Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/162

128 mate of the sums which daily pass through this operation: they fluctuate from two millions to perhaps fifteen. About two millions and a half may possibly be considered as something like an average, requiring for its adjustment, perhaps, 200,000l. in bank notes and 20l. in specie. By an agreement between the different bankers, all checks which have the name of any firm written across them must pass through the clearing-house: consequently, if any such check should be lost, the firm on which it is drawn would refuse to pay it at the counter; a circumstance which adds greatly to the convenience of commerce.

The advantage of this system is such, that two meetings a day have been recently establishedone at twelve, the other at three o'clock; but the payment of balances takes place once only, at five o'clock.

If all the private banks kept accounts with the Bank of England, it would be possible to carry on the whole of these transactions with a still smaller quantity of circulating medium.

(175.) In reflecting on the facility with which these vast transactions are accomplishedsupposing, for the sake of argument, that they form only the fourth part of the daily transactions of the whole communityit is impossible not to be struck with the importance of interfering as little as possible with their natural adjustment. Each payment indicates a transfer of property made for the benefit of both parties; and if it were possible, which it is not, to place, by legal or other means, some impediment in the way which only amounted to one-eighth per cent., such a species of friction would produce a useless expenditure of nearly four millions annually: a