People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1894 — ENGLISH BANKING. [ARTICLE]

ENGLISH BANKING.

Some of the Peculiar Methods of the Bank of England. Judged by American ideas of finance and banking, the Bank of England is a peculiar if not an anomalous institution. A few days ago the chancellor of the exchequer refused to answer questions in parliament concerning the conduct of the bank, on the ground that it is a private institution, and yet it is Certain that in the eyes of a vast majority of the British people the Bank of England is regarded as quite as integral a part of the government as the crown, throne or scepter. The Bank of England is, no doubt, as a proposition of law, a private institution, yet when we know that its chief customers are the various joint stock and private banks of the United K’.ngdom, that it regulates to a great degree the finances of the country by altering its rate of discount, and that its notes are preferred to gold coin by almost everybody in Great Britain, it i'S easy to see that it has assumed a quasi public character of which it cannot divest itself if it would. Of late there has been some very bad management of the bank, as everybody knows, and the assertion is made that the bank is out of date in both methods and men, but there is nothing to be done about it, officially, so long as the chancellor of the exchequer insists upon its private character. If it were a national bank or a department of the treasury there would be no question about the propriety of a parliamentary inquiry, but that, with the conservatism which characterizes most British legislation, is hardly possible. Strangely enough, however, the chancellor of the exchequer says that one reform will be insisted on by parliament, namely, the resumption of public statements of the bank's condition, which were discontinued in 1878. This can be effected, of course, by an act of parliament, for parliament is omnipotent, but it is decidedly inconsistent to say in one breath that the Bank of England is a private institution, and in the next that it will be required to do something that other private banks are not required to do. The bank certainly needs reforming, but such reform should be brought about by first making it in name what it is in reality, a public institution.— Sah Francisco Chronicle.