What else we have to say on the general question, may best be joined with some commentaries on provincial and joint-stock banking, to which let us now turn. Government, to preserve the Bank of England-monopoly, having enacted that no partnership exceeding six persons should become bankers; and the Bank of England having refused to establish branches in the provinces; it happened, during the latter half of the last century, when the industrial progress was rapid and banks much needed, that numerous private traders, shopkeepers and others, began to issue notes payable on demand. And when, of the four {348} hundred small banks which had thus grown up in less than fifty years, a great number gave way under the first pressure—when, on several subsequent occasions, like results occurred—when in Ireland, where the Bank of Ireland-monopoly had been similarly guaranteed, it happened that out of fifty private provincial banks, forty became bankrupt—and when, finally, it grew notorious that in Scotland, where there had been no law limiting the number of partners, a whole century had passed with scarcely a single bank-failure; legislators at once decided to abolish the restriction which had entailed such mischiefs. Having, to use Mr. Mill’s words, “actually made the formation of safe banking-establishments a punishable offence”—having, for one hundred and twenty years, maintained a law which first caused great inconvenience and then extensive ruin, time after time repeated—Government, in 1826, conceded the liberty of joint-stock banking: a liberty which the good easy public, not distinguishing between a right done and a wrong undone, regarded as a great boon! But the liberty was not without conditions. Having previously, in anxiety for its _protégé_, the Bank of England, been reckless of the banking-security of the community at large, the State, like a repentant sinner rushing into asceticism, all at once became extremely solicitous on this point; and determined to put guarantees of its own devising, in place of the natural guarantee of mercantile judgment. To intending bank-shareholders it said—“You shall not unite on such publicly-understood conditions as you think fit, and get such confidence as will naturally come to you on those conditions.” And to the public it said—“You shall not put trust in this or that association in proportion as, from the character of its members and constitution, you judge it to be worthy of trust.” But to both it said—“You shall the one give, and the other receive, my infallible safeguards.”