Page:The Bank of England and the State, 1905.djvu/65

 the scope of this paper, although it forms part of the question of Foreign Trade and the Money Market; but I think that the time has come when a conclusion will have to be arrived at, on whom the responsibility is to be laid for keeping the gold reserve in the country at an adequate level. I do not think we bankers ought to be called upon alone to assume that responsibility, but we should co-operate with the Bank of England towards that end. But even the Bank of England has, at present, no such specific duty imposed upon it, although it is the Bank of the Government, endowed with special privileges. But, as I said nearly three years ago, "the time cannot be far distant when a revision of Peel's Act will become necessary, and it implies no disrespect to the framers of that Act which, on the whole, has worked so well, or to those who have administered it so efficiently and conscientiously, to maintain that new conditions have arisen, to which our system should be adapted."

From the many attacks which, somewhat unexpectedly, have been directed against our whole commercial system during the last few months, three distinct policies have emerged, viz.: (1) Preferential treatment; (2) Retaliation; (3) Protection. To go into these fully is, as I have stated, not my intention, and I am anxious to avoid anything like political controversy; yet there are various points which have material bearing on the subject matter of this paper. It appears to me that in considering the question we must keep certain recognised facts, facts admitted by all sides, constantly before us. No matter what our opinions may be of the results of the policy decided upon 60 years ago, we have to deal with present conditions; we have a large and growing population which is, and must be, dependent on a large proportion of its food supplies and raw materials for its manufactures, having to be imported from abroad. A comparison with a country like, say, the United States, which produces both its food and raw materials at home, must be therefore entirely misleading; the problems to be solved are of a different nature