Chapter V: English Currency Controversies, 1825–1865

The student who turns from the literature of the Heroic Age of British monetary controversy in order to attempt a study of the original sources relating to the antecedents of our modern banking situation will find himself confronted with a jungle of blue books and Parliamentary discussions, pamphlets and tracts and leading articles: a jungle at first sight so impenetrable that he may well despair. For it is characteristic of the period of middle-class ascendancy after 1832 that it produced much heat and little light; many massive volumes of evidence and statistics, but no classic reports; much legislation but, for a long time at least, no final solution of the various problems to be faced.—T. E. Gregory, Select statutes, I, ix.