mercantile community, or to the bankers, 'Do not come to us again. We helped you once. But do not look upon it as a precedent. We will not help you again.' On the contrary, the evident and intended implication is that under like circumstances the Bank would act again as it has now acted."
This article was much disliked by many of the Bank directors, and especially by some whose opinion is of great authority. They thought that the Economist drew "rash deductions" from a speech which was in itself "open to some objection"—which was, like all such speeches, defective in theoretical precision, and which was at best only the expression of an opinion by the Governor of that day, which had not been authorised by the Court of Directors, which could not bind the Bank. However, the article had at least this use, that it brought out the facts. All the directors would have felt a difficulty in commenting upon, or limiting, or in differing from, a speech of a Governor from the chair. But there was no difficulty or delicacy in attacking the Economist. Accordingly Mr. Hankey, one of the most experienced Bank directors, not long after, took occasion to observe:—
"The Economist newspaper has put forth what in my opinion is the most mischievous doctrine ever broached in the monetary or banking
