that its bad consequences, though much felt, have not been fully
seen; that they have been obscured by traditional arguments and
hidden in the dust of ancient controversies.

But it will be said--What would be better? What other system could
there be? We are so accustomed to a system of banking, dependent for
its cardinal function on a single bank, that we can hardly conceive
of any other. But the natural system--that which would have sprung up
if Government had let banking alone--is that of many banks of equal or
not altogether unequal size. In all other trades competition brings
the traders to a rough approximate equality. In cotton spinning, no
single firm far and permanently outstrips the others. There is no
tendency to a monarchy in the cotton world; nor, where banking has
been left free, is there any tendency to a monarchy in banking
either. In Manchester, in Liverpool, and all through England, we
have a great number of banks, each with a business more or less
good, but we have no single bank with any sort of predominance; nor
is there any such bank in Scotland. In the new world of Joint Stock
Banks outside the Bank of England, we see much the same phenomenon.
One or more get for a time a better business than the others, but no
single bank permanently obtains an unquestioned predominance. None
of them gets so much before the others that the others voluntarily
place their reserves in its keeping. A republic with many
competitors of a size or sizes suitable to the business, is the
constitution of every trade if left to itself, and of banking as
much as any other. A monarchy in any trade is a sign of some
anomalous advantage, and of some intervention from without.

I shall be at once asked--Do you propose a revolution? Do you propose
to abandon the one-reserve system, and create anew a many-reserve