undoubted right to pay the customers who made these demands in Bank of England notes; and because Bank of England notes were not in smaller denominations than five pounds the public went to the Bank of England to turn notes into sovereigns. As everybody remembers, this crisis was met by a four days' Bank holiday and a banking moratorium and by the issue of Treasury notes of one pound and ten shillings.[1]
It might have been thought that the more obvious course would have been to permit the Bank of England (if it had not the power, which is uncertain,) to issue notes of one pound and ten shillings and to have suspended for the course of the war the restriction upon the note issue imposed by the Bank Charter Act. This suspension was in fact made under the Currency Notes Act of 1914. But perhaps it was just as well that this course was not taken; as it was the Bank of England only availed itself of the suspension of the limit on its note issue during a few days (as was stated by Mr. Asquith in Parliament in November 1915) and in none of its published weekly returns is it apparent. In all of the Bank Returns issuedNone
- ↑ The more technical details of this crisis are described in my book on "War and Lombard Street." H. W.
