Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/133

Rh, afterwards Earl of Halifax, is ascribed the main credit of suggesting and carrying through this great reform, which was undoubtedly the mightiest financial operation that had yet been achieved or undertaken in England. In the mean time, however, it had, before its completion, very nearly brought down the infant establishment of the Bank, whose notes, together with the new Exchequer Bills, (also a contrivance of Montague's,) had chiefly supplied, while the re-coinage was proceeding, the vacuum occasioned by the abstraction of the old clipped silver money. But these notes, being payable on demand, were presented so much faster than the new coin could be supplied from the Mint, that the Bank, in the course of the year 1697, was obliged to resort to what amounted in fact to a suspension of payments—giving coin for its notes, first by instalments of ten per cent, once a fortnight, and afterwards only at the rate of three per cent, once in three months. The consequence was, that Bank paper fell to a discount of from fifteen to twenty per cent. In the preceding year the directors had made two successive calls of twenty per cent, each upon the proprietors ; but such v/as the difficulty of procuring money, that we find them, in the Gazette of the 6th of May, 1697, urging the defaulters upon the last of these calls, which should have been attended to on the 10th of the preceding November, "and also those indebted to the Bank upon mortgages, pawns, notes, bills, or other securities, to pay in the said twenty per cent., and the principal and interest of those securities, by the 1st of June next." But these difficulties were soon removed and the credit of the Bank completely restored by the effects of an act passed in the ensuing session of parliament, adding above a million sterling to the stock of the corporation, and extending the term of its exclusive privileges to the year 1711. In 1708 its charter was farther continued to the year 1733; in 1712 to the year 1743; and in 1742 to the year 1765. Meanwhile also its capital, or the amount of the advances it had made to