BRIT A I N. 



97. 



Bai.k 

 igUnd 



conti- 

 llieir 



eed- 



rc- 

 tin? 

 Bank. 



The minority in trie next wssion of parliament, 

 made tlie severest animadversions on the conduct of 

 Lord Malmeshury's negotiation. Mr Fox did not 

 hfiit 'to to accuse the minister of insincerity in the 

 whole aft tir. We h.ul proposed to France that s'he 

 should ced-' the Netherlands, when we well knew 

 that France walk! consent to' no such proposal. 

 " The war,'* he said, " was now evidently maintain- 

 ed (or no other object than recovering Belgium." 

 The pacific motions of the opposition were, as be- 

 fore, overturned by large majorities. 



After the failure of the negotiation, the mutual 

 language of the French and English governments 

 breathed irreconcileable hatred. The French utter- 

 ed, as usual, their unmeaning threats of invasion. 

 The Ei glish ministers, anxious to 'unite the people, 

 by fear, if not by love, favoured and propagated the 

 rumour ; but, from the universal panic, some con- 

 sequences followed, which the government neither 

 wished for, nor intended to produce. 



On the prospect of invasion, the people had been 

 exhorted, but in vain, not to he moved by a false 

 alarm, or give a blow to public credit. The dimi- 

 nution of gold became greater and greater every 

 day. The run upon the bank continued to increase 

 until the '25th of February, a day that will long be 

 memorable, as the last on which the Bank of Eng- 

 land was compelled, at the will of the bearer, to pay 

 its promissory notes in gold and silver. Till the 

 evening of the 25th, the run continued; but, on the 

 next day, though it was Sunday, an order was is- 

 suvd from the privy council, requiring the directors 

 of the bank to forbear issuing any cash in payment, 

 until the sense of parliament could betaken upon the 

 Bubject. A great erowd of people, who had assem- 

 bled on Monday morning, as soon as the doors open- 

 ed, were presented with hand bills, announcing the 

 authority by which the stoppage had been sanc- 

 tioned. 



The resemblance of this stoppage to actual bank- 

 ruptcy, occurred to many persons who were not ver- 

 sed in the modern science of distinctions. But the 

 friends to ministers boldly denied what they were 

 pleased to call the false notion, of the bank being 

 unable to make their payments in gold. They said, 

 that it was a great measure of state, produced by the 

 caution of the minister, that too great a dram of 

 gold should not be made. They accused the Jaco- 

 bins of having caused a distrust of the bank, and of 

 having formed a design to ruin the credit of the 

 country, by persuading the people that gold was pre- 

 ferable to bank notes. It is with pain that we no- 

 tice the well-intentioned mind of Wilberforce himself, 

 led away by this senseless clamour. In the fir 

 bate upon the subject, he attributed much of the 

 public calamity to the conduct of the opposition. 

 In answer to this, Mr Fox said, that it reminded 

 him of a scene in Ben Jonson, where it appears, that 

 an impostor had played --his tricks very successfully 

 for a long time upon his dupes ; and when he was 

 detected, the dupes became very angry, not at the 



impostor, but those who had deleted him. The 

 consequences winch have since resulted from the or- 

 il<T to stop bank payments in cash, the depreciation 

 ami tl -if paper currency were then predict- 



ed ; but, bring Jacobin predictions, it was resolved, 

 tint they should not he believe.!.* The fact, of the' 

 bank <l'rectors having sheltered their stoppage under 

 an order of th-> privy council, however glaring, war 

 mo<t shamefully denied by the directors. Several 

 days before the bank stopt its payments, the direc- 

 tors, observing with great uneasiness the large and 

 constant decrease in their cash, held a particular 

 consultation on the subject ; and perceiving that 

 their cash was reduced to a certain sum, they came 

 to a resolution to go to Mr Pitt, and tell him 

 how they were circumstanced. They did so ; and 

 Mr Pitt, seeing that the peal of alarm about in- 

 vasion, which it had suited the views of ministers to 

 rin<r, had produced more serious effects than he had 

 foreseen, observed, that the alarm of invasion was 

 now become much more general than he could see 

 necessary. They then pressed Mr Pitt to make 

 some declaration in parliament, which should ease the 

 public, mind. In the 24th of February, they had an- 

 other interview with Mr Pitt. On a report by a 

 committee of their whole court, it was declared that 

 the cash was going ; which gave such an alarm for 

 the safety of the house, that no time was lost in send- 

 ing a deputation to Mr Pitt, to ask him how far they 

 might venture to o in paying cash, and " when he 

 would think it necessary to interfere." 



On the 27th of February, Mr Pitt gave notice of 

 a motion to be made next day, for the appointment 

 of a committee to inquire into the solvency of the 

 Bank, and also to inquire and report as to the neces- 

 sity of continuing to prohibit their money-payments. 

 The opposition members strongly contended for an 

 inquiry into the causes of the necessity of this mea- 

 sure. Here, they said, is an open acknowledgment, 

 that the government has been obliged to interrupt 

 the right of the subject, the right of the holders of 

 notes, to demand payment in gold and silver, yet a 

 remedy is attempted without examining the cause of 

 this evil. Their motions for full inquiry shared the 

 general fate of the proposals of the same party. A 

 committee, chosen by the ministerial party, was ap- 

 pointed, for the object, as Mr Pitt said, of ascertain- 

 ing that the affairs of the Bank were not in a dan- 

 gerous state. They were not, he added, by any 

 means called upon to push their inquiries into cir- 

 cumstances, the disclosure of which would be attend- 

 ed with temporary injury to the credit of the coun- 

 try, and with permanent embarrassment to the opera- 

 tions of the Bank. This secret and delicate com- 

 mittee seemed, indeed, to understand the lesson that 

 was set to them : they made no inquiries about the 

 quantity of gold and silver in the bank ; they only 

 compared the bank notes of their creditors with the 

 money that was due to them by government. When 

 the reports of this committee were brought up,f 

 which Mr Pitt called highly consoling, the ministers 



Bn: 



Gro<,t[II. 

 1707. 



A commit- 

 tee ap- 

 pointed to 

 inquire in- 

 to the sol- 

 vency of 

 the liank. 



* Mr Sheridan said* that he was convinced, that if the bank was not able to resume its payments immediately, he foresaw 

 h never would be able afterwards to defray its outstanding engagements in cash. The suspension of cash jiayments, he pre- 

 dicted, wnuld produce the issue of a much greater quantity of paper. 



+ The first report of the committee, March 3d, 1797, was as follows :' Your committee have examined the total amount of 

 outstanding demands on the Bank of England, and likewise of the funds for discharging the same, and think it their duty, 



VOL. iv, PART ii. 4-y 



