ABSTRACT
On the present state of bankers in Europe Let us have a look at the present state of banks in Europe. Since 1817, the time of the foundation of the credit system in France, almost all the heads of state in Europe have also adopted it, with a certain number of modifications. Bank directors have been at the head of public loans everywhere: their personal credit and their wealth have grown considerably, but their successes have been of benefit to all industry. They have given more to work, directly by credit open to industrialists or indirectly via circulation which has become faster because of the movement of public funds and by the extension given to banking operations; but it is mainly from a political standpoint that industry has gained most from the system of loans granted by banks. By this system, bankers have taken on political importance which is becoming that of the whole of the industrial classes. Initially called upon by governments as passive instruments, bankers have seen significant growth in their influence since Mr de Laborde. One of them even found himself at the head of finance where he made the greatest improvements without however being in a position to change the fundamental concept of the budgets. Bankers have always tended to change the principles of administration: they have at last imposed the public credit system which, while putting great means of power in the hands of the government, eventually obliges them to use them in a way which is useful to society, credit quickly disappearing into their hands when general interests are really in danger. Apart from this, the main bankers in Europe exercise a huge daily influence over governments’ financial projects to such a point that all the merit is often attributed to them. This rapid progress of banking over the last half century has not gone unnoticed by writers who without a complete image of the nature of the political and financial system of modern peoples consider as a calamity of the time what is on the contrary one of the best results of civilisation. ‘The system of subscribing to loans,’ says Mr Dufresne de Saint-Léon,
puts government credit in the hands of private banking establishments, which makes them a true political power in Europe; they have lately served
the governments in France, England, Naples, Austria, Russia, Berlin and even in Mexico City and Columbia. They have refused to serve Madrid since its counter-revolution, less by temperament than by distrust.2
