I have seen no evidence for supposing that the general conditions outlined in this quotation do not still hold; but in recent years the Presidency Bank rates have not risen above 9 per cent, and occasions for the operation of the tendencies described above have been rarer. The conditions prevailing in the Indian Money Market in the period immediately preceding 1898 were in many respects very abnormal. I suspect that the rates in the two markets may appear to be more different than they really are, and are explicable by the difference of the conditions and of security, subject to which business is transacted. It is, however, plain that the main movements of the interest rate up and down, which result from the central facts of the Indian seasons and harvests, must be the same in both markets, and that the Native Money Market must ultimately depend on the European for additional supplies of cash. 4. As I am chiefly interested in the Indian Banking System, so far as this book is concerned, from the point of view of its effect on the remittance of funds to and from India, I shall be concerned for the most part with what I have called the European Money Market—the Presidency and Exchange Banks. But an Indian writer, in a position to know the facts, could throw much useful light on a question where I must necessarily be content with somewhat doubtful conjecture. 5. The Presidency Bank of Bengal was opened in 1806 and received its charter of incorporation from the East India Company in 1809.[86] The first Bank of Bombay[87] was established under a similar charter in 1840, and the Bank of Madras in 1843. The establishment of these Banks in the other Presidencies put an end to the possibility that the Bank of Bengal might become a Bank for all India. The Presidency Banks had, at first, a semi–official character. At the foundation of the Bank of Bengal, the East India Company contributed one–fifth (the proportion became smaller subsequently) of the capital and appointed three of the directors. Up to the time of the Mutiny the office of Secretary and Treasurer was held by a Covenanted Civilian.