The directors of the Bank are, therefore, in fact, if not in name, trustees for the public, to keep a banking reserve on their behalf; and it would naturally be expected either that they distinctly recognized this duty and engaged to perform it, or that their own self-interest was so strong in the matter that no engagement was needed.  But so far from there being a distinct undertaking on the part of the Bank directors to perform this duty, many of them would scarcely acknowledge it, and some altogether deny it.  Mr. Hankey, one of the most careful and most experienced of them, says in his book on the Bank of England, the best account of the practice and working of the Bank which anywhere exists—­’I do not intend here to enter at any length on the subject of the general management of the Bank, meaning the Banking Department, as the principle upon which the business is conducted does not differ, as far as I am aware, from that of any wellconducted bank in London.’  But, as anyone can see by the published figures, the Banking Department of the Bank of England keeps as a great reserve in bank notes and coin between 30 and 50 per cent of its liabilities, and the other banks only keep in bank notes and coin the bare minimum they need to open shop with.  And such a constant difference indicates, I conceive, that the two are not managed on the same principle.

The practice of the Bank has, as we all know, been much and greatly improved.  They do not now manage like the other Banks in Lombard Street.  They keep an altogether different kind and quantity of reserve; but though the practice is mended the theory is not.  There has never been a distinct resolution passed by the Directors of the Bank of England, and communicated by them to the public, stating even in the most general manner, how much reserve they mean to keep or how much they do not mean, or by what principle in this important matter they will be guided.

The position of the Bank directors is indeed most singular.  On the one side a great city opinion—­a great national opinion, I may say, for the nation has learnt much from many panics—­requires the directors to keep a large reserve.  The newspapers, on behalf of the nation, are always warning the directors to keep it, and watching that they do keep it; but, on the other hand, another less visible but equally constant pressure pushes the directors in exactly the reverse way, and inclines them to diminish the reserve.

This is the natural desire of all directors to make a good dividend for their shareholders.  The more money lying idle the less, caeteris paribus, is the dividend; the less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.  And at almost every meeting of the proprietors of the Bank of England, there is a conversation on this subject.  Some proprietor says that he does not see why so much money is kept idle, and hints that the dividend ought to be more.