THE BRITISH GUIANA BANK. 



BKIEF HISTORY. 

 By J. Van* Sertima. 



Colonial institutions are not of long life, and this for a variety of 

 Cciuses which we need not stop to enumerate or examine. There are excep- 

 tions to every rule, of course : and the British ( Juiana Bank is a gratify- 

 ing illustration of longevity in the case of commercial establishments. 

 It is a kind of institution that is as breath to the nostrils of commerce, 

 and if all is not well with it. all cannot be well "on the Rialto. " The 

 British Guiana Bank, the oldest financial institution in the colony, was 

 fortunate in the opportunity of its birth. It was formed in the year 

 1836, at a time when there was much need for an establishment of its 

 kind, and it met with all the support and success that its promoters 

 anticipated. Compensation money for the liberation of the slaves had 

 been paid, and so there was a good deal of money in the colony for 

 profitable investment. The bank met this want so far as the planters and 

 commercial men were concerned. Thanks largely to the prescience of 

 the Governor, Sir James Carmichael Smyth.* Government savings banks 

 were also established, and these supplied the wants of the labouring and 

 artisan class. 



The formation of a local banking company was due to the initiative 

 of a Scottish gentleman named Hugh Robertson. He had begun his 

 career in the Inverness branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland ; and in 

 1830 he was enoa<»ed in business in Water Street, Georgetown. He saw 

 the great necessity there was for a bank, one reason in particular 

 therefor being the high rate of exchange. Mr. Robertson's well-mean- 

 ing efforts did not at first meet with success, owing, it is said, to •' the 

 opposition of the colonial section of the Court of Policy.'" In May, 1832, 

 a circumstance occurred which exercised the public mind not a little and 



*A 1 > u s t of Governor Smyth may l»e seen in the Town Hall, New Amsterdam, in the 

 manager's office of the British Guiana Bank, Georgetown, and in the vestibule of Colony 

 House, Berbice. Beueath the bust in the last-mentioned place is a marble tablet with 

 the following inscription : — " To the memory of His Excellency Major-Ceneral Sir James 

 Carmichael Smyth. Baronet, C.B., K.C.H., K.M.T., K.S.W., etc., late Governor and 

 Commander in Chief of British Guiana This monument was erected by the inhabitants 

 of the county of Berbice to testify the respect in which His Excellency was held by all 

 classes of this community and more especially to mark their sense of approbation of the 

 system pursued by him in administering the government of this province during a most 

 important period of colonial history when the state of society in the British West Indies 

 was undergoing such rapid and important changes as were involved in the transition from 

 slavery to unqualified freedom ; the manifest success which attended the system of 

 apprenticeship in this province is ascribed, under the guidance of Divine Providence, to 

 the energy, wisdom and lirmness of this distinguished officer who was honoured 

 as the instrument for conducting in this colony the grand experiment, but who was not 

 permitted to witness the completion of the work, being cut oti" by the hand of death after 

 a short illness of four days at a time when busily engaged in the duties of his Government 

 on the 4th of March, 183?*." 



