BANKERS' WARNINGS.
More than a year ago, for example, in the Manifesto signed by Free Trade bankers and economists the need for economy was pressed home upon the Government. In the course of this Manifesto the following sentences appeared : " No present party takes any serious interest in economy ; all appear to accept as inevitable a continuance of public expenditure on something like the present scale. Thus the root cause of our economic troubles is to remain, and our position in the world economically and socially must sink ever lower. The stupidity of bribing the people with their own money is beginning to be realised by the people themselves, and retrenchment is a battle cry to which we believe the genius of the nation would be proud to rally.".
For years the bankers have been proclaiming at their annual meetings what must be the inevitable result of continued extravagance, and some months before the present crisis became acute the President of the British Bankers' Association, Mr. Beaumont Pease, speaking at the annual dinner, when the chief guest was the Lord Chancellor, said : " I would ask him (the Lord Chancellor) to take from this gather- ing of bankers to the Government, of which he is a member, this message : We believe that the financial and commercial condition of this country is highly critical. We do not believe that that condition can be met by merely marking time and hoping for better things. The position must be faced and must be faced squarely. If we, as a nation, are spending more than-We can afford, as I have already hinted, it must stop. Bankers know of only one end to such a course, if continued sufficiently long.' "
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