system? My plain answer is that I do not propose it. I know it would
be childish. Credit in business is like loyalty in Government. You
must take what you can find of it, and work with it if possible. A
theorist may easily map out a scheme of Government in which Queen
Victoria could be dispensed with. He may make a theory that, since
we admit and we know that the House of Commons is the real
sovereign, any other sovereign is superfluous; but for practical
purposes, it is not even worth while to examine these arguments.
Queen Victoria is loyally obeyed--without doubt, and without
reasoning--by millions of human beings. If those millions began to
argue, it would not be easy to persuade them to obey Queen Victoria,
or anything else. Effectual arguments to convince the people who
need convincing are wanting. Just so, an immense system of credit,
founded on the Bank of England as its pivot and its basis, now
exists. The English people, and foreigners too, trust it implicitly.
Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of
credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is
gone: but what we have requires no proof. The whole rests on an
instinctive confidence generated by use and years. Nothing would
persuade the English people to abolish the Bank of England; and if
some calamity swept it away, generations must elapse before at all
the same trust would be placed in any other equivalent. A
many-reserve system, if some miracle should put it down in Lombard
Street, would seem monstrous there. Nobody would understand it, or
confide in it. Credit is a power which may grow, but cannot be
constructed. Those who live under a great and firm system of credit
must consider that if they break up that one they will never see
another, for it will take years upon years to make a successor to it.

On this account, I do not suggest that we should return to a natural