526 THE BAMK CHARTER. 



ever, nor even to have defrayed their expences, because unsustained by 

 the enormous and undue profits from the revenue, which alone have 

 supported the monstrous expences of the mother Bank. Indeed, there 

 is reason to suppose that the whole private department of the business 

 of the Bank of England, consisting of discounts and loans, has been 

 conducted at an extraordinary loss. When viewed in conjunction with 

 the losses by forgery, defalcation, and the expense of management, for 

 the dividends have been paid from the profits of the management of the 

 revenue, with the annuity of 600,000/. from the government, which is 

 usually called the dead weight, and an addition of late years from the 

 previous accumulation of capital, which amounted in 1819 to several 

 millions, but which has since been most deceitfully applied to the 

 keeping up the dividends, producing thereby that undue market price 

 of the stock of the institution, which, upon the expiration of the char- 

 ter, will produce a loss of 70/. in every 200/. to the recent purchasers 

 under this fraudulent and mysterious system. If, therefore, no profit 

 whatever has been hitherto realized from the private sources, to which 

 the operation of reform will undoubtedly confine the future business of 

 the Bank, it is difficult to conjecture whence a dividend upon twenty 

 millions of stock, with a cost for salaries and pensions of 240,000/. per 

 annum, and a rent of 60,000/., the estimated interest of the value of the 

 buildings at 1,100,000/., can possibly be defrayed. It is, indeed, too 

 apparent, that the establishment can exist no longer, when deprived of 

 its enormous and unjust profits from the public revenue ; and since this 

 change is inevitable under a reformed parliament, there being now no 

 longer a Lord Castlereagh, to give away millions of the public money 

 at his own discretion, it becomes the interest of the shareholders in the 

 Bank of Bngland to reflect upon their future prospects, and to decide 

 upon the prudence of petitioning for a renewal of the charter, unaccom- 

 panied by the privileges which alone have rendered it a profitable invest- 

 ment in former years. 



It is, indeed, our opinion, that a renewal of the Charter will be a 

 measure most adverse to the interests of the stockholders, under the 

 circumstances and in the manner in which public opinion will alone 

 tolerate the measure, in these enlightened days of retrenchment and 

 reform. Left to themselves, amidst the cost for directors, clerks, pen- 

 sioners, and rent, with the losses from defalcation, forgeries, and the 

 mismanagement and waste peculiar to all great incorporated bodies, it is 

 probable that no profit whatever, and consequently no dividend would 

 ever result to the shareholders in this huge and corrupt institution. 

 That the directors themselves will accept a renewal of the Charter upon 

 any terms whatever is exceedingly probable, since their enormous 

 salaries would then continue to be paid, whether profit or loss were the 

 portion of the body of proprietors ; and the sum of 2000/. being the 

 utmost stake which any of the directors possesses in the bank, it would 

 not be material whether a smaller or a larger dividend were derivedfrom 

 such an unimportant sum ; or indeed, no dividend at all, would merely 

 occasion to each director a loss of about 80/. or 100/. per annum, whilst 

 he would derive from the institution a certain and unfailing salary of 

 1000/. per annum. And though the preservation of their own enormous 

 salaries are undoubtedly motives sufficient why the Directors should 

 now move heaven and earth for a renewal of the Charter, it becomes, 

 however, the interest of the general proprietors of stock, who have no 



