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    venient fbrm than that of the ; Times or the Chronicle , QHpeefaUf $ i there are some valuable additions . A powerful writer in the Edinburgh Review having taken Mr Clay ' s speech for a text , and endeavoured to controvert some of his arguments , Mt Clay has replied to that writer , and we think successfully grappled with the attack . The repeated embarrassments into which the country had

    been placed at various times , between 1792 and 1826 , firctoa the imperfect system of banking which existed , had caused the public to hail with pleasure the introduction of a fiew system , that of Joint-stock Banking Companies , ' —associations convpoaed of united bodies of several hundred persons , instead of erne , two , and not exceeding six persons , to which each bank was by law limited , previously to what is called the panic erf December . 1825 .

    The new system seemed to work well ; Joint-stock Banks were formed , and spread their branches far and wide ; and as Adam Smith showed , so long as the currency kept increasing , there wm a tendency in prices to advance , and a period of national prosperity .

    In this state of things , the attention of the public waa fixed tm the advantages , and had not suffered itself to examine whether or not the new arrangement was based on a good foundation . Mr Clay endeavoured to shew , and we think was successful in showing , that unless Joint-stock Banks were established on sound princi p les , they might , from their extensive credit , bring on a state of things more disastrous even than such as existed in , and previously to , 1825 . He brought fprward the statement of the case in a manner as cautious as the

    circumstances would admit — he strove not to paint a dark imaginary picture to alarm the timid . He did not tell thfe House that any thing very alarming had yet arisen , but bfc temperately and calmly showed that the law on which the new system of banking was founded did hot sufficiently provide against over-issues . He showed that if individuals , few or many , associated together to form a company , and

    Obtained very extensive credit , from the circumstance of every shareholder being answerable to the full extent of his property ; yet the amount of paid-up capital being very small , and the public in ignorance of the real state of the affairs , aueh an establishment might in adverse times be as unable to control its operations or meet its engagements as a private banker .

    His prediction was fully verified jn November last , b y the ¦ foot of the Agricultural Bank of Ireland , though consisting pf many thousand shareholders , beiflg compelled to suspend it » payments , thus drawing a chain of evil consequences round the shareholders , the customers of the bank , and the public

    Untitled Article

    MQ Joint-Stick B&nkl

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 1, 1837, page 110, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1828/page/63/