Bentley's Quarterly Review Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. THE COMMEBCIAL CRISIS OF 1857 AND THE CUKRENCY. 1. Report from the Select Committee on the Hank Acts, togetlter with the Evidence, $c. 30th July, 1857... more ». 2. Report from the Select Committee on the Bank Acts, together with the Evidence, $c. 1st July, 1858. THE two bulky folios bearing the above titles contain, it is needless to say, a large store of instructive facts and valuable material for commercial history. The character of the subject will, it is to be feared, make them sealed books to the majority. The ' general reader' will shrink from the exertion of perusing them. Even of those whose life is spent in the transactions of money-dealing or commerce, probably but a small number will have the courage or the leisure to explore their contents. But to the well-braced intellect, which takes pleasure in a keen and well-sustained controversy, these volumes will prove by no means unattractive. If the subject of the currency has become somewhat of a bugbear to the public, it is owing to the folly and presumption of those shallow persons who have chosen it for the display of their perverse conceit and intolerable tediousness. In truth, the principles of monetary science form a study peculiarly well adapted to exercise the powers of a well-trained and logical mind. Such readers may derive not only interest but delight from the keen encounter of intellect here exhibited—a great parliamentary discussion, in which, setting aside the accidental distinction of member and witness, such men as Lord Overstone, Sir George Lewis, Mr. Cardwell, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Norman, and Mr. John Stuart Mill are the disputants. The original Committee on the Bank Acts was appointed early in the session of 1857, Sir George Oornewall Lewis being then Chancellor of the Exchequer. The inquiry then in...« less