materially exceed 4 per cent., the Bank would be placed in a position to afford any further accommodation that might be required by the public, would effectually prevent the recurrence of any apprehension as to the possible exhaustion of the Bank’s available resources. We will now proceed to the case in which the deficiency of currency is produced by an actual drain of the precious metals. Such a drain may obviously arise from a variety of causes too numerous to specify. But there are three cases which are not only in themselves the most important, but which also serve as fair representatives of the remainder. These three are, first, a drain arising out of general high prices at home, originally produced by an excess of currency and great overtrading; secondly, the exportation of gold to pay for some staple article of food or manufacture, caused by the deficient supply of such article at home; and thirdly, the maintenance of a large military expenditure abroad during time of war. The first of these was the main cause of the crisis of 1825; the second was the chief, but not the exclusive, agent in producing the pressure of April, 1847; the third is now in operation, and should the war prove of long continuance, may possibly subject the present system to as severe a test as that of October, 1847, provided the Act should not in the mean time undergo amendment. To take the case of a drain produced by over speculation first. We have already seen that one operation of the present currency system is, either directly to produce a drain whenever money is redundant, or else materially to aggravate it if produced by other agencies. We have now to consider the effect of another part of the same system, which comes into operation when the drain has taken place, and money is deficient. It is a generally admitted principle, that in such a case as this, in which the drain has been occasioned by a low rate of interest and high prices, there is nothing but a rise in the rate of interest, and a fall in prices, that can remedy the evil and recover the exported treasure. But it by no means follows that prices must necessarily fall as much below, as they had previously risen above their average, or that the rate of interest must rise as much above, as it had previously fallen below its average; as, in this case, the evil produced would be fully equal to that which it was designed to cure. For it must be remembered that the exported treasure will, in its turn, produce an excess of currency in the countries which receive it; and that that excess will necessarily lead to a rise in prices and a fall in the rate of interest, precisely commensurate with the amount received. It will not be necessary, therefore, that prices should fall much below the average at home, in order to stimulate an increased export of commodities to those countries in which prices have risen; nor that the rate of interest should much exceed the average, in order