begins to deposit this immense income as it accrues at any bank, at
once it becomes interested in the welfare of that bank. It cannot
pay the interest on its debt if that bank cannot produce the public
deposits when that interest becomes due; it cannot pay its salaries,
and defray its miscellaneous expenses, if that bank fail at any
time. A modern Government is like a very rich man with very great
debts which he cannot well pay; its credit is necessary to its
prosperity, almost to its existence, and if its banker fail when one
of its debts becomes due its difficulty is intense.

Another banker, it will be said, may take up the Government account.
He may advance, as is so often done in other bank failures, what the
Government needs for the moment in order to secure the Government
account in future. But the imperfection of this remedy is that it
fails in the very worst case. In a panic, and at a general collapse
of credit, no such banker will probably be found. The old banker who
possesses the Government deposit cannot repay it, and no banker not
having that deposit will, at a bad crisis, be able to find the
5,000,000 L. or 6,000,000 L. which the quarter day of a Government
such as ours requires. If a finance Minister, having entrusted his
money to a bank, begins to act strictly, and say he will in all
cases let the Money Market take care of itself, the reply is that in
one case the Money Market will take care of him too, and he will be
insolvent.

In the infancy of Banking it is probably much better that a
Government should as a rule keep its own money. If there are not
Banks in which it can place secure reliance, it should not seem to
rely upon them. Still less should it give peculiar favour to any
one, and by entrusting it with the Government account secure to it a