The London and Westminster, despite the determined opposition of the Bank of England, opened business in London during 1834, and the Bank's monopoly of banking was gone. All that then remained to it was the exclusive privilege of issuing notes in and within sixty-five miles of London, the only legal monopoly it still enjoys. Unable to keep the joint stock banks out of London the Bank actively opposed them, as also did the private bankers, who, while the Bank refused to open accounts for the new companies in its books, declined to admit them into the Clearing House, which was founded by the London bankers about 1775. The irony of Fate! They are now a feeble minority in a house of their own building. But history--both domestic and economic--can supply parallel instances. Although the new system was destined to drive out the old, the joint stock banks made a bad start, and failures were at first so frequent that the public began to share the opinion of the Bank and to look upon them as anything but safe institutions. They were born in disaster, and their policy did not provide an antidote to the old evils; but, like the Bank of England itself, they were taught prudence by a series of panics and upheavals which threatened to wipe them out of existence. They were, in short, licked into shape, and that cautious prudent policy which now distinguishes our great banking companies is the fruit of a very bitter experience. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century the manufactures of Great Britain began to increase by leaps and bounds, and population, which always augments rapidly when food is cheap and abundant, kept pace with the country's unprecedented commercial activity. In 1801 the population of London was less than one million. In 1837 it had increased to about two millions; and at the present time Greater London contains over six and a half millions. It is quite evident that the Bank of England could not alone minister to the increasing wants of London, and both in the Metropolis and in the provinces its joint stock rivals rapidly accumulated credit. In June, 1854, the new banks were admitted into the Clearing House, and since that date they have carried all before them. They shared in the almost magical increase in the volume of British trade, but they neither created nor provided the incentive to that remarkable outburst of national prosperity which was the result of Free Trade, and which made this country the workshop of the world. Since then, however, the world has filled up.