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303 would terrify and harass the public mind. An old banker once told me: "Sir, I was on Lord Althorp's committee which decided on the publication of the Bank account, and I voted against it. I thought it would frighten people. But I am bound to own that the committee was right and I was wrong, for that publication has given the Money Market a greater sense of security than anything else which has happened in my time." The diffusion of confidence through Lombard Street and the world is the object of the publication of the Bank accounts and of the Bank reserve.

But that object is not attained if the amount of the reserve when so published is not enough to tranquillise people. A panic is sure to be caused if that reserve is, from whatever cause, exceedingly low. At every moment there is a certain minimum, which I will call the "apprehension minimum," below which the reserve cannot fall without great risk of diffused fear; and by this I do not mean absolute panic, but only a vague fright and timorousness which spreads itself instantly, and as if by magic, over the public mind. Such seasons of incipient alarm are exceedingly dangerous, because they beget the calamities they dread. What is most feared at such moments of susceptibility is the destruction of credit; and if any grave failure or bad event happens at such moments the public fancy seizes on it, there is a