It was in this reign that the Bank of England was founded, principally through the exertions of Mr. William Paterson, famous also as the projector of the Scottish Darien Company. Paterson, according to his own account, commenced his exertions for the establishment of an English bank, similar to those already existing at Amsterdam, Venice, Genoa, and Hamburgh, in the year 1691. A principal object which he had in view from the first, in addition to the accommodation of the mercantile community, appears to have been the support of public credit and the relief of the government from the ruinous terms upon which the raising of the supplies and other financial operations were then conducted. The lowest rate, he tells us, at which advances used to be obtained from capitalists, even upon the land-tax, which seems to have been considered the surest part of the national revenue, was eight per cent., although repayment was made within the year, and premiums were generally granted to the subscribers. On anticipations of other taxes, counting premiums, discount, and interest, the public had sometimes to pay twenty, thirty, and even forty per cent. Nor was the money easily obtained when wanted even on such terms. It was no uncommon thing for ministers to be obliged to solicit the common council of the city of London for so small a sum as a hundred or two hundred thousand pounds, to be repaid from the first returns of the land-tax; and then, if the application was granted, particular common councilmen had in like manner to make humble suit to the inhabitants of their respective wards, going from house to house for contributions to the loan.[1] In these circumstances Paterson might have laid his account with the opposition of the monied interest, whose inordinate gains his proposed Bank was to put an end to; the disaffected, also,—that is, the enemies of the revolutionary settlement,—were all, he tells us, against it; their argument was, that the new Bank would engross to itself all the
- ↑ Paterson's Account of his Transactions in relation to the Bank of England, fol. 1695; and his Conferences on the Public Debts by the Wednesday's Club in Friday-street.
