In the conduct of their business, then, the Bank of England perform three distinct and important functions—that of financial agents, that of issuers of notes under the control of the State, and that of Government and general bankers. The duties involved in these functions are discharged, severally, towards the State and the various governments and corporations for whom they are agents; towards the general public, from or to whom they buy or sell notes and gold; and towards the Government and customers for whom they act as ordinary bankers. I will consider briefly the system by which these three functions are discharged. The offices comprised in the department for the management of the National Debt are the various stock offices in which are kept the stock ledgers and the transfer books, the Dividend Office, the Cheque Office, the Unclaimed Dividend Office, the Power of Attorney Office, and the Will or Register Office. The nature of the business transacted in these different offices is sufficiently indicated by their names, with the exception of the Cheque Office, which, on the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle, is probably so called because it has nothing whatever to do with “cheques,” but is devoted, for the most part, to the purpose of checking the amounts and totals of the dividend warrants paid by the “Dividend Pay Office,” an office which belongs to the Banking Department. Some idea of the amount of work done in the various Stock Offices may be gathered from the circumstance that they employ the services of some 450 clerks. Nearly 2,000 books are in constant use in some ten or twelve rooms. The dividend warrants on the funded debt alone number about half a million a year, and are, when paid, sent to Somerset House for verification, together with a duplicate copy of the dividend book. As a remuneration for its services in connection with the National Debt, the Bank is paid a commission of £300 per million on the first six hundred millions of the amount and £150 per million on the remainder. Since the funded debt is now altogether about £628,500,000, the Bank receives on this account about £184,000 per annum, a remuneration which cannot be considered excessive.