banking reserve—any such sum of actual cash—of real sovereigns and Bank notes, as will help them through a sudden panic. It acknowledges a 'duty' on the part of the Bank of England to 'support the banking community,' to make the reserve of the Bank of England do for them as well as for itself.
"In our judgment this language is most just, and the Governor of the Bank could scarcely have done a greater public service than by using language so businesslike and so distinct. Let us know precisely who is to keep the banking reserve. If the joint stock banks and the private banks and the country banks are to keep their share, let us determine on that; Mr. Gladstone appeared not long since to say in Parliament that it ought to be so. But at any rate there should be no doubt whose duty it is. Upon grounds which we have often stated, we believe that the anomaly of one bank keeping the sole banking reserve is so fixed in our system that we cannot change it if we would. The great evil to be feared was an indistinct conception of the fact, and that is now avoided.
"The importance of these declarations by the Bank is greater, because after the panic of 1857 the Bank did not hold exactly the same language. A person who loves concise expressions said lately 'that Overends broke the Bank in 1866 because it went, and in 1857 because it was not let go.' We need not too precisely examine such language; the
