52 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 
other a sword which he shakes at the Act of Settlement. The 
beautiful Queen sinks down fainting. The spell by which she -has 
turned all things around her into treasure is broken. The money 
bags shrink liked pricked bladders. The piles of gold pieces are 
turned into bundles of rags or fagots of wooden tallies. The 
truth which this parable was meant to convey was constantly 
present to the minds of the rulers of the Bank. So closely was 
their interest bound up with the interest of the Government that 
the greater the public danger the more ready were they to come 
to the rescue. In old times, when the Treasury was empty, when 
the taxes came in slowly, and when the pay of the soldiers and 
sailors was in arrear, it had been necessary for the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer to go, hat in hand, up and down Cheapside and 
Cornhill, attended by the Lord Mayor and by the Aldermen, and 
to make up a sum by borrowing a hundred pounds from this 
hosiery and two hundred pounds from that ironmonger. Those 
times were over. The Government, instead of scooping up sup- 
plies from numerous petty sources, could now draw whatever it 
required from an immense reservoir, which all those petty sources 
kept constantly replenished. It is hardly too much to say that, 
during many years, the weight of the Bank, which was constantly 
in the scale of the Whigs, almost counterbalanced the weight of 
the Church, which was as constantly in the seale of the Tories.’’ 
The original capital of this Bank was the beginning of the 
national debt of Great Britain. 
Looking back over two hundred years we see that the Bank 
has been of the greatest assistance to every Government. It 
started with tremendous opposition, as already shown, which, 
however, made the management exceedingly careful, and, in this 
way, the opposition which was shown to it was really a blessmg 
in disguise. The capital of the Bank has been increased from 
time to time. In 1709 it was inereased to four million pounds 
sterling, and, at the present time reaches the large sum of four- 
teen million five hundred and fifty-three thousand pounds ster- 
ling, at which figure it was increased in 1816 by a dividend of 
twenty-five per cent. of the stock to the shareholders of that date. 
