530 THE BANK CHA11TER. 



actions of every individual in this great nation. Upon principles of 

 natural liberty, a banker who shall issue his note for one sovereign, or 

 for one hundred millions of sovereigns, ought to be subject to no re- 

 straint other than the voluntary acceptance or refusal of his money by 

 the public, with whom the common principles of self-interest and seli- 

 preservation will ever be the best of all restraints upon an undue issue 

 of money ; and a law prohibiting a banker from giving his note for one 

 sovereign to whomsoever will give him credit for that sovereign, is a 

 clear violation of the rights of individuals in a free community. To obtain 

 an extensive circulation of his money, a banker must ever present an ap- 

 pearance of solid property and real responsibility ; for men will not usually 

 accept as value the written promise of any man to pay the sum of one 

 sovereign, without a belief in his ability to redeem that promise, more 

 than to give credit to a tailor or a smith, for woollen cloth or for iron to 

 the value of one sovereign, without belief in the sufficiency of his capital 

 for the payment of the debt. And notwithstanding the clamour against 

 the bankers, they have invariably been found to be the most solvent and 

 substantial of all the traders of the country ; as the panic of 1826 swept 

 away whole thousands of the manufacturers, merchants, and indiscri- 

 minate traders, whilst only one banker can be named whose estate has 

 not produced a full dividend of twenty shillings in the pound. It is 

 the existence of the Bank of England which alone has caused the perio- 

 dical shocks in our monetary system ; for the great mass of capital, and 

 many privileges, accumulated in one great institution, has conferred 

 upon the Directors all power over the commerce of the kingdom, and 

 the world. The abolition of the Bank of England, and the liberation of 

 the trade in money from the shackles with which the blind measures of 

 our government have surrounded it, is therefore the true remedy for the 

 commercial miseries of the nation, the deficiency of money being the 

 sole cause of the ruinous condition of our trade, in a country super- 

 abounding in all the elements of plenty and content. The expe- 

 rience of the last few miserable years, in the absence of a paper cir- 

 culation, proves that paper alone is the medium which can be profitably 

 employed in the commercial transactions of this great nation j and as 

 money, whether manufactured from silver, or paper, or gold, possesses 

 no natural value, being merely the representative of the commodities of 

 existence, it is clear that the suppression of the one pound note is the 

 suppression of all the conveniencies and luxuries of life, of new coats 

 and kettles, and new houses, furniture and plate, and the suppression of 

 new coats and furniture has brought on a new parliament, and will yet 

 further bring on a new church establishment, a new house of lords, and 

 a new chief magistrate of the state, similar to that of the United States, 

 where men may issue notes and buy coats and kettles where they will. 

 That the Duke of Wellington and his fellow soldiers in the government 

 should have persevered in a measure for the contraction of the currency, 

 and the consequent contraction of the comforts of every man in Eng- 

 land, is not remarkable in men who could avow their desire to diminish 

 the population of the island ; but it is a blindness to their fate which 

 can induce their successors in office to persevere in those financial 

 measures through the operation of which the Duke of Wellington and 

 all his host, though sheltered behind a hundred thousand bayonets, at 

 the rising of that population have yet flown like chaff before the wind. 

 Entire destruction will be the inevitable fate of their successors, without 



