Result of the pains taken by Parliament to enlighten the Public on the subject - The authorities differed in opinion before, and they differ still - Secret Committees - description of - Give no account of Bankrupt Banks - No rule of good Banking, and no exemplification of Banks that do well and Banks that do ill - Old Mr. Lefevre's definition of Banking to a customer with a bad memory - Great want of Banking accommodation in the spring of 1841 - Contrast between the state of Banking now and that 30 years ago.

Banking, in a commercial community, is every man's affair. In the present relations of society it not only affects us one and all, more or less directly, but is so potent and penetrating that there is no escaping from its influence, or getting on without direct and intimate connexion with it. More truly than nine out of the ten millions of things to which the quotation has been applied - "Tis like the air we breathe - if we have it not, we die." It pursues us in the streets, follows us to our homes, pierces each household nook and cranny, embraces our whole existence, public and private, and constitutes the very soul and being of all our pursuits, interests, relations, undertakings, dependencies, and possessions. What is there in all this broad and stirring land of ours that a man can begin without a Bank; and what, however well begun or conducted, that will not, when the Bank refuses accommodation, at once stop, sink, and be for ever extinguished? There is nothing of which we can treat - nothing upon which we can act - nothing to which we can allude - which is not closely mixed up and deeply compounded and amalgamated with it. Moot the Corn Laws pro and con; inquire into commercial or manufacturing distress; lecture upon bubble companies; jump into the meridian of the speculative mania of 1825 and 1836, or plunge into the cold panics that followed those extremes; discourse, in short, as you will, of prosperity or of ruin; in one and all you find the same general influence actuating and over-ruling every possible state of things - it is Banks and Bankers - the currency, or circulating medium of the country. The great modern specific against all sorts of oppression - passive resistance - is, here at least, of no avail. It is equally vain to think of making head against it, or of subsisting without some compromise or understanding with it. Need I observe how stringently it follows as a matter of paramount importance from all this, that we should have that well done, which, if ill done, no man amongst us, whatever may be his resources or abilities, can count upon doing well for any period, however limited ? So much, then, for my case: it has one great attraction, a universal interest.

But there's the proverb - "Every one's busi-ness is no one's business." - This old saying is just as true when applied to Banking, as to any other thing on earth. We all know, feel, and confess by our conduct even more than by our words, that we must have Banking - be it good, bad, or indifferent; and yet the number of those is comparatively small, who give themselves any trouble about it beyond complaining every now and then that it is no better than it happens to be. It is notorious that the times, as to Banking, are sadly out of joint, and we are constantly exclaiming against them; and yet, most pertinently may it be asked, in what are we gainers by the outcry we make?

At the same time, it is quite true that Parliament has been at great pains, and undergone very protracted labours from time to time to enlighten the public upon Banking; but it is equally true that the public does not appear to be much wiser upon the subject than it was when left to itself to gain information as it could. The authorities used then to differ widely amongst themselves in opinion as to what was right and what was wrong, and they differ widely still.

Of late years we have had a parliamentary committee upon Banking almost every session. All sorts and degrees of Bankers, bill-brokers, and book-makers upon the subject; cavillers and commentators, theorists and doctrinaires, have been courted and consulted; huge folio after folio has been printed and published at the public expense; - we are told, moreover, that these volumes have been sold, and we have, therefore, a warrant for assuming that they have been read. Yet what, after all, is the result? We are worse off than ever. This is no exaggeration. The monetary affairs of this country have never, within the memory of man, been in a state of more pungent difficulty than they have been during the last twelve months. You may read yourself blind upon Banking in the library of either House of Parliament, and when you have lost your eye-sight, you will rise from the sacrifice with few clearer perceptions than you had before you devoted yourself to it; unless, indeed, it be that you then thought the case dangerous, and you will now, perhaps, feel that it is desperate. Voila tout! I have my own way of accounting for the small harvest that has been reaped from all the seed that has been sown; it is this - one half of the inquiries that have been instituted have gone far wide of the mark. Theories have been abundantly discussed, and practice greatly over-looked. Put any ten men of business you can bring together - provided always they be not members of Parliament - down to a table to talk of Banking, and they will in ten minutes' start half-a-dozen points, not one of which has been sifted by all the committees of all the Sessions that have taken up the subject since the great Bullion Committee of 1810. That made the first beginning of the never-ending toil and trouble. We have now for thirty years been laying great stress upon eventualities, as Monsieur Thiers would call them, and shutting our eyes all the while to distinct realities, in which the whole pith and marrow of the question are compressed.

For instance - look at the distant and obscure manner in which the two millions and a half loan borrowed by the Bank of England from the Bank of France is alluded to in the Report of 1841. I need not remark how conclusive is the nature of the evidence, afforded by that fact, of distress and mismanagement upon the part of the Bank of England; and yet most sparing is the information either sought by the committee or supplied by the Bank respecting it. On all sides, in short, there seems to have been but one anxiety, and that was to keep the transaction as much a mystery as possible. - Again, in all the returns upon Banking before the two houses of Parliament, there is no such thing as a complete list of the Banks that have failed, while Lords and Commons have been inquiring about a variety of things presumed to have something to do with their failure. Legislators have been delivering unprofitable speeches, and committees have been making endless reports, leading to nothing, upon the dangers to which the country has been exposed by its vicious system of Banking - Banks, meantime, have been breaking by the score, and money has been lost in millions; but the total number of bankrupt Banks has never been returned, nor the sum of the losses ascertained, which has from year to year been entailed upon the trade and commerce of the country. Not only has this not been done, but the particular cause of the failure of a single Bank has never once been investigated and exposed, nor has a word of censure fallen upon the many firms by which the public have lost millions of money. The anatomy of the subject has evidently been either too powerful for the nerves, or too intricate for the attention of members of Parliament, who have neither had the skill nor patience to probe the disease to its core, or the courage to describe in detail the ravages it has committed upon the body politic. The nature and amount of the mischief done was about the first thing to be ascertained, and it has been the only thing never considered. Had the evil been fairly traced, and honestly laid bare, the nation would have risen long ago as one man, and insisted upon a searching change. Our legislators have treated Banking as the doctors are sometimes said to treat a rich patient - they have been most anxious to keep the subject alive for the sake of what they can make by it, and have never insisted upon a radical cure, lest it might detract from their practice.