As soon as the plan became generally known, a paper war broke out as furious as that between the swearers and the nonswearers, or as that between the Old East India Company and the New East India Company.  The projectors who had failed to gain the ear of the government fell like madmen on their more fortunate brother.  All the goldsmiths and pawnbrokers set up a howl of rage.  Some discontented Tories predicted ruin to the monarchy.  It was remarkable, they said, that Banks and Kings had never existed together.  Banks were republican institutions.  There were flourishing banks at Venice, at Genoa, at Amsterdam and at Hamburg.  But who had ever heard of a Bank of France or a Bank of Spain?522 Some discontented Whigs, on the other hand, predicted ruin to our liberties.  Here, they said, is an instrument of tyranny more formidable than the High Commission, than the Star Chamber, than even the fifty thousand soldiers of Oliver.  The whole wealth of the nation will be in the hands of the Tonnage Bank,—­such was the nickname then in use;—­and the Tonnage Bank will be in the hands of the Sovereign.  The power of the purse, the one great security for all the rights of Englishmen, will be transferred from the House of Commons to the Governor and Directors of the new Company.  This last consideration was really of some weight, and was allowed to be so by the authors of the bill.  A clause was therefore most properly inserted which inhibited the Bank from advancing money to the Crown without authority from Parliament.  Every infraction of this salutary rule was to be punished by forfeiture of three times the sum advanced; and it was provided that the King should not have power to remit any part of the penalty.

The plan, thus amended, received the sanction of the Commons more easily than might have been expected from the violence of the adverse clamour.  In truth, the Parliament was under duress.  Money must be had, and could in no other way be had so easily.  What took place when the House had resolved itself into a committee cannot be discovered; but, while the Speaker was in the chair, no division took place.  The bill, however, was not safe when it had reached the Upper House.  Some Lords suspected that the plan of a national bank had been devised for the purpose of exalting the moneyed interest at the expense of the landed interest.  Others thought that this plan, whether good or bad, ought not to have been submitted to them in such a form.  Whether it would be safe to call into existence a body which might one day rule the whole commercial world, and how such a body should be constituted, were questions which ought not to be decided by one branch of the Legislature.  The Peers ought to be at perfect liberty to examine all the details of the proposed scheme, to suggest amendments, to ask for conferences.  It was therefore most unfair that the law establishing the Bank should be sent up as part of a law granting supplies to the Crown.  The Jacobites entertained some hope that