This therefore is the reason why Lombard Street exists; that is, why England is a very great Money Market, and other European countries but small ones in comparison.  In England and Scotland a diffused system of note issues started banks all over the country; in these banks the savings of the country have been lodged, and by these they have been sent to London.  No similar system arose elsewhere, and in consequence London is full of money, and all continental cities are empty as compared with it.

II.

The monarchical form of Lombard Street is due also to the note issue.  The origin of the Bank of England has been told by Macaulay, and it is never wise for an ordinary writer to tell again what he has told so much better.  Nor is it necessary, for his writings are in everyone s hands.  Still I must remind my readers of the curious story.

Of all institutions in the world the Bank of England is now probably the most remote from party politics and from ‘financing.’  But in its origin it was not only a finance company, but a Whig finance company.  It was founded by a Whig Government because it was in desperate want of money, and supported by the ‘City’ because the ‘City’ was Whig.  Very briefly, the story was this.  The Government of Charles II. (under the Cabal Ministry) had brought the credit of the English State to the lowest possible point.  It had perpetrated one of those monstrous frauds, which are likewise gross blunders.  The goldsmiths, who then carried on upon a trifling scale what we should now call banking, used to deposit their reserve of treasure in the ‘Exchequer,’ with the sanction and under the care of the Government.  In many European countries the credit of the State had been so much better than any other credit, that it had been used to strengthen the beginnings of banking.  The credit of the state had been so used in England:  though there had lately been a civil war and several revolutions, the honesty of the English Government was trusted implicitly.  But Charles II. showed that it was trusted undeservedly.  He shut up the ‘Exchequer,’ would pay no one, and so the ‘goldsmiths’ were ruined.

The credit of the Stuart Government never recovered from this monstrous robbery, and the Government created by the Revolution of 1688 could hardly expect to be more trusted with money than its predecessor.  A Government created by a revolution hardly ever is.  There is a taint of violence which capitalists dread instinctively, and there is always a rational apprehension that the Government which one revolution thought fit to set up another revolution may think fit to pull down.  In 1694, the credit of William III.’s Government was so low in London that it was impossible for it to borrow any large sum; and the evil was the greater, because in consequence of the French war the financial straits of the Government were extreme.  At last a scheme was hit upon which would relieve