the almost continuous correspondence between the Bank and its largest customer—­the Government; to bring all necessary matters before the board of directors or the Committee of Treasury, in a word, to do very much of what falls to the lot of the manager in most companies.  Under this shifting chief executive, there are indeed very valuable heads of departments.  The head of the Discount Department is especially required to be a man of ability and experience.  But these officers are essentially subordinate; no one of them is like the general manager of an ordinary bankthe head of all action.  The perpetually present executive—­the Governor and Deputy-Governor—­make it impossible that any subordinate should have that position.  A really able and active-minded Governor, being required to sit all day in the bank, in fact does, and can hardly help doing, its principal business.

In theory, nothing can be worse than this government for a bank a shifting executive; a board of directors chosen too young for it to be known whether they are able; a committee of management, in which seniority is the necessary qualification, and old age the common result; and no trained bankers anywhere.

Even if the Bank of England were an ordinary bank, such a constitution would be insufficient; but its inadequacy is greater, and the consequences of that inadequacy far worse, because of its greater functions.  The Bank of England has to keep the sole banking reserve of the country; has to keep it through all changes of the money market, and all turns of the Exchanges; has to decide on the instant in a panic what sort of advances should be made, to what amounts, and for what dates; and yet it has a constitution plainly defective.  So far the government of the Bank of England being better than that of any other bankas it ought to be, considering that its functions are much harder and graver—­any one would be laughed at who proposed it as a model for the government of a new bank; and that government, if it were so proposed, would on all hands be called old-fashioned, and curious.

As was natural, the effects—­good and evil—­of its constitution are to be seen in every part of the Bank’s history.  On one vital point the Bank’s management has been excellent.  It has done perhaps less ‘bad business,’ certainly less very bad business, than any bank of the same size and the same age.  In all its history I do not know that its name has ever been connected with a single large and discreditable bad debt.  There has never been a suspicion that it was ‘worked’ for the benefit of any one man, or any combination of men.  The great respectability of the directors, and the steady attention many of them have always given the business of the Bank, have kept it entirely free from anything dishonorable and discreditable.  Steady merchants collected in council are an admirable judge of bills and securities.  They always know the questionable standing of dangerous persons; they