We should not be doing justice to our proposed system if we did not subject it to a test still more severe than any of the preceding, and one which could not arise under the present currency laws without entailing upon the nation a very serious difficulty in meeting its engagements. We refer to the very possible contingency already alluded to, of our being obliged to discharge some heavy foreign liabilities through the failure of some important article of domestic consumption, or through any other cause, while already embarrassed by an excessive military outlay. The events of the past twelve months, indeed, have indubitably proved that it lies within the competency of a foreign country at any time, when the bullion is at a minimum, to buy up all the marketable English bills on the Continent at a trifling monetary sacrifice, and by transmitting them for discount, entail so sudden a demand for gold upon the Bank as may completely exhaust the treasure in the coffers of that establishment. Now, it can be readily shown that the provisions which we have proposed would altogether preclude the possible occurrence of such a calamity as this. For, supposing such an operation to be effected at a time when the bullion had been already reduced, as just now supposed, to £12,000,000, and supposing £4,000,000 to be the highest probable limit of such a demand, the effect of this sudden drain of an additional £4,000,000 might possibly be to raise the rate of discount momentarily to perhaps 7 per cent., and might thereby produce a contraction in the actual circulation of £1,000,000 or £2,000,000, yet the result upon the issues could hardly be more violent than to reduce them as follows:-- Issued on bullion £8,000,000 ” at 1 per cent. 11,000,000 ” at 2 per cent. 11,000,000 ” at 4 per cent. 4,000,000 ----------- £34,000,000 and as the bullion withdrawn by such an operation should be rapidly recovered, the additional pressure would be very soon relieved, and would pass over without entailing any abatement of confidence in the perfect security of the unrepresented issues[E].