The sum paid yearly in salaries amounted at first to only four thousand three hundred and fifty pounds.

It now exceeds two hundred and ten thousand pounds.

We may therefore fairly infer that the incomes of commercial clerks are, on an average, about three times as large in the reign of Victoria as they were in the reign of William the Third.

[525] It soon appeared that Montague had, by skilfully availing himself of the financial difficulties of the country, rendered an inestimable service to his party.

During several generations the Bank of England was emphatically a Whig body.