-trade measure, which has the avowed object of restricting certain voluntary acts of exchange, appears so manifest a contradiction in terms that it is scarcely credible it should be made. The whole system of currency-legislation is restrictionist from beginning to end: equally in spirit and detail. Is that a Free-trade regulation which has all along forbidden banks of issue within sixty-five miles of London? Is that Free-trade which enacts that none but such as have now the State-warrant, shall henceforth give promises-to-pay on demand? Is that Free-trade which at a certain point steps in between the banker and his customer, and puts a veto on any further exchange of credit-documents? We wonder what would be said by two merchants, the one about to draw a bill on the other in return for goods sold, who should be stopped by a State-officer with the remark that, having examined the buyer’s ledger, he was of opinion that ready as the seller might be to take the bill, it would be unsafe for him to do so; and that the law, in pursuance of the principles of Free-trade, negatived the transaction! Yet for the promise-to-pay in six months, it needs but to substitute a promise-to-pay on demand, and the case becomes substantially that of banker and customer.