United States or Saint Barthélemy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This suggestion involves, of course, a complete reversal of the principles on which our monetary system has grown up, since it has long been based on a note-issuing monopoly in the hands of the Bank of England.
In other words, the note-issuing business would once more have to be regulated on banking principles and controlled by the price asked, for advances, instead of expressing the helplessness and improvidence of an impecunious and invertebrate Government. In this manner the new departure might be a convenient halfway-house on the way from chaos back to sanity.
In the case of the Bank of England the limit then established was £14,000,000, and it was enacted that if any note-issuing bank gave up its right to a note issue the Bank of England should be empowered to increase its power to issue notes against securities to the extent of two-thirds of the power enjoyed by the bank which was giving up its privilege.
Eight years before Peel's Act was passed two Joint Stock Banks had been founded in London, although the Bank of England note-issuing monopoly still made it impossible for any Joint Stock Bank to issue notes in the London district.
Such a note issue as has been described is possible only in a country exempt from invasion, and free from revolution. During an invasion note-issuing banks must stop payment; a run is nearly inevitable at such a time, and in a revolution too.
It is thus evident that deposit banking was already well founded as a profitable business when Peel, and Parliament behind him, thought that they could sufficiently regulate the country's banking system so long as they controlled the issue of notes by the Bank of England and other note-issuing banks.
Word Of The Day