’In our judgment this language is most just, and the Governor of the Bank could scarcely have done a greater public service than by using language so businesslike and so distinct.  Let us know precisely who is to keep the banking reserve.  If the joint stock banks and the private banks and the country banks are to keep their share, let us determine on that; Mr. Gladstone appeared not long since to say in Parliament that it ought to be so.  But at any rate there should be no doubt whose duty it is.  Upon grounds which we have often stated, we believe that the anomaly of one bank keeping the sole banking reserve is so fixed in our system that we cannot change it if we would.  The great evil to be feared was an indistinct conception of the fact, and that is now avoided.

’The importance of these declarations by the Bank is greater, because after the panic of 1857 the bank did not hold exactly the same language.  A person who loves concise expressions said lately “that Overends broke the Bank in 1866 because it went, and in 1857 because it was not let go.”  We need not too precisely examine such language; the element of truth in it is very plain—­the great advances made to Overends were a principal event in the panic of 1857; the bill-brokers were then very much what the bankers were lately they were the borrowers who wanted sudden and incalculable advances.  But the bill-brokers were told not to expect the like again.  But Alderman Salomons, on the part of the London bankers, said, “he wished to take that opportunity of stating that he believed nothing could be more satisfactory to the managers and shareholders of joint stock banks than the testimony which the Governor of the Bank of England had that day borne to the sound and honourable manner in which their business was conducted.  It was manifestly desirable that the joint stock banks and the banking interest generally should work in harmony with the Bank of England; and he sincerely thanked the Governor of the Bank for the kindly manner in which he had alluded to the mode in which the joint stock banks had met the late monetary crisis.”  The Bank of England agrees to give other banks the requisite assistance in case of need, and the other banks agree to ask for it.

’Secondly.  The Bank agrees, in fact, if not in name, to make limited advances on proper security to anyone who applies for it.  On the present occasion 45,000,000 L. was so advanced in three months.  And the Bank do not say to the mercantile community, or to the bankers, “Do not come to us again.  We helped you once.  But do not look upon it as a precedent.  We will not help you again.”  On the contrary, the evident and intended implication is that under like circumstances the Bank would act again as it has now acted.’