528 THE BANK CHARTER. 



Bank of England, or the Threadneedle-street Joint Stock Banking 

 Company. Thus the Bank of England is generally inaccessible to the 

 mass of the middling traders of the metropolis, who can seldom be 

 known to men in the condition of directors of such an institution, and 

 its discounts are therefore confined to the great mercantile houses, the 

 aristocracy of the city, wealthy capitalists, to whom banking accommo- 

 dation is in reality not an indispensable assistance. The establishment 

 of a national bank will still further increase this evil, for it will be 

 managed by men of habits more aristocratical even than the servitors of 

 the Bank of England, and insolvent lords and dukes will be the persons 

 principally favoured in the business of discounts, by directors who will 

 owe their appointments to the patronage of the great. Considering also 

 the dangerous vicissitudes and panics, which have resulted from the too 

 great power of the Bank of England over all the commercial interests 

 of the country, it is certain that the subdivision and dispersion of its 

 vast capital is our only safeguard from a recurrence of the desolating 

 consequences resulting from one all powerful institution, and the esta- 

 blishment of a national bank upon similar principles, will be in reality a 

 substitution of one tyranny for another. 



But we entertain small hopes that our advice to divide the business of 

 banking into many hands, and to allow the trade in money to flow into 

 the numberless channels of commercial enterprise, will be adopted in a 

 country where an erroneous admiration of the aristocratical accumulations 

 of capital is engraved upon the hearts of men. We clamour for the 

 establishment of a national bank, but do not discern that great masses 

 of money will be thus buried, and dead to the majority of the people ; 

 that the tendency of all national and incorporated bodies is to impoverish 

 the many, and heap up favours on the few ; that privileged institutions 

 are a subtraction from the liberty and the rights of individuals ; and 

 that to diminish the weight, size, and power of government to its natural 

 purpose of protecting individuals from violence and fraud, should be 

 the true policy of a free and enlightened people. The appointment of 

 judges, constables, and soldiers, is almost all the true and beneficial 

 purpose of human government ; and all public trading, or needless inter- 

 ference with trade, is an invasion of the commercial rights of individuals, 

 which the powers were established to protect. The coining of money 

 and the issuing of paper form in reality no part of the original purposes 

 of government, and our whole commercial system, the Board of Trade, 

 the East India Company, the Bank charter, and restrictive duties upon 

 corn, sugar, wines, and innumerable commodities of life, form only one 

 vast and tyrannical usurpation of the rights of individuals in a free 

 community. But we despair of seeing these principles acknowledged, 

 when even our enlightened contemporary of the Westminster Review 

 can maintain such doctrines as the following, which appear in the pre- 

 sent number even of that liberal and invaluable work : " Why does 

 not the government come down with a demand that the country bankers 

 shall cease to rob the community by coining ?" and further, says our 

 contemporary, " the function of making money is not a trade, but an 

 exercise of public power." Now we can discern no just reason why 

 the making of money, more than the making of cloth, or shoes, should 

 be a public power, other than as an ancient usurpation, which ought to 

 be abolished. The principal use of a gold coinage in modern times is 

 for facilitating the foreign commerce of the various nations, and we are 



