War-time financial problems

274 THE REGULATION OF THE CURRENCY

Issue Department of the Bank of England securities
to the value of," etc. It is the practice of the Bank
to put Government securities into the Issue Depart-
ment, but the terms of the Act do not compel them
to do so, and if an excess issue were needed they
would seem to be empowered to put any bills that
they discounted into the assets held against the note
issue. On the whole the terms of the Act leaving
them freedom in the matter, except with regard to
the " Government debt" of £11 millions, whidbris
specially mentioned as to be transferred to the Issue
Department, seem to be preferable to a special
stipulation in favour of bills of exchange.

But the most important difference between Sir
Edward Holden and the Cunliffe Committee seems
to be in their attitude towards the gold reserve and
the relation between the Bank of England and the
rest of the items that compose the London money
market. The Committee, working to restore the
conditions which made our market the centre of the
world's finance, endeavoured to give back the control
of the central gold reserve to the Bank of England
by suggesting, among other things, that the other
banks shbuld hand over their gold to it. They
omitted to discuss the serious question of the greater
difficulty that the Bank is likely to find in future in
controlling the price of money in the market, owing
to the huge size that the chief clearing banks have
now reached. But a central gold reserve under
central control was evidently the object at which
they aimed. Sir Edward will have none of this.
He says that if this were done the position of the