monarchy and substitute a republic, as to alter the present constitution of the English Money Market, founded on the Bank of England, and substitute for it a system in which each bank shall keep its own reserve. There is no force to be found adequate to so vast a reconstruction, and so vast a destruction, and therefore it is useless proposing them.
No one who has not long considered the subject can have a notion how much this dependence on the Bank of England is fixed in our national habits. I have given so many illustrations in this book that I fear I must have exhausted my reader's patience, but I will risk giving another. I suppose almost every one thinks that our system of savings' banks is sound and good. Almost every one would be surprised to hear that there is any possible objection to it. Yet see what it amounts to. By the last return the savings' banks—the old and the Post Office together—contain about £60,000,000 of deposits, and against this they hold in the funds securities of the best kind. But they hold no cash whatever.[1] They have of course the petty cash about the various branches necessary for daily work. But of cash in ultimate reserve—cash in reserve against a panic—the savings' banks have not a sixpence. These banks
- ↑ The Savings' Bank deposits (Post Office and Trustee) are now about £240,000,000 against which no cash reserve exists.
