Just so, an immense system of credit, founded on the Bank of England as its pivot and its basis, now exists.

The English people, and foreigners too, trust it implicitly.
Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof.

The whole rests on an instinctive confidence generated by use and years.

Nothing would persuade the English people to abolish the Bank of England; and if some calamity swept it away, generations must elapse before at all the same trust would be placed in any other equivalent.

A many-reserve system, if some miracle should put it down in Lombard Street, would seem monstrous there.