Most critics will seize on the passage as to the Act, either to attack it or defend it, as if it were the main point.
There has been so much fierce controversy as to this Act of Parliament--and there is still so much animosity--that a single sentence respecting it is far more interesting to very many than a whole book on any other part of the subject.

Two hosts of eager disputants on this subject ask of every new writer the one question--Are you with us or against us?
and they care for little else.

Of course if the Act of 1844 really were, as is commonly thought, the _primum mobile_ of the English Money Market, the source of all good according to some, and the source of all harm according to others, the extreme irritation excited by an opinion on it would be no reason for not giving a free opinion.

A writer on any subject must not neglect its cardinal fact, for fear that others may abuse him.

But, in my judgment, the Act of 1844 is only a subordinate matter in the Money Market; what has to be said on it has been said at disproportionate length; the phenomena connected with it have been magnified into greater relative importance than they at all deserve.