CHAPTER XIII.

Conclusion.

I know it will be said that in this work I have pointed out a deep malady, and only suggested a superficial remedy.  I have tediously insisted that the natural system of banking is that of many banks keeping their own cash reserve, with the penalty of failure before them if they neglect it.  I have shown that our system is that of a single bank keeping the whole reserve under no effectual penalty of failure.  And yet I propose to retain that system, and only attempt to mend and palliate it.

I can only reply that I propose to retain this system because I am quite sure that it is of no manner of use proposing to alter it.  A system of credit which has slowly grown up as years went on, which has suited itself to the course of business, which has forced itself on the habits of men, will not be altered because theorists disapprove of it, or because books are written against it.  You might as well, or better, try to alter the English 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 destructions 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 everyone thinks that our system of savings’ banks is sound and good.  Almost everyone 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 L. of deposits, and against this they hold in the funds securities of the best kind.  But they hold no cash whatever.  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 panicthe savings’ banks have not a sixpence.  These banks depend on being able in a panic to realise their securities.  But it has been shown over and over again, that in a panic such securities can only be realised by the help of the Bank of Englandthat it is only the Bank with the ultimate cash reserve which has at such moments any new money, or any power to lend and act.  If in a general panic there were a run on the savings’ banks, those banks could not sell 100,000 L. of Consols without the help of the Bank of England; not holding themselves a cash reserve for times of panic, they are entirely dependent on the one Bank which does hold that reserve.