Mr. Goschen took the second reading of the Bill intended
to limit the Scotch Banks of Issue to Scotland on Wednesday last. We have discussed the subject elsewhere, but may add here that. in the short debate which ensued Mr. Gladstone spoke in favour of the Bill, and especially drew attention, with some authority, to the late Sir Robert Peel's views in passing the English and Scotch Bank Acts of 1844 and 1845. Sir Robert Peel held that "where the law imposed restrictions upon Banks in the business of banking, those restrictions should be maintained in reference to another principle,—that the State was entitled to receive ultimately into its own hands the entire business of issue," and also held that that course should be taken on the first favourable opportunity. Mr. Gladstone himself maintained that the privileges of issue enjoyed by the Scotch Banks were stated quite correctly by Mr. Gosehen to be exactly equivalent to a subsidy granted to them by the Govern- ment,—a "lucrative privilege" being precisely the same thing as a sum of money paid over to the owner,—but he wished the legi- timate opportunity offered by the opening of this question as to- the Scotch Banks to be utilised by the Government for the purpose of dealing in a much larger sense with the whole question of Note- issue, and he promised the Government the cordial support of the front Opposition Bench in legislating on the subject, if they would take it in hand.
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