First of all, we see that the cash in hand and at the Bank of England is nearly £6,000,000. This is legal tender, that which the law of the land has enacted shall be absolute, permanent wealth, not subject to the vagaries of fashion or sentiment. Money at call and short notice is nearly as much--over five and a half millions. This forms a portion of the loan deposits, and being callable by the banks practically on demand, they show that a portion of the deposits payable on demand can also be recalled on demand. The equivalent of these loans, or deposits, the bank possesses in the shape of wealth not in the absolute category of legal tender. They are securities of the highest class, securities representing the credit or wealth of the nation. While these securities are lying in the safes of the banks they have been converted into temporary currency, and have been fulfilling all the purposes of money in circulation. They have been resurrected from dead into live capital. A similar process could be gone through by selling the securities in the market. The owner could convert them for his purposes into liquid capital. But he sells them temporarily to the bank instead of permanently in the market, and when he has employed his liquid capital temporarily, he repays it to the bank. He rechanges it, as it were, into dead or illiquid capital, until the moment comes when he desires to reconvert it into live capital, or currency. The bank possesses the wealth in bonds; he possesses the wealth in currency, and the bank’s gain consists of the interest on the accommodation, and his gain in the profit accruing from the active employment of his capital. There is no more trust than a butcher has when he sells a leg of mutton for 4_s._ 6_d._ on the nail. His dead leg of mutton he converts into live legal tender currency. If he never sold his mutton he would starve. If the housewife’s husband earned no more salary wherewith to exchange it for future legs of mutton they would starve. If the banker lent the borrower money without security, it would be more truly credit, for he would have no wealth that was the equivalent of the loan. If he, at certain seasons, is compelled to call in these loans to bill-brokers and others and cannot renew them--quite a frequent, familiar operation--those who want to convert their dead wealth into currency go to the Bank of England. Machinery similar to that employed in the joint stock banks is put into operation there. The Bank takes in the securities, debits itself with the amount it empowers the borrower to withdraw in currency, and credits itself, not with words, but with valuable bonds. It insists that these bonds shall be of the highest value, and this insistence is inconsistent with the idea of what the ordinary man regards as giving credit. Otherwise, there would be greater trust in promises than in securities.