t 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.

The letter addressed by Secretary Chase, of the Treasury Department, to
the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means of the House of
Representatives, and to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance,
under date June 7th,