BILL TO ENABLE PRIVATE BANKS TO HAVE AN UNLIMITED NUMBER OF PARTNERS,
ETC.
The bill extinguishing small notes in England was followed by two other bills affecting the currency. The first of these bills was to permit the number of partners in each country bank to be unlimited; and the second, as a compensation to the Bank for conceding to this measure, extended its exclusive privileges to a circle round the metropolis, with a radius of sixty-five miles, and authorised the directors to establish branch banks in different parts of the country. While these measures were before parliament, in which they received general support, distress widely prevailed throughout the country. An idea was entertained that ministers would relieve this by the issue of exchequer-bills; but they had the prudence to abstain from any short-sighted and injurious palliatives. They expressed themselves willing, indeed, to keep the Bank harmless to the extent of two millions, if it should think proper to go into the market and purchase exchequer-bills; but they would not involve themselves in a system of artificial relief for a disease which they thought would cure itself better without their interference. Petitions were presented, praying the house to take commercial distress into its consideration; and government was charged by several members with being insensible to the misery which prevailed, and the danger which threatened; but nothing could move them to implicate themselves in transactions which might have involved them in pecuniary embarrassments. But relief was afforded in some degree by the Bank itself. Although the directors had refused to go into the market for the purchase of exchequer-bills, they came to a resolution of lending three millions on direct or collateral security. This measure was immediately carried into execution; and commissioners were appointed by the Bank in the principal provincial towns, in order to distribute the money. The whole of this sum, however, was not applied for; the very knowledge that such loans were attainable having a considerable effect in restoring confidence among the commercial classes. In some of the provincial towns the offices of the Bank commissioners, who were almost uniformly mercantile persons connected with the district where they were stationed, were almost unfrequented. The applications for advances, indeed, were made with great moderation; none were required beyond what the need of the applicant demanded. The adoption of this measure rendered it necessary for the security of the Bank to introduce a bill regarding the law of principal and agent. The Bank, indeed, in consenting to advance three millions, made it a condition of their compliance, that the protection of the statute should be extended to them immediately. Accordingly a bill was brought in and passed to enable persons in the possession of goods, and of the documents conferring the property of them, although such persons should be merely factors or agents, to pledge them with the Bank as effectually as if such persons were the owners. Such were the measures recommended by ministers, and adopted by parliament, to palliate the existing distress, and to provide security against some of the causes which had produced it. And they tended greatly to those ends. Commerce, feeling itself unshackled, soon repaired its losses and extended its operations; it found its way not only through European nations, where barriers had hitherto been raised against it, but penetrated the most barbarous regions of the earth.