The question was whether the documents that suspended gold convertibility in Britain in 1797 and 1931 wrote down what would end the suspension. They did, in different forms, and the difference is the contribution. The Minute of 1797 named a procedure: until Parliament's sense could be taken. By 1810, by the Bullion Committee's account, the law named an event: six months after a definitive peace. The committee named a date, two years, peace or war, and argued that an end tied to an undatable event endangered confidence in the return. Thornton defended its renewal as resting on the circumstances of the time and on no principle that necessarily implied permanence. The Act of 1931 named a procedure in the executive's own hands, a proclamation, with no condition, date or parity, and gave a fixed term only to the Treasury's power over the exchanges.
For the debate over the gold standard as a rule with an escape clause, the finding is that the order of 1797 wrote no escape clause, that the law the committee describes in 1810 wrote one as an event, and that the committee argued for writing it as a date on grounds of credibility; the Act of 1931 was written as an exit, not as a clause of a continuing rule. Bordo and Kydland's reading, in the form its note gives, does not say what form an expected return must take; the committee's report of 1810 shows that the form mattered to the committee. The golden-fetters reading values leaving; the Act of 1931 is written so as not to bind its authors to return. Neither reading is settled by the texts, and the texts do not settle whether either suspension was wise.
For the modern records, the finding is that both keep dates and caution, and both lose what the actors wrote about the end. One supplies with hindsight an end year the actors never wrote, and a reader of the record for what the act promised would take that year for a promise.
The limits are serious. All four primary texts are uncorrected machine readings, quoted only in the passages listed in advance and otherwise paraphrased. The Minute is cut at both ends; Thornton and the Bullion Report are read in excerpts. No text at hand records what Parliament did with the committee's proposal, when cash payments resumed, or whether a proclamation under the Act of 1931 ever came. No text measures what the public expected. The Skeptron records are modern summaries of modern institutional histories, and the ledger's readings of them, one model run twice, describe the summaries, not the events. The secondary works are described only as far as their reading notes go, and their placement in the debates is this article's own.
Further research would read the statutes that continued the Restriction between 1797 and 1810, which the committee mentions and the evidence here does not hold, to see when the end was first tied to peace and in what words; the statute or proclamation, if any, that ended it; and the parliamentary debates on the Act of 1931, to see whether anyone asked for a condition or a date and what answer was given. It would set those texts beside the records of other suspensions, among them those of the Act of 1844 that Fetter's note names, to see whether the three forms of written end recur and whether any pattern joins the form of the end to what the suspension became. A reading of that kind would not measure expectations either. It would show what each authority offered the public to form them on.
Appendix: Ledger Figures Used
The figures below come from the study's table of its own fields. They describe the Skeptron records, not the primary texts. A cell is settled when both codings chose the same value; otherwise it is reported as unsettled.
| Case | act | act kind | temporary | exit named | outcome of term | dates apart | figure | bearer named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Bank Restriction | yes | suspension-or-closure | term-stated | observable | ended-as-stated | unsettled | no-figure | not-named |
| Britain Leaves Gold | yes | suspension-or-closure | unsettled | not-named | not-said | not-named | no-figure | not-named |
Among the twenty-four cases the study reads closely, the cell exit named stands at not-named 14, unsettled 4, observable 4, not-applicable 1, vague 1; the cell temporary at not-said 12, unsettled 7, term-stated 3, not-applicable 1, temporary-no-term 1; the cell outcome of term at not-said 20, unsettled 2, ended-as-stated 1, not-applicable 1; the cell bearer named at not-named 17, unsettled 5, not-applicable 1, named 1. The Bank Restriction is the one close-read case whose outcome of term is ended-as-stated.
Across all eighty-four cases, the study's hypotheses that bear on this article stand as follows, in the study's words. F1 (in most cases that show an act, the case's own text, apart from the studio's recurring sentences, does not name an observable condition, date or event on which the act would end or be revised): supports on the strict reading (supports 28, against 4, unclear 29, not applicable 23; share 88%) and on the lenient reading (supports 30, against 6, unclear 8, not applicable 40; share 83%). F2 (in most cases that present an act as temporary and say what became of it, the act lasted longer than first said or became permanent): unclear on the strict reading (supports 0, against 0, unclear 5, not applicable 79) and on the lenient reading (supports 0, against 1, unclear 3, not applicable 80; share 0%). F5 (in most cases that show an act, the case's own text does not name who bore the loss or the cost while the act was in force or not yet taken): supports on the strict reading (supports 31, against 1, unclear 29, not applicable 23; share 97%) and on the lenient reading (supports 35, against 3, unclear 6, not applicable 40; share 92%).
Before coding, the study registered the prediction that F2 would apply to fewer than ten cases and be supported among them, naming the Bank Restriction, Britain's suspension of gold and the closing of the gold window. F2 came out unclear. Section 4.4 gives one reason visible in these two records: the record of the Restriction gives only a retrospective period, so there is no first-said term against which to measure a longer one, and the record of 1931 was not settled as presenting its act as temporary.
Cases whose record lets a later reader judge an emergency act by its own end (an act presented as temporary; an observable condition of its end named; who bore its cost named; two dated moments named): 1 of 42 (2%); neither of the two records read here is that case.