Observations on paper money, banking, and overtrading

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J. Ridgway and E. Wilson, 1827 - Banks and banking - 177 pages
 

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Page 42 - When, therefore, by the substitution of paper, the gold and silver necessary for circulation is reduced to, perhaps, a fifth part of the former quantity, if the value of only the greater part of the other four-fifths be added to the funds which are destined for the maintenance of industry, it must make a very considerable addition to the quantity of that industry, and, consequently, to the value of the annual produce of land and labour.
Page 93 - In that year, a charter of incorporation was granted to certain individuals named therein, for carrying on the business of banking, under the name of the Royal Bank ; and subsequent charters were granted to this establishment enlarging its capital, which now amounts to one million and a half. ' An act passed in the year 1765 is the first and most important act of the legislature, which regulates the issue of promissory notes in Scotland. It appears, from its preamble, that a practice had prevailed...
Page 92 - If bankers are restrained from issuing any circulating bank notes, or notes payable to the bearer, for less than a certain sum, and if they are subjected to the obligation of an immediate and unconditional payment of such bank notes as soon as presented, their trade may, with safety to the public, be rendered in all other respects perfectly free.
Page 59 - Bank have the power of reducing the circulation to the very narrowest limits will not be denied, even by those who agree in opinion with the Directors, that they have not the power of adding indefinitely to its quantity. Though I am fully assured that it is both against the interest and the wish of the Bank to exercise this power to the detriment of the public, yet when. I contemplate the evil consequences which might ensue from a sudden and great reduction of the circulation, as well as from a great...
Page 92 - The first notice of banking in Scotland which occurs in the statute-book, is an Act of King William the Third, passed in the year 1695, under which the Bank of Scotland was established. By this Act an exclusive privilege of banking was conferred upon that bank, it being provided, 'that for the period of twenty years from the 17th July...
Page 51 - A paper money consisting in bank notes, issued by people of undoubted credit, payable upon demand without any condition, and in fact always readily paid as soon as presented, is, in every respect, equal in value to gold and silver money; since gold and silver money can at any time be had for it. Whatever is either bought or sold for such paper must necessarily be bought or sold as cheap as it could have been for gold and silver.

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