1832. J The Currency and the Bank of England. 183 



cheaper money-house ; for this business merely consists in taking the 

 daily transfers of stock, and paying the quarterly dividends to the re- 

 spective fundholders, in which the Bank of England incurs no hazard 

 whatever but, on the contrary, usually holds about four millions of the 

 public money, received from the Customs, Excise, Post-office, and other 

 branches of revenue the Treasury being proved by the Report of the 

 Finance Committee to be merely a piece of straw. This business, then, 

 can be managed equally well by any other responsible banking-house ; 

 and if an advertisement were inserted in the newspapers, that upon a 

 certain day, contracts for the annual management of the national debt, 

 directed to the Speaker, would be opened in the House of Commons, it 

 would probably be found that the bank of Coutts and Co. would un- 

 dertake the management of the 3 per cents, for the sum of ten thousand 

 pounds per annum ; and Jones, Lloyd, and Co., or Baring and Brothers, 

 the whole remainder of the stock, at a sum of four or five thousand 

 pounds ; for an immensity of business may be transacted for a certain 

 sum of fifteen thousand pounds per annum, without any hazard what- 

 ever, and with the advantage of immense sums of the public money in 

 hand. The interest upon the accumulating unclaimed dividends will 

 alone pay this annual expense for management ; and it cannot therefore 

 be politic to continue gratuitously to present two hundred and sixty 

 thousand pounds annually to Mr. Horsley Palmer and his partners in 

 the Bank of England, whose whole original capital is only about four- 

 teen millions not greater than other banking concerns but who, by 

 plundering the revenue, have supported a mass of extravagance, forgery, 

 and defalcations ; maintained an immense nursery for clerks, patronage, 

 and directors, and yet have been able to lend us back about twenty 

 millions and a half of the public money. This twenty and a half mil- 

 lions may therefore be repaid by the new contractors for the manage- 

 ment of the national debt, or the sum may continue to rank amongst 

 the other stock, the Bank of England to receive the interest upon it, 

 amongst other fundholders, from Coutts, Jones, or Drummond. It only 

 remains for the parliament, in the ensuing session, upon the application 

 for a renewal of the charter, to take away the name of the Bank of 

 England, and substitute that of the Threadneedle-street Joint Stock 

 Banking Company ; and if Mr. Horsley Palmer and his partners cannot 

 carry on their business under that name, and upon a level with the 

 other bankers of the kingdom, it is then certain that the Bank of 

 England is in a most desirable situation for being converted into a 

 bazaar. Almost all our calamities have arisen from the dishonest pri- 

 vileges granted by law to the Bank of England ; the authorized sus- 

 pension of its payments in the specie, contracted to be paid upon the 

 surface of its notes, was a violent, unjust, and arbitrary exercise of 

 power, which led to infinite calamities at home, which for thirty years 

 has involved us in senseless foreign wars, and rendered Europe one vast 

 slaughter-house. The time, therefore, is providentially arrived for the 

 destruction of this internal tyranny; and we shall be traitors to our 

 children if, after the present session of parliament, a stone of the Bank 

 of England remains upon a stone. 



Having thus slain and dismembered this dragon of the commercial 

 world, the repeal of the one pound note act, and of all other restrictions 

 upon the trade in money, may with safety follow, and, indeed, the 



