The country banks of England had increased their circulation from L9,920,000 in 1823 to L14,980,000 in 1825, or over fifty per cent., thus stimulating prices, and promoting speculation widely throughout the country.

Immediately following the revulsion at the close of the year 1825, Mr. Huskisson’s free trade policy was advocated in the House of Commons by a vote of 223 to 40.  In the same year lotteries were suppressed in England.  In 1828 branches of the Bank of England were established—­a measure, of course, unpopular among the provincial joint stock banks.

In the year 1832-’3 were brought forward three important measures in Parliament.  One was the abolishment of the death penalty for forgery; another was the modification of the usury laws; the third was the re-charter of the bank.

The last criminal executed for forgery was a man by the name of Maynard, in December, 1829.  Public sentiment had long been opposed to the infliction of this punishment for the offence of forgery, and transportation was now substituted in the prominent cases.  England, at the same time, opened the way for a gradual abolishment of the usury laws.  At first the relief was extended to short commercial paper, afterward to all paper having not over twelve months to run, 1837; and finally, in 1854, the usury laws were removed from all negotiable paper, as well as from bonds and mortgages.

By the new charter of 1833, Bank of England notes were, for the first time, made a legal tender, except at the bank itself.  Joint stock banks were authorized in the metropolis, but were prohibited from issuing notes.

The English work of Mr. Francis is anecdotical in its character.  The American edition conveys to the reader, for the first time, a resume of the leading movements in Parliament on the subject of the bank, and its close connection with the Government finances.  The part which Mr. Pitt, Mr. Canning, Sir Robert Peel, and other distinguished statesmen took in the relations between the bank and the exchequer, is in the supplementary portion of the new edition shown, as well as the views of Lord Althorpe, Lord Ashburton, Lord Geo. Bentinck, Mr. Thomas Baring, Lord Brougham, Mr. Gilbart, Sir James Graham, Lord King, Earl of Liverpool, Jones Loyd, Lord Lyndhurst, Mr. Rothschild, and others who exercised a large influence over the monetary interests of their day.

In the consideration of the banking and currency questions of the day and of the last and present century, it is desirable to have thus brought together in a single work, a continuous history of the institution which has had so large an influence upon the public interests of Europe, and a review of the important circumstances which marked the progress of the bank in its successful efforts to sustain England against foreign enemies and domestic revulsions, an index to the speculative movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when commerce, trade, and the vast monetary interests of Europe and America have been unnecessarily and cruelly involved.