We have, evidently, not yet done with experiments in the currency; we have undergone some heavy treatment, and withstood not a few violent shocks in that respect; but not having materially improved our condition, the doctors meditate further operations, to which, no doubt, we shall by-and-by have to submit with whatever courage and grace we can muster. With this prospect before our eyes, it may be instructive to look back to the opinions entertained of former theories, and mark for a moment the vain confidence with which security and success were predicted from their introduction. It may be too much to suppose, that by reminding legislators and ministers of state of the disappointment and failure of their former hopes and prognostications, we shall arm them with resolution enough to resist for the future all novel discoveries and untried expedients. We may, however, succeed in quickening their minds to a due sense of the value of caution, and at least make them somewhat slower than they have been in the adoption of extreme measures. On this account it is that the space here devoted to Mr. Ricardo's cure for a deranged currency has been so considerable; and the same reason renders it necessary to particularize the opinions entertained of it by both houses of Parliament.

The committee of the Lords, of which Lord Hardwicke was chairman, spoke of the plan as follows: "These considerations have led the committee to examine, with particular attention, a plan which has been suggested to them, and which, as it will appear by the evidence, is viewed in a very favourable light by many persons well qualified to form a judgment upon such a subject.

"The leading principle of this plan is, to restore to the country, by the speediest and safest means, a metallic standard, as the regulator of its paper currency, by permitting the Bank to pay its notes in gold bullion, at the Mint price, instead of gold coin.

"Various advantages appear to the committee to attend this plan, in preference to a simple resumption, in the first instance, of cash payments by the Bank. It establishes, equally with cash payments, the principle and the salutary control of a metallic standard, while it affords the best prospect of avoiding or diminishing many of the inconveniences which are by many persons apprehended from that measure. It exempts the Bank from the obligation of providing a quantity of gold, necessary to replace, in case the public should prefer coin to paper, all the smaller notes, to the amount, probably, of fifteen or sixteen millions, which are now circulated in London and in the country; and, therefore, by relieving the bullion market from this demand, it prevents that augmentation of the price of gold which might be the consequence of large purchases of that article made in a short space of time, under the pressure of a necessity publicly and previously known; and it continues to the Bank, and, therefore, to the nation at large, all the advantages to be derived from the employment of a capital, equal to the amount of all the small notes in circulation, whether of the Bank of England or country Banks. In the one case this capital would still be, as it now is, employed in the support and extension of agriculture, and of commerce, whether foreign or domestic; in the other, it would be merely an addition to the dead stock of the country, producing neither profit nor advantage."

The Commons' committee, of which Sir It. Peel was chairman, was still more earnest in its language.

"By requiring the Bank to pay a given quantity of notes in standard gold at the Mint price, a security against fluctuation in the value of the paper currency will be provided, of the same nature with that which payments in specie afforded previously to the Restriction Act. If the issues of the Bank shall, at any time, exceed the amount to which they must be limited, in order to maintain their value on a par with gold, the Bank will he subjected to an immediate demand for gold, and will naturally have recourse, as before the restriction, to the contraction of the issues of their paper.

"The chief recommendation of this plan, in the opinion of the committee, is, that it will enable the Bank to pay their notes in gold at a much earlier period than they could pay them in the present gold currency. There cannot, while this plan is acted upon, be any demand for gold for the purposes of internal circulation; and whatever quantity it would be necessary to provide with the view of replacing the small notes at present in circulation, may therefore be dispensed with. That portion of capital which must otherwise he applied to the purchase of an expensive and unproductive instrument of commerce, will be less available for the employment of productive labour; or at any rate time will be afforded, during the operation of the plan, for the gradual abstraction of that capital and for the accumulation of such a stock of the precious metals, as may enable the Bank with perfect safety to supply a metallic currency."

We have now explained the plan itself; we have given a summary of the reasoning upon which it was based, and we have shown what were the opinions pronounced upon it by the most competent judges and in the highest quarters. It was announced to the public by the inventor as "An Expedient to bring the English Currency as nearly as possible to Perfection;" and in almost every direction to which the public could look for an opinion to guide them in coming to a right conclusion upon the subject, it was stoutly maintained that our currency would be placed by it upon such a footing as it never had been before; that the Bank directors would no more repeat their old sins of avarice and capriciousness; that they would now be compelled to conduct all their operations with rectitude and consistency; that we should have no more panics; no more runs for gold; no further extreme oscillations in the value of money; no sudden expansions and contractions of the currency; the use of gold was to be economised to the nicest point of safety, while the issue of banknotes was to flow in that gentle level, which was to keep the stream of the circulation, like the volume of water in the Thames, so prized by the poet as the model of good poetry.