The project of a Bank of England seems to have been often discussed during the Commonwealth, and was seriously proposed at the meeting of the First Council of Trade at Mercers' Hall after the Restoration. Paterson has himself described the first starting of the Bank, in his "Proceedings at the Imaginary Wednesday's Club," 1717. The first proposition of a Bank of England was made in July, 1691, when the Government had contracted £3,000,000 of debt in three years, and the Ministers even stooped, hat in hand, to borrow £100,000 or £200,000 at a time of the Common Council of London, on the first payment of the land-tax, and all payable with the year, the common councillors going round and soliciting from house to house. The first project was badly received, as people expected an immediate peace, and disliked a scheme which had come from Holland—"they had too many Dutch things already." They also doubted the stability of William's Government. The money, at this time, was terribly debased, and the national debt increasing yearly. The ministers preferred ready money by annuities for ninety-nine years, and by a lottery. At last they ventured to try the Bank, on the express condition that if a moiety, £1,200,000, was not collected by August, 1699, there should be no Bank, and the whole £1,200,000 should be struck in halves for the managers to dispose of at their pleasure. So great was the opposition, that the very night before, some City men wagered deeply that one-third of the £1,200,000 would never be subscribed. Nevertheless, the next day £346,000, with a fourth paid in at once, was subscribed, and the remainder in a few days after. The whole subscription was completed in ten days, and paid into the Exchequer in rather more than ten weeks. Paterson expressly tells us that the Bank Act would have been quashed in the Privy Council but for Queen Mary, who, following the wish of her husband. expressed firmly in a letter from Flanders, pressed the commission forward, after a six hours' sitting.
The Bank Bill, timidly brought forward, purported only to impose a new duty on tonnage, for the benefit of such loyal persons as should advance money towards carrying on the war. The plan was for the Government to borrow £1,200,000, at the modest interest of eight per cent. To encourage capitalists, the subscribers were to be incorporated by the name of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England. Both Tories and Whigs broke into a fury at the scheme. The goldsmiths and pawnbrokers, says Macaulay, set up a howl of rage. The Tories declared that banks were republican institutions; the Whigs predicted ruin and despotism. The whole wealth of the nation would be in the hands of the "Tonnage Bank," and the Bank would be in the hands of the Sovereign. It was worse than the Star Chamber, worse than Oliver's 50,000 soldiers. The power of the purse would be transferred from the House of Commons to the Governor and Directors of the new Company. Bending to this last objection, a clause was inserted, inhibiting the Bank from advancing money to the House without authority from Parliament. Every infraction of this rule was to be punished by a forfeiture of three times the sum advanced, without the king having power to remit the penalty. Charles Montague, an able man, afterwards First Lord of the Treasury, carried the bill through the House; and Michael Godfrey (the brother of the celebrated Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, supposed to have been murdered by the Papists), an upright merchant and a zealous Whig, propitiated the City. In the Lords (always the more prejudiced and conservative body than the Commons) the bill met with great opposition. Some noblemen imagined that the Bank was intended to exalt the moneyed interest and debase the landed interest; and others imagined the bill was intended to enrich usurers, who would prefer banking their money to lending it on mortgage. "Something was said," says Macaulay, "about the danger of setting up a gigantic corporation, which might soon give laws to the King and the three estates of the realm." Eventually the Lords, afraid to leave the King without money, passed the bill. During several generations the Bank of England was emphatically a Whig body. The Stuarts would at once have repudiated the debt, and the Bank of England, knowing that their return implied ruin, remained loyal to William, Anne, and George. "It is hardly too much to say," writes Macaulay, "that during many years the weight of the Bank, which was constantly in the scale of the Whigs, almost counterbalanced the weight of the Church, which was as constantly in the scale of the Tories." "Seventeen years after the passing of the Tonnage Bill," says the same eminent writer, to show the reliance of the Whigs on the Bank of England, "Addison, in one of his most ingenious and graceful little allegories, described the situation of the great company through which the immense wealth of London was constantly circulating. He saw Public Credit on her throne in Grocers' Hall, the Great Charter over her head, the Act of Settlement full in her view. Her touch turned everything to gold. Behind her seat bags filled with coin were piled up to the ceiling. On her right and on her left the floor was hidden by pyramids of guineas. On a sudden the door flies open, the Pretender rushes in, a sponge in one hand, in the other a sword, which he shakes at the Act of Settlement. The beautiful Queen sinks down fainting; the spell by which she has turned all things around her into treasure is broken; the money-bags shrink like pricked bladders; the piles of gold pieces are turned into bundles of rags, or fagots of wooden tallies."
- rename it Little England (it's people being little englanders.
- I'l starting drawing up plans.
