The total number of employés all told in the Bank is about 1,100, and the salary list, including pensions, is about £300,000 per annum. There is an excellent library and reading-room in the Bank, to which the directors have liberally contributed both money and books. There are also a Widows’ Fund and Guarantee Society, a Life Insurance Company, a Volunteer Company, and a Club, or dining room, where clerks can dine cheaply and well, connected with the Bank, which owe very much of their prosperity to the liberality and kind consideration of the directors. The governors and directors of the Bank divide between them £14,000 per annum. Of this the governors receive £1,000 each and the directors £500 each. Beyond the status which their position gives them, they derive no benefit from their office, while they tax themselves most liberally by their contributions towards the welfare of their clerks. The governor and deputy-governor remain in office for two years only, and this short tenure of office is, with considerable reason, thought to be detrimental to the efficient and consistent administration of the functions of government. The great blot of the system seems to be the want of continuity of policy which is engendered. A governor, let us say, is an enlightened financier; for two years his policy is paramount; but his successor then comes, and perhaps reverses everything, and the onus of the change, so far as the Bank customers are concerned, is left to be borne by the permanent officers of the Bank, who have perhaps never been consulted in the matter, or whose opinions, based on the experience of many years, may be ruthlessly ignored. The two years’ system undoubtedly has its advantages in the constant introduction of new blood, it also strengthens the governors from above and below the chair. The directors below the chair give the governor a loyal and hearty support, because they feel that one day their own turn may come, while those above the chair, having passed through the ordeal, know the value of their colleagues’ support. But the result of this is nevertheless the institution of a sort of one-man power, which is well enough when there is a Hubbard, Hodgson, or Crawford in the chair, or if there is a Baring, Hambro, Rothschild, or Goschen to follow, but which may have its disadvantages.