The Living Present
THE LIVING PRESENT BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS [Illustration: THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNE President Le Bien--Etre du Blesse] TO "ETERNAL FRANCE"
44,891,613 L 44,891,613 L
GEO. FORBES, Chief Cashier.
Dated the 30th December, 1869.
There are here 15,000,000 L. bank notes issued on securities, and
18,288,640 L. represented by bullion. The Bank of England has no
power by law to increase the currency in any other manner. It holds
the stipulated amount of securities, and for all the rest it must
have bullion. This is the 'cast iron' systemthe 'hard and fast' line
which the opponents of the Act say ruins us, and which the partizans
of the Act say saves us. But I have nothing to do with its
expediency here. All which is to my purpose is that our paper 'legal
tender,' our bank notes, can only be obtained in this manner. If,
therefore, an English banker retains a sum of Bank of England notes
or coin in due proportion to his liabilities, he has a sufficient
amount of the legal tender of this country, and he need not think of
anything more.
But here a distinction must be made. It is to be observed that
properly speaking we should not include in the 'reserve' of a bank
'legal tenders,' or cash, which the Bank keeps to transact its daily
business. That is as much a part of its daily stock-in-trade as its
desks or offices; or at any rate, whatever words we may choose to
use, we must carefully distinguish between this cash in the till
THE LIVING PRESENT BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS [Illustration: THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNE President Le Bien--Etre du Blesse] TO "ETERNAL FRANCE"