Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/401

1922 replies that he will not ask any person to be joined security with him. Norris insists on the right to lay down rules for the conduct of his private affairs, and adds, 'It is fortunate the circumstance happens to a person whose credit is above conjecture'. In December 1791 Norris asks if he is to expect 'the payment of the £2,000, or the land security you noted to me in your last letter'. In the meantime Oldknow had been falling behind in his remittances to Arkwright, who writes on 13 September 1791, 'It is true I did not expect a regular sum to be remitted me every week but I understood the defalcation of one week should be made up in another which you have not done'. Before midsummer 1792 Oldknow had apparently been driven to seek the financial assistance of Drinkwater, and Arkwright, in acknowledging the receipt of half a year's interest on the debt of £12,000, adds, 'I hope the person, whoever he is, that you have joined, has £20,000 to spare, and will turn out an agreeable partner'. The new connexion had evidently been formed with the intention of paying off Arkwright, but the commercial crisis of 1792, followed by the outbreak of war in 1793, compelled Oldknow not only to contract fresh loans with his bankers, Smith, Payne & Smith, but also, on the death of his brother in the autumn of 1793, to sell the bleach- and print-works at Heaton Mersey. In May 1794, when the bankers were pressing for the repayment of their loan, Oldknow wrote to Arkwright, asking that he might defer payment on the long-standing debt to him. To this, not unnaturally, Arkwright replied with some heat,

"… you know what was my opinion from the first of your launching out into these extremes, and you have pretended to consult Mr. Strutt and myself what was best to be done, but instead of following our advice you have continued to increase your machinery. … Will Mr. D. join you in to me for the debt and engage … the interest shall be regularly paid? One may talk of letting matters rest till 6 or 12 months after the war, but surely such a thing is quite unmercantile."

It will be seen that a remarkable interest attaches to the shop-notes issued in payment of wages at the Mellor mill in 1793–4 from several different points of view. They are symptomatic of an important crisis in the private fortunes of Samuel Oldknow and constitute an episode in the history of the Truck System. But they have a still wider significance in relation to the history of commercial credit and of paper currency. Enough has been said to show the almost desperate condition of Oldknow's affairs at the beginning of 1793. He had invested an immense capital for those days—probably £20,000 at least—in the fixed forms of land, buildings and machinery, which would not yield any return without the assistance of commercial credit, and owing to