We have seen that our banking reserve is, as compared with our liabilities, singularly small; we have seen that the rise of these great banks has lessened the proportion of that reserve to those liabilities; we have seen that the greatest strain on the banking reserve is a 'panic.' Now, no cause is more capable of producing a panic, perhaps none is so capable, as the failure of a first-rate joint stock bank in London.

Such an event would have something like the effect of the failure of Overend, Gurney and Co.; scarcely any other event would have an equal effect.

And therefore, under the existing constitution of our banking system the government of these great banks is of primary importance to us all..