DELUSIONS AND FALLACIES IN THE BILL BROUGHT INTO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS FOR THE RENEWAL OF THE CHARTER OF THE BANK, AND IN THE STATEMENTS AND ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT OF IT. BY THE AUTHOR OF AN ATTEMPT TO GIVE A POPULAR EXPLANATION OF THE THEORY OF MONEY." London: PELHAM RICHARDSON, 23, CORNHILL; AND JOHN OLLIVIER, 59, PALL MALL. DELUSIONS AND FALLACIES In the Bill brought into the House of Commons for the Renewal of the Charter of the Bank, and in the Statements made in support of it. THE title of the Bill is--" To regulate the issue of “Bank-notes, and for giving to the Governor and Company of the Bank of England certain privileges for a limited period." 66 In that title and in the preamble are omitted (not unadvisedly, as may well be presumed) the startling disclosures in the body of the bill-viz. that it is a bill proposing, First,-To give by law, for 12 years after the 1st of August next, a monopoly of the trade in the issue of paper-money payable to bearer in coin on demand to the Bank of England, and the persons or parties in the United Kingdom, their heirs, executors, administrators, or assigns, who happened to be engaged in that trade on the 6th day of May, 1844-to the exclusion from such trade of all other subjects of the realm; although it be a trade adapted to the enterprize of private individuals and ordinary copartneries. And, Secondly,―That upon the discontinuance of the B issue of paper-money by any bank which existed on the 6th of May, 1844, the trade thereof in the issue of such paper-money shall not be resumed; that the monopoly of the corporation of the Bank of England may be more stringent. The public has of late years heard much, in our courts of justice, of the property of an individual banker (the late Mr. Wood of Gloucester), who was an issuer of paper-money, and who by his trade and industry (though not indeed without parsimony), acquired a mass of accumulated capital exceeding a million, or some larger sum. In the year 1798, the deposited capital of the Bank of England was 11 millions (£11,686,800), and it is now, in 1844, 11 millions (£11,015,100). The proprietors of the bank (the owners of a capital about half-a-million less in 1844 than it was in 1798), are therefore probably not more numerous now in 1844, nor much varied in description from what they were in 1798—when they consisted of 2,500 persons or parties, of whom about 400 or 500 were foreigners, residing in Holland, what is now Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and other countries abroad,-260 were widows, and 330 spinsters,*-making, collectively, above 1000 of the said 2,500 persons or parties. Of the remaining 1,500 it would be curious to know how many are peers or members of parliament. Address to the proprietors of the Bank of England, by Alexander Allardyce, M.P., one of the proprietors of the Bank. -3rd edit. note, page 12. |