We are not now dealing with mere surmises, but with well ascertained facts which every intelligent reader may verify from his own experience. That the liberty to issue £14,000,000 of unrepresented notes free of charge, does actually induce the Bank of England, when money is abundant, to make advances at an injuriously low rate of discount is a matter of common observation. For a glaring illustration of this we need only refer to the year 1844, when, a few months after the passing of the Act, so ardent was the competition of the Bank Directors for an increased share of discounts, that they even forced accommodation on the public at 1¾ and 2 per cent. And that the effect of this course was extremely mischievous is now a matter of universal agreement. We have indeed the testimony of the Committee of the House of Lords on Commercial Distress--a testimony fully sustained by the witnesses examined before the Committees of both Houses--to the fact that the operation of this low rate of discount, in imparting an active stimulus to speculations of every kind, was to contribute in no small degree to the severity of the crisis in 1846-7. The mode in which it produces such a result is readily intelligible. It does so in two ways. In the first place, the rise of prices at home, unless it should happen by an extraordinary coincidence to be accompanied by a corresponding rise of prices in all the foreign countries with which we trade, must necessarily have the two-fold effect of putting a check to the export of our own commodities to the foreign markets, and of encouraging an increased importation from those foreign markets to our own. And in the second place, the decline in the rate of interest produces a proportionate rise in the price of public securities; and this rise in the price of securities, unless accompanied by a simultaneous enhancement in the price of foreign securities, has the two-fold effect of preventing foreign capitalists from purchasing our securities and of inducing our own capitalists to sell out their securities at home and purchase in the foreign market. Now, the effect of both of these operations--the one on the relation between our imports and exports, and the other between domestic and foreign securities is to necessitate the transmission of the unfavourable balance in treasure to those foreign countries from which we have obtained the increased securities and imports. The ultimate result therefore of the low rate of interest is in both respects an exportation of gold, and this exportation of gold is so serious an evil that it becomes an essential object, in currency legislation, to adopt every possible precaution against any occurrence that might unnecessarily induce or aggravate it.