Middlemen in English Business 405 



the new ruling House. The estabhshment of the Bank of England 

 in 1694, the recoinage in 1696, the operations of the great trading 

 companies for charters and favors — all these financial events inter- 

 twined the monied interest with the government interest, as opposed 

 to the landed and Tory interest, in an almost indissoluble union. * 

 From the Revolution till 1760 the Whigs were almost continuously 

 in the ascendancy and waged the long drawn struggle with the landed 

 interest. The Tories insisted that land and a majority of land- 

 holders ought to be regarded with more concernment than trade and 

 traders. To this end in 1712 a temporary Tory government tried to 

 pass the Landed Property Qualification Act; it aimed at keeping from 

 Parliament men whose wealth was ventured in trade and stock.- 

 The monied interest held the government loans and threatened the 

 government's policies and ministries.^ The Bank and East India 

 Company exercised such an influence in Parliament as to be declared 

 dangerous by the opposition.^ The commercial element became very 

 conspicuous in legislation and administration. Patterson, Godfrey, 

 Barnard and others championed bills and carried them through 

 Parliament. Commercial and financial questions, especially during 

 the long administrations of Walpole and Pelham, excited most interest. 

 Debates were concerned in the national debt, the rate of interest, the 

 sinking fund, the excise, bounties and subsidies, the land- and shop- 

 tax; even rehgious questions, and questions of foreign policy and 

 immigration turned upon their commercial aspects. In brief, it 

 may be said that the merchants in general held as legislative objec- 

 tives among others the following: The establishment of a National 

 Bank,^ reduction of the rate of interest on the pubhc debt,^ mainte- 

 nance of the balance of trade by legislative prohibitions and support, 

 reform of the currency, transferability of bills of debt, establishment of 

 a merchant court, opposition to the naturalization of the Jews, registry 

 of deeds, mortgages, etc., increase in the convoy service, colonial 

 enterprise, maintenance of the tax on land as opposed to the taxes 

 setting hard upon trade as excises, shop-taxes; etc. In many matters 



^ Very ample treatment of these combinations may be fomid in Von Ranke, 

 Hist., V, Ch. X; Postlethwayt, Diet., Moneyed Interest; Lecky, Hist., IV, VI; 

 Cunningham, Growth, II, 404-5. 



2 Lecky, I, 217. 



^ Defoe, Essay on Loans, 10, 14. 



^ Cf. "Reasons of the Decay of Trade and Private Credit," 36-7, and "Vindica- 

 tion of Bank of England," 37, et seq. 



* For example, consider the efforts of William Patterson and Michael Godfrey. 



^ John Barnard made this his task, 1757. 



