That is a difficult question to answer, and one, moreover, to which there is no occasion to reply in this work. It may safely be said that no director who understands his business would take the risk upon any consideration; but there is the remote chance that an incompetent Governor might be placed at the helm, and in that event, however improbable, should he lose sight of everything but the dividends, he might create a terrible panic throughout the land. On the other hand, all who see the Bank return from week to week may read the signs, and should the ratio fall abnormally low the critics would flagellate the Governor unmercifully, and the business man, who is unaccustomed to the pleasantries of criticism, unless he be a most hardened member of his species, squirms under such a lash, fearful that his friends may read just what the Press thinks of him; so he takes heed. Though the Bank's rate is not always the same as the market rate, it is seldom very much out of touch therewith. When the directors find that their rate of discount is too high to attract custom, then, if the reserve be also high, they lower their minimum in order to get a fair share of the business that is doing. Their other alternative, of course, is to borrow on stock, and in that manner to compel the bill brokers to pay them a reluctant visit. The policy of the Bank has never been one of "grab," though the bill brokers often grumble; but its position, in relation to the market, is an extremely difficult one, so difficult at times as to be fraught with great anxiety; and remembering the power that devolves upon it by reason of its holding the bankers' balances, its policy seems one of enviable restraint and moderation. But that is only what everybody expects of the Bank of England. CHAPTER X. The Battle of the Banks. But little has hitherto been said concerning the relations of the Bank of England with its rivals in the money market, and in order to trace the movement from its beginning we must return to 1826, in which year joint stock banks could be established in England at a greater distance than sixty-five miles from London. The Bank stoutly resisted this innovation, but the Government, in consequence of the constant failures of the country private bankers, passed the Act of 1826, and the thin edge of the wedge once inserted, the Bank's monopoly in London soon disappeared.