The Sun.
London, England, 1832-04-23 00:00:00

dealer, and would bring it directly in contact
with the moneyed interest, and involve it in the
pecuniary transactions of individuals. Jews and
Pentiles would come under its cognizance and
:interference, and every operation it made in the
funds would subject it to obloquy, in propor-
tion to its extent, by those who suffered from
;the fluctuation it produced. It is scarcely pos-
sible to imagine that the institution of a na-
tional bank could be carried on without great
facilities being afforded by it to improper deal-
ings in the public funds on the part of indivi-
duals connected with the Government and with
its directors, because such individuals would be
thoroughly acquainted with the transactions in
progress, and might be induced to buy or sell
stock in conjunction with the managers
of the national bank. But if parties at the
Treasury were unsullied in this respect they
would be strongly suspected of it. But there
is another very important consideration,
and that is, the opportunity of discounting, which
the Bank Directors have availed themselves of
to a considerable extent, and greatly to the pub-
lic advantage. They are composed of the first
merchants in the City, and comprise within their
body all the commercial information that can be
required under any circumstances for the due per-
formance of their important duties. They are
familiarly and practically acquainted with the
state of trade and of mercantile and manufactur-
ing credit throughout the country, and hence it is
that in periods of panic and pecuniary difficulty
the Directors have been enabled to sustain the
commercial and financial stability of the country
by those immense advances that their general
usage of extensive discounting has given them
facilities for making. This could not be
the case with the Directors of a National Esta-
blishment, who ought to be aloof from mercan-
tile collision, to keep them free from even the
suspicion of partiality and abuse in the manage-
ment of their affairs. But supposing there were
no objections to these agents of the Government
in the_ character of Bank Directors issuing cash
advances, in the course of their transactions, as
discounts, where is the discretion or experience
or sound judgment to be derived from persons
fresh from Downing-street to conduct this depart-
ment? But the Directors of the projected in-
stitution, being thus deprived of the means
of discounting, would be also deprived of one
important facility of contracting or enlarging their
issues, which operation they could then only
perform by the purchase or sale of bullion or
Government securities. And it is not difficult
to foresee cases in which a more powerful and
direct instrument must be brought to bear upon
a deeply affected exchange than the mere trans-
actions of buying or selling bullion or stock, which
latter transaction, unassisted, would produce the
most destructive fluctuations in its value. The
power of discounting is a great engine in the
hands of the Bank of England, by which its
Directors can control the quantity of paper in
circulation in London, and this desideratum upon
this particular point could not be afforded to Go-
vernment agents without great hazard and incon-
venience. But it may be said that there may be
no objection to a national bank performing also
the office of a discount bank, for they have
no readier facilities for abuse of management
than the Bank of England Directors. This
quibble is best answered by now referring more
closely to the conduct and circumstance of Bank
of England Managers, noticing previously that
the Government agents of the new establishment
will be mere machines, working at a salary, with-
out a great permanent stake in the country ; their
only fortune their connexion with the Treasury;
and also repeating the assertion that if they were
allowed they would not possess the knowledge to
enable them to discount either with advantage to
themselves or the public. The Bank Directors,
as we have before observed, are selected from
among the first merchants of the city of London in
point of wealth and character, and the uniform
integrity of their conduct has placed them above
suspicion. Upon this part of the subject,
we prefer alluding to the statements,
of others rather than rest upon our own infor-
mation and arguments. It has been said that
Mr. Huskisson was not very friendly to the
pretensions of the Bank of England ; but what
did that. distinguished man say regarding the
conduct of the Bank Directors in the debate in
the House of Commons in the early part of the
year 1826, during the period of the panic ?
" Whatever difference of opinion gentlemen
might entertain as to the conduct of the Direc-
tor, there could be but one sentiment in that
House, and with the public, as to the high
sense of honour and integrity those individuals
had ever evinced." Mr. Huskisson, we know,
was always forward in expressing in pri-
vate the same sentiments ; and within a
few months we have seen the copy of a
letter from Mr. Huskisson to one of his Liver-
. pool constituents, by whom he had been asked
some years since his sentiments respecting the
state of the banking trade of the United King-
dom, wherein that accomplished Statesman ob-
serves—" The high character of the Directors
of the Bank of England is a great safeguard to
the public." What does Mr. John Smith say
in the debate to which we have previously re-
ferred ? "He would defy any man to show, in
the history of the commercial world, a more
strict personal integrity than was to be found
in the conduct of the Directors in the whole
of their money transactions with the public.—
He would take, for instance, the period of
1816, when the Bank was dividing enormous
profits, and when they divided the immense
sum of twenty-five per cent. upon their
capital stock, a circumstance the previous
knowledge of which would have made the for-
tune of any individual ; and yet, on examining
the books, not a single Director was found to
hare possessed one shilling more of stock than
was necessary to his being constituted a Direc-
tor according to the Charter. The whole of the
Gentlemen who composed the directory of that
establishment were men of the highest character
and soundest principles, and were every way
worthy of the respect and confidence of the
country." We will now descend in the scale,
and go from well-informed and well-educated
individuals to the vulgar-minded and prejudiced,
and they, even in the plenitude of their abuse
of the Bank of England, have never ventured
to accuse the directors of want of inte-
grity. The shaft of slander has never been
levelled at their character. That has been a
landmark that virulence itself, in the malignant
form of the lowest scribblers, never ventured to
overstep. Here then we have the foundation
for all commercial usefulness, high character,
with all the other means at the disposal of the
managers of the Bank of England for essentially
and usefully controlling the national currency.
That institution acts as a pivot around which
the circulating medium of the country moves,
and it possesses facilities for the accomplish-
ment of its purposes that we sincerely believe
no other arrangement could effect ; and as those
purposes are extensively interwoven with the