£2 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM
which answer'd the necessity of Commerce among the
Meaner People, for the Common Conveniences of Life * * *.
These Bills passed as so many counters, which the People
were satisfied to receive * * * * and these State Counters so
well supplied the want of Money, till New Coin was issued
from the Mint, that Trade and Commerce were maintained,
and Mutual Payments well enough made, to answer the
Necessities of the Government and the Peoplet.” In this
way the community at large became habituated to the use
of a convertible paper currency. Mercantile bills had long
been in vogue? and were commonly used by the merchants
who frequented Blackwell Hall, or had dealings with gold-
smiths. These forms of credit suffered® like the rest, during
the period when metallic currency was $0 scarce, and there
was difficulty in meeting them punctually, but the general
effect of the episode was to render paper currency of every
sort more familiar than it had ever been before, and so to
develop a new and more economical circulating medium.
The Bank, 217. Important as were these incidental services in float-
also facili- ing a public loan and in providing currency, it was as an
formation organ for the formation and diffusion of capital that the Bank
Deal, gave the greatest impulse to the trading life of England. One
"projector after another had pointed out the advantages which
accrued to Holland from the existence of banks, and insisted
that Englishmen might attain similar success if they would
employ similar means”. One of the earliest of these writers
is Samuel Lambe, a London merchant who addressed Season-
able Observations humbly offered to hus Highness the Lord
Protector. In it he advocated the establishment of a bank,
not as a means of assisting the Government®, nor as a body
1 Kennett, op. eit. m1. 726.
2 Certain London merchants proposed in 1696 to develop the system by insist
ing that buyers of goods of £10 and upward should pay in assignable bills.
Commons Journals, x1. 620.
8 Review of the Universal Remedy for all Diseases sneident to our Coin (1696).
* Se complsints of the heavy discount on bills were frequent; Commons Journals,
x1. Newbury, p. 631; Bury, p. 635 (a); Tamworth, p. 640; Chippenham, p. 624.
5 See above, 419, n. 2. Compare the Report of the Committee on Decay of
Trade in 1669 in the Hist. Manus. Commission, VIL. 133.
6 In 1660 Francis Cradocke proposed the erection of a Land bank. He was
“ware of the necessity of having a fund of cash. as well as credit. in order to
A.D. 1689
1776.
helped to
popularise
paper
SUTTENCY «
