JB/002/327/001

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3 Note continued

In the infancy At an early period of the Exchequer currency, Bills
were issued for sums as low as £10 or even £5.
Now it should have happened that they should have been
the practice of issuing such small notes should have
ceased, and the minimum note raised to and
continued at insensibly fixed at its present pitch of £100, is not
difficult to conceive. The form of the security could
naturally be adapted adapt itself to the convenience of the lenders
more especially as the lenders were individuals acting
on their own account, and the Governors statesmen
acting, without any such personal interest for the public at large. The lenders on
this security have been on as the one part and that
the principal part the immensely opulent Company
the Bank of England — partly the work of small but prodigiously opulent opulent
moneyd men about Change known to each other
and meeting one another continually at or in the
nag neighborhood of the Exchange. £100 was
a magnitude quite small enough for persons of that
class. The faculty of employing in the same way
a smaller sum, suppose £50, would have
been of no use to him: since that and more even
the £100 is not so much as he would be under
the necessity of keeping by him or at his Bankers
for the purpose of current expences or small and payments
on a small scale. Notes Bills of less magnitude
would thus be attended with no advantage, and they
would be attended with the disadvantage of making a
proportionable addition to the trouble of computation.
Another relative disadvantage and a much more considerable
one, is — the effect of small Bills that £10 and £5 Bills for example, would
be to open the market to a greater number of customers, thence
to increase the competition for it. — and to raise the price — in
other words to lower the rate of interest upon the paper, and thence diminish the profit to be made by purchasing it.