142 THE BANK CHARTER. 



Thus it appears, that without any cause apparent in the state of com- 

 merce at that period the Directors had increased their issues by about 

 3,000,000 in a single year ; and in the following eighteen months, 

 they, with as little cause, withdrew nearly 5,000,000, amounting al- 

 most to one-half of their entire issues but two years before. When, 

 therefore, we know that the bulk of the notes circulating in the kingdom 

 is at all times issued from the Bank of England, that the issues of the 

 country bankers are enlarged or contracted in a corresponding degree 

 by the amount of their accumulation directly or indirectly at the Bank 

 of England, and that therefore this withdrawal of five millions, or half 

 the circulation of the Bank of England, led to the withdrawal of one- 

 half the entire circulation of the kingdom, and therefore to a depre- 

 ciation of fifty per cent, upon the property of every person in this 

 country, we have a fair view of the power of these twenty-four Direc- 

 tors, who reign supreme upon the throne in Threadneedle-street. A 

 similar contraction of the issues of the Bank, to the extent of twenty- 

 three per cent., brought on the commercial distress of 1816, and the 

 more recent and far more calamitous panic and convulsion of 1825, is 

 clearly to be traced to the doors of the Bank of England. Thus, 

 according to Sir Henry Parnell, the notes in circulation were as 

 follows : 



February 15th, 1825. ... 21,000,000 



November 15th. 1825 17,980,620 



Here is a diminution of between three and four millions in the short 

 space of nine months, which too clearly accounts for the causes of the 

 panic, with the ruin of thousands of industrious merchants, manufac- 

 turers, farmers, and mechanics, with all the long train of national 

 misfortune which for the last six dismal years has weighed this country 

 to the earth. 



So clear is this state of things, that we entertain no fear that the Com- 

 mittee upon the Bank Charter will report for the unconditional renewal 

 of this monstrous tyranny. But, in the protraction of the inquiry, we 

 see grounds for alarm that a mere accommodation will take place that 

 the Directors will preserve their dangerous privileges and that the 

 trade in money will not be effectually delivered from the dominion of 

 the Bank. It is in vain to fence in the public with securities against 

 this arbitrary power by any other means than the entire and final abo- 

 lition of the Bank of England. The accumulation in the hands of 

 twenty-four individuals of a capital of twenty millions will be at all 

 times dangerous to the commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of this 

 country, whilst the dispersion of this enormous capital into the numerous 

 banks which will arise upon the ruins of the Bank of England, will faci- 

 litate the purposes of trade in a far more efficacious degree, and remove 

 the danger of oppression to the lesser institutions from one overgrown 

 and all-powerful establishment. Nor will this, or any other measure 

 relieve the present commercial misery of the country without a repeal of 

 that crowning tyranny the one-pound note suppression act. When 

 the nation had been already stabbed by the Directors of the Bank of 

 England in 1826, then, in the following year, did our wise and pro- 

 vident statesmen still further drain the kingdom of the life-blood, com- 

 merce, manufactures, and agriculture a small paper circulation ? We 

 hold that this act was founded upon tyranny, injustice, and a violation 

 of all natural liberty ; for it is not the province of governments to inter- 

 fere with their subjects in the exercise of their commercial occupations ; 



