ABSTRACT
In this case, as in many others of a like kind, the theorists saw farther than the practical men. Whilt' the bankers and City people approved of the Bank Act, with its division of departments, and rigid restriction of the note issue on securities to £15,000,000, such writers as Mill, Tooke, and others predicted that on the first serious crisis the Act, owing to the inelasticity which it caused, would be found to be unworkable, and would have to be suspended. As will be scec. by what followed, they proved perfectly right ; and it may be said even to-day that the Bank Act of 1844 is only maintained because, at the critical moment, everybody knows it will be treated as a. dead letter. This strange sort of fatalism in business seems to be worthy of the singular a.rra.ngemeut by which a body of men who are not bankers, and whose personal and business interests may any day be opposed to the reai interests of the Bank, are placed a.s Directors in control of that which is the most important banking institution of the greatest commercial country in the world.
