[10][11] The Act was a victory for the British Currency School, who argued that the issue of new banknotes was a major cause of price inflation.

Although the Act required new notes to be backed fully by gold or government debt, the government retained the power to suspend the Act in case of financial crisis, and this in fact happened several times: in 1847[12] and 1857, and during the 1866 Overend Gurney crisis.

[15][16] The Bank Notes (Scotland) Act 1845 adopted a year later was more lenient, allowing banks in Scotland to issue more than their 1845 circulation amount, as long as the additional circulation was backed pound-for-pound with gold reserves at head office.

[19] The Cambridge economic historian Charles Read has argued that this legislation reduced Britain's fiscal capacity to pay for humanitarian relief during the Great Famine in Ireland (1845–1852),[20] and that it also made the financial crises of 1847, 1857 and 1866 worse than they would otherwise have been.

[21][22] (More traditional explanations for the UK Government's decisions to withhold relief and intervention are given in the article about the famine.)