As long as Portugal was on the gold standard, the Bank of Portugal, sought to stabilize the currency at the exchange rate to which the country was committed. Because it was subject to political and other constraints, the Bank carried out discount rate interventions excessively sparingly, although in accordance with what could be termed the contemporary ‘science’ of central banking. Consequently, it had to intervene constantly in the currency markets, usually in covert fashion, repeatedly infringing the gold standard’s ‘rules of the game’, in order to conciliate the needs of convertibility with a frequently unorthodox stance towards the gold standard.