WHAT WOULD THE LATE- SIR ROBERT PEEL RAVE DONE—WITH THE
BANK OF ENGLAND?
Gateshead, 19th December 1855. Sin—What would the late Sir Robert Peel liave done ? is a question which has already in more than one case been asked and answered ; but not hitherto, so far as I am aware, has the very natural question been propounded, What would the late Sir Robert Peel have done with the Bank of England?
To that question the following is the answer : it was his conviction that the Bank of England ought to be separated from the State ; and this, had he lived, it would have been one of the objects of his life to effect. My authority for this statement is Mr. John M•Gregor 14.P. ; who eons- muincated it to me in the course of an interview I had with him in London not long after Sir Robert Peel's death. That interview was sought by him with the object of inducing me to become trustee of a new bank it was at that time proposed to establish. in London ; and thus-it was the conversation took this turn. The conclusion as to the necessity of this separation I had already derived from intercourse with my accomplished friend and neighbour Thomas Dou- bleday, and from reading in MS. his interesting Financial History of Eng- land, (since published by Effingham Wilson); and I had, moreover, been led to suspect this conclusion in the minded Sir Robert Peel from remarkable passages in some of his speeches, indicating tie terror in which he lived as to the action of the Bank of England.
I therefore took the opportunity of questioning Mr. M'Gregor an the sub- ject; and his reply was emphatic and distinct, that had Sir Robert Peel lived, it would have been an object with him to have separated the Bank of England from the State, and to this he had looked forward. Of this circum- stance, so distinct is my recollection that I am prepared to mike an affidavit out. , I give publicity to it in the hope of thus stimulating inquiry, and in the full conviction that as in the connexion of the Rank of England with the State originated the National Debt and all our financial disorders, so in the -dissolution of that connexion is to be 'sought the only source of remedy.
0. CRAWSIIATI.
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