our one reserve system of banking was not deliberately founded upon
definite reasons; it was the gradual consequence of many singular
events, and of an accumulation of legal privileges on a single bank
which has now been altered, and which no one would now defend.






CHAPTER IV.

The Position of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Money Market.





Nothing can be truer in theory than the economical principle that
banking is a trade and only a trade, and nothing can be more surely
established by a larger experience than that a Government which
interferes with any trade injuries that trade. The best thing
undeniably that a Government can do with the Money Market is to let
it take care of itself.

But a Government can only carry out this principle universally if it
observe one condition: it must keep its own money. The Government is
necessarily at times possessed of large sums in cash. It is by far
the richest corporation in the country; its annual revenue payable
in money far surpasses that of any other body or person. And if it