inferred by many that the Bank had no responsibility.  The complete uncertainty as to the degree of responsibility acknowledged by the Bank of England is best illustrated by what has been said by the Bank directors themselves as to the panic of 1866.  The panic of that year, it will be remembered, happened, contrary to precedent, in the spring, and at the next meeting of the Court of Bank proprietors—­the September meeting—­there was a very remarkable discussion, which I give at length below, and of which all that is most material was thus described in the ‘Economist’: 

’The great importance of the late meeting of the proprietors of the bank of England.

’The late meeting of the proprietors of the Bank of England has a very unusual importance.  There can be no effectual inquiry now into the history of the late crisis.  A Parliamentary committee next year would, unless something strange occur in the interval, be a great waste of time.  Men of business have keen sensations but short memories, and they will care no more next February for the events of last May than they now care for the events of October 1864.  A pro forma inquiry, on which no real mind is spent, and which everyone knows will lead to nothing, is far worse than no inquiry at all.  Under these circumstances the official statements of the Governor of the Bank are the only authentic expositions we shall have of the policy of the Bank Directors, whether as respects the past or the future.  And when we examine the proceedings with care, we shall find that they contain matter of the gravest import.

’This meeting may be considered to admit and recognise the fact that the Bank of England keeps the sole banking reserve of the country.  We do not now mix up this matter with the country circulation, or the question whether there should be many issuers of notes or only one.  We speak not of the currency reserve, but of the banking reserve—­the reserve held against deposits, and not the reserve held against notes.  We have often insisted in these columns that the Bank of England does keep the sole real reserve—­the sole considerable unoccupied mass of cash in the country; but there has been no universal agreement about it.  Great authorities have been unwilling to admit it.  They have not, indeed, formally and explicitly contended against it.  If they had, they must have pointed out some other great store of unused cash besides that at the Bank, and they could not find such store.  But they have attempted distinctions; have said that the doctrine that the Bank of England keeps the sole banking reserve of the country was “not a good way of putting it,” was exaggerated, and was calculated to mislead.

’But the late meeting is a complete admission that such is the fact.  The Governor of the Bank said: