The Directors soon found it impossible to procure silver enough to meet every claim which was made on them in good faith.  They then bethought them of a new expedient.  They made a call of twenty per cent. on the proprietors, and thus raised a sum which enabled them to give every applicant fifteen per cent. in milled money on what was due to him.  They returned him his note, after making a minute upon it that part had been paid.702 A few notes thus marked are still preserved among the archives of the Bank, as memorials of that terrible year.  The paper of the Corporation continued to circulate, but the value fluctuated violently from day to day, and indeed from hour to hour; for the public mind was in so excitable a state that the most absurd lie which a stockjobber could invent sufficed to send the price up or down.  At one time the discount was only six per cent., at another time twenty-four per cent.  A tenpound note, which had been taken in the morning as worth more than nine pounds, was often worth less than eight pounds before night.703

Another, and, at that conjuncture, a more effectual substitute for a metallic currency, owed its existence to the ingenuity of Charles Montague.  He had succeeded in engrafting on Harley’s Land Bank Bill a clause which empowered the government to issue negotiable paper bearing interest at the rate of threepence a day on a hundred pounds.  In the midst of the general distress and confusion appeared the first Exchequer Bills, drawn for various amounts from a hundred pounds down to five pounds.  These instruments were rapidly distributed over the kingdom by the post, and were every where welcome.  The Jacobites talked violently against them in every coffeehouse, and wrote much detestable verse against them, but to little purpose.  The success of the plan was such, that the ministers at one time resolved to issue twentyshilling bills, and even fifteenshilling bills, for the payment of the troops.  But it does not appear that this resolution was carried into effect.704

It is difficult to imagine how, without the Exchequer Bills, the government of the country could have been carried on during that year.  Every source of revenue had been affected by the state of the currency; and one source, on which the Parliament had confidently reckoned for the means of defraying more than half the charge of the war, had yielded not a single farthing.

The sum expected from the Land Bank was near two million six hundred thousand pounds.  Of this sum one half was to be subscribed, and one quarter paid up by the first of August.  The King, just before his departure, had signed a warrant appointing certain commissioners, among whom Harley and Foley were the most eminent, to receive the names of the contributors.705 A great meeting of persons interested in the scheme was held in the Hall of the Middle Temple.  One office was opened at Exeter Change, another at Mercers’ Hall.  Forty agents went down into the country,