Miscellaneous Legislative Provisions. 
403 
As we saw in the discussion of competing banks, the time 
when a central bank can render most valuable service in main¬ 
taining credit is when fluctuations are greatest. But the re¬ 
strictions of the bank act would have made it an engine of the 
greatest destruction to all outside of itself. 1 
Economic crisis was the rock upon which the artificial struct¬ 
ure of the “currency ” theory went to pieces. The act grew 
from a too exclusive view of abuses arising in connection with 
one particular form of credit. 2 Knowledge and integrity in the 
management of the Bank of England has, however, steadily in¬ 
creased, and its influence, without, or, perhaps in spite of 
legislation, 3 has correspondingly been a wholesome one. 
MISCELLANEOUS LEGISLATIVE PROVISIONS. 
The forms into which capital may be combined for the fur¬ 
therance of business purposes are clearly of the greatest import¬ 
ance in estimating and explaining the tendencies manifested by 
business enterprise. Some of these forms have shown them¬ 
selves fitted for certain classes of undertakings only, and through 
some of them over-speculative and dishonest business spirit has 
been able to work itself out much more easily than through 
others. 4 
of the view that they were caused wholly or even principally by over¬ 
issue of notes. 
1 “Sir George Lewis once said that Peel’s Act did great good except for 
a week once in ten years, but in that week it did so much evil as almost 
to counterbalance the good it had done before.” Sydney Buxton, 
“Finance and Politics,” vol. II, p. 17, cf. Wagner, “Lehre,” p. 11, also 
“Geld und Credittheorie,” pp. 258-259. 
■-* Mill, op. cit., Bk III, cfi. 24, § 1. For a general review of the false as¬ 
sumptions of the Act, see James Wilson, “Capital, Currency, and Bank¬ 
ing,” p. 36, also Tooke, IV, p. 260. 
3 Schaflfle quotes with entire approval Lord Ashburton upon the man¬ 
agement of crises: —“Nothing can be more absurdly presumptious than 
to substitute machinery in such a case for human understanding.” 
“Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift,” 1858, heft I, p. 369, cf. Huskisson quoted 
by Torrens “Principles of Peel’s Act of 1844,” pp. 107-108. 
4 Ti e juristic person is now too often used as the “persona” once was 
in Rome—as a mask to hide the true actors. Corporation methods 
would in many cases be immediately recognized as infamous if they 
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