THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 49 
and at Hamburg. But who had ever heard of a Bank of France 
or a Bank of Spain? Some discontented Whigs, on the other 
hand, predicted ruin to our liberties. Here, they said, is an in- 
strument of tyranny more formidable than the High Commission, 
than the Star Chamber, than even the fifty thousand soldiers of 
Oliver. The whole wealth of the nation will be in the hands of 
the Tonnage Bank—such was the nickname then in use—and the 
Tonnage Bank will be in the hands of the Sovereign. The power 
of the purse, the one great security for all the rights of English- 
men, will be transferred from the House of Commons to the Gov- 
ernor and Directors of the new Company. This last considera- 
tion was really of some weight, and was allowed to be so by the 
authors of the bill. A clause was therefore inserted which in- 
hibited the Bank from advancing money to the Crown without 
authority from Parliament. Every infraction of this salutary 
rule was punished by forfeiture of three times the sum advanced ; 
and it was provided that the King should not have power to remit 
any part of the penalty. 
The plan, thus amended, received the sanction of the Com- 
mons more easily than might have been expected from the vio- 
lence of the adverse clamor. In truth, the Parliament was under 
duress. Money must be had, and could in no other way be had so 
easily. What took place when the House had resolved itself into 
a Committee cannot be discovered; but while the Speaker was in 
the chair, no division took place. 
The bill, however, was not safe when it had reached the 
Upper House. Some lords suspected that the plan of a National 
Bank had been devised for the purpose of exalting the moneyed 
interest at the expense of the landed interest. Others thought 
that this plan, whether good or bad, ought not to have been sub- 
mitted to them in such a form. Whether it would be safe to call 
into existence a body which might one day rule the whole com- 
mercial world, and how such a body should be constituted, were 
questions which ought not to be decided by one branch of the 
Legislature. The peers ought to be at perfect liberty to examine 
all the details of the proposed scheme, to suggest amendments, 
to ask for conferences. It was therefore unfair that the law es- 
